The Internationalism

This first quarter-century has seen an epochal turning point in inter-power relations, triggered by China's very rapid imperialist development. Arrigo Cervetto recognised this process from the very early 1990s: Today history has sped up its pace to an unpredictable extent. [...] Analysis of the sixteenth century, as the century of accelerations and rift in world history, is a model for our Marxist vision ( La mezza guerra nel Golfo [The Half War in the Persian Gulf], January 1991). The course of imperialism was speeding up, and China's very rapid rise was opening up a new strategic phase with the new century. The United States, the leading power in the world, is being challenged by an antagonist with comparable economic strength which, moreover, openly states that it wants to provide itself with a "world class" military force within the next decade. Favoured by the 2008 global crisis and also by the pandemic crisis, China has forged ahead with its rapid rise for ...

Since March 1 st , the Nigerian economist Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has been the new director general of the World Trade Organization. Like a coach hired by a team languishing at the bottom of its league — writes Larry Elliott of The Guardian — Okonjo finds herself in the happy position of taking over at the WTO when the only way is up , This historic international institution is unlikely to experience extinction or irrelevance. However, the appointment of Okonjo does not in itself remedy WTO’s deep troubles. An alternative in plurilateralism The negotiating function of the WTO has been lacking for twenty years now. The latest ambitious goal of liberalising trade in goods and services, announced in Doha in November 2001, became bogged down by the impossibility of a general compromise between old powers and large emerging economies. In 2015 Michael Froman, President Barack Obama’s Trade Representative (USTR), officially called for the abandonment of the Doha Round. Froman’s alternative p...

The pandemic of the century is putting all political leaders to the test, while a colossal state intervention has taken shape commensurate only to those of the 1930s and the Second World War. Donald Trump is suffering the consequences of the cheap demagogy with which he faced Covid-19 in the beginning, and perhaps of the excessive propaganda with which he precipitated the clash with Xi Jinping's China. Vladimir Putin is coming to terms with historic Russian weaknesses, magnified by the recent collapse in oil prices. Narendra Modi is seeing the spectre of famine descending over India. In Brazil Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump imitator, is hounded by the disillusionment of his electors. In France Emmanuel Macron faces, as he did with the yellow vests, the unknowns of a political tradition that was once monarchical and regicidal. Pedro Sánchez, in Spain, is walking the tightrope of balancing the various sections of his shaky coalition, the complicated mosaic of local autonomies and the relat...