The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 78-79, August-September 2025 Pages 1 and 2 In current Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, appeasement stands for cowardly and illusory pacification, as exemplified by the Munich Agreement of 1938, which conceded to the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia without stopping the march towards world war. Were Shigeru Ishiba, Ursula von der Leyen, Emmanuel Macron, and Friedrich Merz really, as has been said, the Neville Chamberlains of the tariff war, accepting appeasement on the 15% tariff in an ignominious surrender to Donald Trump's blackmail? And has Trump really revealed himself in Anchorage, Alaska, to be an appeaser towards Vladimir Putin? Was it, finally, only the firmness of the Europeans at the Washington summit which convinced Trump to remain as one of the guarantors of Ukraine's security? The plague of television and social media diplomacy feeds on simplistic and propa...

Internationalism No. 77, July 2025 Page 16 After the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the tariff war , and the hundred-hour war between India and Pakistan, now comes the twelve-day war , in which Israel has secured American support to strike Iran’s nuclear sites. The real outcome is still unknown. In the endless boasting that features regularly in the script for each daily episode of his global sitcom , Trump compares the hammer blow of his bunker-buster bombs to the atomic bomb that incinerated Hiroshima, ending the war with Japan. For others, including American agencies, Iran’s nuclear programme will only be delayed by a few months, and Tehran will now be even more determined to try to assemble its deterrent, triggering regional proliferation. What remains, on the American side, is the display of unrivalled military capability, a signal sent to all powers. Of course, no one in the chancelleries arou...

Internationalism No. 77, July 2025 Page 15 From the series Atom and industrialisation of science At a conference in January 1946 in Princeton, New Jersey, Albert Einstein was asked why, when humanity’s intellect had advanced so far as to discover the structure of the atom, it had not been able to devise the political means to prevent its use. The scientist replied: That is simple, my friend. It is because politics is more difficult than physics [Grenville Clark, The New York Times , April 22 nd , 1955]. Truman, Churchill, Stalin, and the atomic bomb From July 17 th to August 2 nd , 1945, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin [1878-1953], British Prime Minister Winston Churchill [1874-1965], and American President Harry Truman [1884-1972] met in the German city of Potsdam. Their purpose was to negotiate the terms for the end of World War II, after Germany had surrendered o...

Internationalism No. 77, July 2025 Page 14 From the series Industry and pharmaceuticals The 20 th century, particularly its second half, saw an extraordinary transformation in the field of pharmaceuticals. Starting with the production of penicillin, the first in a long line of antibiotics, the therapeutic capabilities of thousands of chemical compounds have been discovered, capable of changing the natural history of many diseases – that is, their normal course if left untreated. Industrial production has filled pharmacy shelves with ready-to-use remedies, or purported remedies, replacing the pharmacist’s ancient galenic formulations. Italy’s regulatory agency, Agenzia Italiana del Farmaco (AIFA), lists approximately 3,000 active ingredients across various therapeutic classes, for nearly 11,000 human medicines authorised for sale. However, we should not forget that, ...

Internationalism No. 77, July 2025 Page 13 Estimates by international institutions for April to June confirm the slowdown in global output and trade. The World Bank forecasts a decline in GDP growth from 2.8% in 2024, to 2.3% in 2025, and a sharp fall in trade from 3.4% to 1.8%. The main cause of the new slowdown is the tariff war declared by Donald Trump, who has so far imposed a universal minimum tariff of 10%. The uncertainty arising from his peculiar art of the deal , consisting of lunges, postponements, relaunches, U-turns, and pauses, makes the policy of the world's leading power unpredictable. It is also paying the highest price, with US growth halving, from 2.8% to 1.4%. The Eurozone has been floating at a rate of less than 1% since 2023 and, according to the World Bank, will remain below this level in 2025 and 2026, while the OECD and the ECB predict a return to 1% in 2025. Chin...

Internationalism No. 77, July 2025 Page 12 From the series Chronicles of the new American nationalism Donald Trump’s first 100 days in the Oval Office have been an opportunity for making an assessment. The establishment newspapers of the East Coast judge that the foreign and trade policies of the administration do not serve Washington’s interests, and that fundamental corrections are necessary. In particular, an unexpected counter power has emerged, says the title of an editorial in Les Echos , a leading business daily in France. According to deputy editor Dominique Seux, the surprise of the first 100 days is that The Wall Street Journal ( WSJ ), a conservative newspaper close to the Republican Party and owned by billionaire Rupert Murdoch, has stepped up as one of the most determined opponents of Trump’s economic policy. Who would have thought it possible? Not ...

Internationalism No. 77, July 2025 Page 11 Marxist science has always paid close attention to China. In the mid-19 th century, it was concerned with the discovery of the world market ; in the early 20 th century, with the prospect of the inflammable material of revolution in Asia; in the postwar period, it was faced with the duration of the counter-revolutionary phase ; and today it is concerned with the critical juncture of the crisis in the world order and the prediction of its breakdown. Over the past two centuries, without exception, China has been involved in every major juncture of revolutionary development. This volume is limited to one particular aspect: the Dragon’s global projection over the last ten years. The Asian Giant’s imperialist maturation was bound to shake up the world order set up by the winners of World War II and to decree its crisis. This world order was able to co...