Internationalism Number 84

No. 84, February 2026

Title	Author	Page
Hand and Brain and Artificial Intelligence		Page 1
The Atlantic Crisis Comes Close to Catastrophe for the Alliance		Page 2
European news The Challenge in Greenland Deepens the Atlantic Crisis		Page 3
Factional Struggle and the Violence of Capital in Iran’s Repression		Pages 4 and 5
American Castling Over Caracas’s Oil Fields		Page 6
War industry and European defence The Challenge in Greenland Deepens the Atlantic Crisis		Page 7
Pages from the history of the worker’s movement The January Uprising		Page 8
Principles of Marxism Materialist Conception and International Politics		Page 9
Malaysia Buys Time With Trump		Page 10
Oil and Gas, Crucial Changes		Page 11
Chronicles of the new American nationalism Is the Supreme Court a Check on Trump?		Page 12
The world steel battle India’s Lift-Off		Page 13
The world energy battle Uneven Energy Development		Page 14
Atom and industrialisation of science Nuclear Physicists and Spies for the Russian Bomb		Page 15
Thinking the Decade		Page 16

Other issues

India’s Weaknesses in the Global Spotlight

Farmers’ protests around New Delhi have been going on for four months now. A controversial intervention by the Supreme Court has suspended the implementation of the new agticultural laws, but has raised questions about the dynamics between the judiciary and the executive, and has failed to unblock the negotiations between government and peasant organisations. The assault by Sikh farmers on the Red Fort during the Republic Day parade as India was displaying its military might to the outside world — the Chinese Global Times maliciously noted — paradoxically widened the protest in the huge state of Uttar Pradesh. The Modi government has been trying to revive India’s image with the 2021 Union Budget: it announced one hundred privatisations and approved the increase to 75% of the limit on direct foreign investment in insurance companies. For The Indian Express ( IEX ) this is a sign of the commitment to push ahead with reforms despite the backlash from rural India. Also for The Economi...

The Defeat in Afghanistan — a Watershed in the Cycle of Atlantic Decline

In crises and wars there are events which leave their mark on history because of how they make a decisive impact on the power contention, or because of how, almost like a chemical precipitate, they suddenly make deep trends that have been at work for some time coalesce. This is the case of the defeat of the United States and NATO in Afghanistan, which is taking the shape of a real watershed in the cycle of Atlantic decline. For the moment, through various comments in the international press, it is possible to consider its consequences on three levels: America’s position as a power and the connection with its internal crisis; the repercussions on Atlantic relations and Europe’s dilemmas regarding its strategic autonomy; and the relationship between the Afghan crisis and power relations in Asia, especially as regards India’s role in the Indo-Pacific strategy. Repercussions in the United States Richard Haass is the president of the CFR, the Council on Foreign Relations; despite having ...

The Fourth Plenum of China's War Preparations

Internationalism No. 83, January 2026 Page 2 According to Nicolas Baverez of Le Figaro , China’s proposed Five-Year Plan for 2026-2030, accepted by the Fourth Plenum of the CCP Central Committee, marks China’s transition to a war economy . At the national level, the focus would not be on rebalancing demand, but on reducing dependencies in order to resist external pressures and international sanctions. War preparations, writes the French economist, are now fully integrated into China’s economic development strategy. In our view, it would be more accurate to speak of a rearmament economy , since no major power has yet moved towards the proportions of a full-scale war effort, i.e., military spending historically measured in tens of percentage points of GDP. Instead, the variations have so far been a few percentage points and fractions of a point. This does not mean that there is no rearmament process affecting the economy and society as a whol...

The Unstoppable Force: Capital’s Demand for Migrant Labour

Internationalism No. 78-79, August-September 2025 Page 16 “Before Giorgia Meloni became Italy’s prime minister, she pledged to cut immigration. Since she has been in government the number of non-EU work visas issued by Italy has increased”. This is how The Economist of April 26th summarises the schizophrenia of their politics; and this is not only true in Italy: “Net migration also surged in post-Brexit Britain”. The needs of the economic system do not coincide with the rhetoric of parliamentarism. And vice versa. Schizophrenia and imbalances in their politics Returning to Italy, the Bank of Italy has pointed out that by 2040, in just fifteen years, there will be a shortage of five million people of working age, which could lead to an estimated 11% contraction in GDP. This is why even Italy’s “sovereignist” government is preparing to widen the net of its Immigration Flow Decree. The latest update, approved on June 30th, provides for the entry of almost ...

