The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Page 6 The conflict in the Gulf has entered its third month, marked by a precarious truce that reflects a strategic stalemate, with Tehran’s “selective blockade” of Hormuz and the US Navy’s “counter-blockade” of Iranian ports. According to the Pakistani daily Dawn , bilateral negotiations — mediated by Islamabad with the explicit support of Riyadh and the “discreet and indirect” backing of Beijing — appear to centre on the price of reopening the energy artery. For Washington, writes the Saudi newspaper Asharq al-Awsat , the negotiations should yield some kind of “tangible result” on the nuclear issue, allowing both sides to “claim victory”, given that the priority is resuming commercial traffic. To this end, granting Tehran the opportunity to collect some form of revenue has not been ruled out. Iranian “pragmatic” factions are raising the idea of maritime tr...

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Pages 4 and 5 Kolkata's The Telegraph announces "a rupture with the principle of post-War pacifism: that Japan and Germany had adhered to for decades". The West Bengal-based newspaper was founded in 1982 by Aveek Sarkar, a former protégé of Harold Evans at The Sunday Times in London. The editorial highlights certain aspects worth noting. First and foremost, there is a psychological dimension to the crises in the world order . The ideologies of the post-war order, imposed on the defeated bourgeoisies of Germany and Japan for decades, have permeated the whole of society to the point of becoming second nature that shape the German and Japanese ruling classes themselves. But today, a re-evaluation of these ideologies is in turn being imposed by an uneven development that, over the long term, has been economic, political, and military. This is a Z...

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Page 3 From the series European news As Henry Kissinger wrote in his book Leadership (Penguin, 2022), in the British political system, parties are "rigorously institutionalized": "An electoral victory functions first to empower a party in parliament and, as a consequence of that, to install a new premier". Unlike presidential systems such as the American one, "the British system elevates members of the cabinet to the highest echelons of their party". The prime minister's authority "rests primarily on the maintenance of party discipline" because "the dissent of an influential clique, or the machinations of a single magnetic personality, can limit the premier's ability to pursue desired political objectives". "In extraordinary circumstances", warns Kissinger, ...

Internationalism No. 88 - June 2026 Page 2 In almost four years in government, Italy’s renewed stability has been a key asset for Giorgia Meloni, also encouraging the European adaptation of the italian-style immigrants . However, the backlash from the referendum defeat, a real own goal, has opened a glaring rift that runs through both the end of the current legislature and the prospects for the next. There is debate over the political exhaustion of her government, forced to navigate the narrow path of budgetary statistics and under the threat of what the Financial Times has termed a “coming energy crisis” triggered by the blockade of the strait of Hormuz. At the referendum polls, the left-wing broad coalition “discovered” that it could compete with the centre-right, but no poll shows any substantial changes in the balance of power. The scenario of a “deadlock”, or a narrow majority for one...

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Page 1 From the series Artificial Intelligence It may seem curious that the Franciscan friar Paolo Benanti refers to neuroscience and the theories of David Eagleman, which reflect a materialistic conception of consciousness. The explanation probably lies in Eagleman’s self-definition as a possibilian , a not particularly clever neologism that seeks to distinguish itself from atheism, but also from agnosticism: we know too little, so science must keep multiple possibilities open at once. In Engels’ view, agnosticism is shamefaced materialism . The scientist, as such, is a materialist. However, outside his own field, he translates his ignorance into Greek and calls it agnosticism . Eagleman is even more circumspect, so it is understandable that religion sees an opening for itself in the possibilities left open. In Die Zeit , Benan...

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. 86, April 2026 Page 15 From the series Major industrial groups in China When the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, oil extraction in the country was practically non-existent, and the country was completely dependent on imports. The exploration and development of domestic oil resources required a major effort. As Jin Zhang reports in his book Catch-up and Competitiveness in China [Routledge, 2004]: The required massive human resources were supplied by the People's Liberation Army (PLA). In 1952, Mao Zedong ordered the reorganisation of the 57 th Division of the 19 th Army of the PLA into the 1 st Division of Oil . The effort led to the discovery of several oil fields, the most significant of which was in Daqing, Heilongjiang Province, in northeastern China, in 1959. It became operational the following year, reaching a ...