The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Page 16 Beijing in the Factory China Shock 2.0 . This means that Beijing has long since moved beyond being the world’s factory merely for T-shirts, shoes, refrigerators, or laptops. While the capital it has channelled abroad via the Silk Road exceeds $1 trillion, China has moved up the value chain to more technologically advanced and complex manufacturing. This is evident in the global battle over cars and electric vehicles, where Chinese exports have reached seven million units. The consequences of the first shocks have by no means been absorbed; the reaction to American deindustrialisation is among the forces that brought a chaotic huckster to the White House. Today, Europe is the epicentre of the second shock . Among the large corporate groups, their lobbies, and their political parties, there...

Internationalism No. 86, April 2026 Page 16 After show politics and show diplomacy , have we sunk to the obscenity of show warfare ? On the surface, this is true. The Pentagon’s video game-style communications, where airstrikes, missile launches, and deadly explosions are set to music for social media clips, certainly suggest so. It matters little that a hundred schoolgirls were also blown to bits as artificial intelligence took centre stage on the battlefield. In reality, war propaganda has always showcased destruction and mocked the enemy; today in Washington, in the era of the high-tech groups of television and social media democracy , the only thing that has changed is the style and the means used to inflame fanaticisms and stuff people’s brains. In Tehran, dominated by a parasitic bourgeoisie that feeds on oil revenues and is intertwined with the militias and hierarchies of t...

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...