The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 11 The Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in September 2008 has gone down in history as the symbol of the financial crisis and of the subsequent “great recession”. According to our Marxist analysis, that economic earthquake revealed above all a world power balance transformed by Atlantic decline and Chinese rise. It was a crisis in global relations and, in fact, we can also count the birth of the BRICS among its strategic consequences: the coalition of China, India, Russia, Brazil, and South Africa began meeting annually, demanding the reform of the international order to give the emerging powers a bigger say. G7 and BRICS in the G20 The firstborn son of the global crisis was the “Group of Twenty” (G20) which, as swiftly as November 2008, met for the first time in Washington at the level of heads of State and government. We wrote in our newspaper that this was the birth of a “new balance in power relations: the old metropol...

Internationalism No. 33, November 2021 Page 4 The taifu shizun , Japan’s typhoon season, last from May to October and is especially intense between August and September. Straits Times , a prestigious Singaporean newspaper, recently used the metaphor, invoking the rumbling of thunder and lightning bolts in relation to the announcement of the AUKUS deal (Washington’s strategic relaunch in the Indo-Pacific), and the immediate Chinese economic response, with China applying to join the CPTPP , the equivalent trading bloc to the RCEP in the Pacific. A hot autumn in the Indo-Pacific Other events have contributed to upsetting the Asian waters: the American withdrawal from Kabul, which has raised doubts about American credibility among its allies and Asian partners; a succession of North Korean ballistic tests, with the novelty of a Pyongyang cruise missile being deployed; the test conducted by Seoul of a ballistic missile aboard a conve...

Internationalism No. 33, November 2021 Page 2 Fog of war is a military expression referring to the difficulty, during the course of battle, of knowing and calculating all factors at play as they unfold and interact. This image can be extended to the military-strategic and also to the political dimension of power relations: today a rearmaments race, regular parades of war devices, new alliances, political warnings and mutual ambiguities in Asia signal the agitated beginning of a long crescendo of tensions. A number of questions can help us understand the new characteristics of this contention. Should NATO extend its strategic aim to the confrontation with China? Jens Stoltenberg, the Alliance’s secretary general and a Norwegian — a fact which expresses an Atlanticism closely aligned with American positions — thinks so. He tells the Financial Times that China, even though it cannot be defined exclusively as an adversary , is having an impact on European ...

From the series News from the Silk Road According to The Washington Post , through the federal budget the White House has opened negotiations with the Senate that include long-term competition with China. The figures — $6 trillion, including infrastructure and family welfare plans — will vary in the negotiations, and will be centred on three directives. One demand is common to various proposals of expenditure: they must have a positive impact on the American productivity vis-à-vis China on the open fronts of industrial, energy and technological restructuring, or on the efficiency of welfare systems. In the case of welfare, the competition is also vis-à-vis Europe. Another calculation, attributed to Biden’s administration and the Democrats, is the enlargement of the electoral coalition in view of the next mid-term elections. Finally, there is a need to direct military expenditure, within the framework of a greater increase in the other items of discretionary expenditure, not absorb...

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 ...

From the series European News In his book Britain Alone , the Financial Times columnist Philip Stephens argues that David Cameron’s decision to hold the Brexit referendum in 2016 was self-serving […] The prime minister wanted to snuff out a Tory rebellion and to give himself a quieter life in 10 Downing Street . For short term tactical reasons, Cameron gambled on the strategic issue of Britain’s link to Europe. As for Boris Johnson, backing Brexit had been about personal ambition: establishing his claim to the leadership . In Stephens’ reconstruction of events, Brexit was an unwanted outcome for the leaders of the Leave campaign: When Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, […] appeared before the cameras on the morning of 24 June, they looked shell-shocked rather than triumphant. […] Winning was not part of the plan. However, once Brexit had been set in motion, Johnson pursued it with wild abandon and made it the cornerstone of his bid for No. 10. According to Stephens, there was no und...