In These New Times

A new cold war led by the USA has become a fashionable theme. However, core US diplomacy has consistently contradicted such a scenario. The USA, more than Europe, needs to reach out to the BRICS for its own salvation. The problem is that vested interests, the imperial state if you like, continue to rely on a strategy of geopolitical tension. But the CIA, the neo-cons, the Israel lobby, the Military Industrial Complex and their congressional representatives have emerged from the fiascos in Syria, Venezuela and Ukraine embittered and weakened. This should enable Obama to pursue policies in accord with US national interests whereby US retreat from empire is rewarded by inward investment from China and others. For that surplus to be available a new motor of global development must emerge which can only be the Eurasian economic space from Shanghai to Lisbon. The resolution of the Ukrainian crisis, the first step of which was completed at Geneva yesterday, will facilitate this happy development. Certainly Russia and China are emerging as leading global players but their prime goal is geo-strategic partnership with the USA. By an agonised path Obama is positioning himself to reciprocate

LEAP 2020

17th April, 2014

In the present confrontation between Russia and the West over the Ukrainian crisis, the image of the Cold War inevitably comes to mind and the media are obviously fond of it. However, contrary to what it gives us to understand, it’s not Russia that seeks the return of an iron curtain but really the US. An iron curtain separating the old powers and emerging nations; the world before and the world afterwards; debtors and creditors. And this in the crazy hope of preserving the American way of life and the US’ influence over “its” camp in the absence of being able to impose it on the whole world. In other words, go down with as many companions as possible to give the impression of not sinking. 

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