Democratic Defeat in the Urban Vote

Internationalism No. 71, January 2025 Page 2 From the series Elections in the USA A careful analysis of the 2022 mid-term elections revealed the symptoms of a Democratic Party malaise which subsequently fully manifested itself in the latest presidential election, with the heavy loss of support in its traditional strongholds of the metropolitan areas of New York City and Chicago, and the State of California. A defeat foretold Republican votes rose from 51 million in the previous 2018 midterms to 54 million in 2022, a gain of 3 million. The Democrat vote fell from 61 to 51 million, a loss of 10 million. The Republicans gained only three votes for every ten lost by the Democrats, while the other seven became abstentions. In 2022, we analysed the elections in New York City by borough, the governmental districts whose names are well known through movies and TV series. In The Bronx, where the average yearly household income is $35,000, the Democrats lost 52,00...

Armed Negotiations between the Gulf and the Mediterranean

David Petraeus, Commander of the US forces in Iraq and the Gulf in 2007-2008, then director of the CIA in 2011-12, described the elimination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani on January 3 rd in Baghdad as a defensive action , with which the Trump presidency restored a US deterrence , which was weakened by recent Iranian actions . This is a reference to the attacks conducted indirectly, unclaimed by Tehran, against the Saudi oil infrastructures on September 14 th 2019. In March 2008, when the forces under Petraeus’ command supported the Iraqi Army in the fight against local Shite militias, Soleimani sent a message to the American general: informing him that he was the person in charge for Iranian policies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza therefore the channel through which to define an agreement to resolve the various issues with Tehran. Petraeus holds the advisors of the Quds Force, the spearhead of the Pasdaran asymmetric operations, responsible for the killing of around 600 ...

“Polish Moment” at Risk

Internationalism No. 78-79, August-September 2025 Page 3 From the series European news In July, the strategic triangle of London-Paris-Berlin was strengthened with the Northwood Declaration, in which the United Kingdom and France signalled the possibility of coordinating the use of their nuclear weapons through the creation of a “Nuclear Steering Group”, and with the Kensington Treaty, an Anglo-German defence pact. These agreements complement the Franco-British agreements of Lancaster House and the Franco-German Treaty of Aachen. Although Poland signed the Treaty of Nancy with France in May 2025, it was excluded from the recent “E3” consultations, in which only the United Kingdom, France, and Germany participated. Nevertheless, the establishment of the new government led by Donald Tusk, the Civic Platform (PO) leader, in the October 2023 elections, after eight years of antagonism with Brussels under the Law and Justice Party (PiS)-dominated government, ha...

The EU Commission Plans for Rearmament and a Clean Industrial Deal

Internationalism No. 71, January 2025 Page 2 From the series European news Following the European elections which took place on June 6th - 9th, the leaders of the Member States met on June 27th at the European Council. Ursula von der Leyen was nominated as president of the next European Commission, after she was chosen as the European People’s Party’s (EPP) Spitzenkandidat (“leading candidate”). The agreement also included the election of former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa as president of the European Council, and the appointment of former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas as High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Subsequently, on July 18th, Parliament elected von der Leyen as president of the Commission by an absolute majority, with 401 votes out of 719 MEPs. On September 17th, von der Leyen presented her team of commissioners to the European Parliament and, two days later, the Council adopted this list of...

Speculative Race for Charging Stations

From the series The world car battle If at the beginning of the 21 st century electrification had technological limits in batteries, both in terms of cost and range, these are now partly overcome, because electric cars have a range of 240-450 km, more than enough for 95% of journeys of less than 50 km. The major obstacle remains the construction of a network of charging stations and their integration with the electricity grid. The race between China, Europe, and USA UBS Evidence Lab, a team of UBS bank experts working in 55 specialised labs to provide data on investment decisions, predicts that cost parity between electric and internal combustion cars will be achieved in 2024 [ Inside EVs , October 20th 2020]. By then, the development of car electrification will be self-sustaining without government subsidies. Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), in its report Electric Vehicle Outlook 2020 , estimates that by 2022 carmakers will have 500 different models of electric cars avai...

Euro-solubility

Before capsules and pods, there was freeze-dried instant coffee powder, which of course tasted nothing like a real espresso. Now: for some time we have been following the vicissitudes of sovereigntists and populists with the idea that their political future depended on their Euro-solubility . Referring to the law-and-order, xenophobic and immigrant-hostile traits that have become common currency in European debates, we wrote that a Europe that protects could use the anti-immigration rhetoric of the sovereigntists to keep them on the leash of the pro-European strategic consensus. No sooner said that done. In Italy, as in France and other European countries, that phenomenon is in full swing. In Italy, the Five Star Movement has already embarked on its path to conversion a year and a half ago, entrusted with no less than the direction of Italian diplomacy. And even the Lega, believe it or not, has become a pro-European party overnight. In France, a similar process has seized Marine Le P...

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