The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 86, April 2026 Pages 4 and 5 According to The Economist , the war that began on February 28th with the American and Israeli attack on Iran has rightly earned the label third Gulf War . A clarification is needed: the war between Iran and Iraq, from 1980 to 1988, cost at least half a million lives and left its mark on the Persian Gulf no less than the subsequent conflicts. However, if we consider only the wars initiated by the United States in an attempt to manage its own decline, the current conflict follows on from those of 1991 and 2003. Hence, the third Gulf War . The conflict has already transcended regional boundaries, involving all countries in the area; the unprecedented assassination of Ali Khamenei, Iran’s religious and political leader, on the first day of the war, was the turning point. The war’s objectives are unclear: it is a war without a strategy , writes The...

Internationalism No. 80, October 2025 Page 4 For our analysis, Asia has always been the realm of multipolarism . There was no Asian Yalta to divide and constrain the region; the American victor could not prevent the uneven development of imperialism in the Asian epicentre. It is no coincidence that Asia, with a quarter, perhaps a third, of global military spending, is the focal point of accumulating tensions in the crisis in the world order . It is no coincidence that the shifts in relations between the powers are most noticeable in that region. Zhao Huasheng, of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, considers China, Russia, the United States, Europe, India, and Japan to be the key players in the global system. The Institute, directed by Wu Xinbo, has merged with the Centre for American Studies, founded in 1985. They are part of the network of Chinese think tanks that comment on current foreign policy, expressing ...