Israel and Iran: all-out war or measured retaliation?
Today, everyone is waiting for high-profile events in the Middle East related to the unprecedented confrontation between Israel and Iran. The primary source of the conflict, Gaza, and its offshoots, the Houthis in the Red Sea and the collapse of global shipping, have been pushed into the background. On closer inspection, Iran and Israel have more in common than they do differences. Both are regional outsiders, both are sectarian and ethnic. Both Tel Aviv and Tehran have built their national strategies on the contradictions of their neighbours and on hidden reserves…
Late admission: Who is really responsible for the chemical attacks in Syria?
On 22 February this year, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) issued an opinion from the Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) that found ISIL* responsible for the use of chemical weapons (CW) in the Syrian town of Mari in September 2015…
Britain and the United States—modern echoes of the colonial era
Recently, the countries of the Global South have been actively expanding their ties, finding new areas of cooperation, creating their own integration associations. In general, they are trying in every possible way to restore justice, to become full-fledged members of the world community, as it is now accepted to say, “independent poles of power”. This is causing serious discontent and even irritation in the West, especially in the US and Britain—the Anglo-Saxons, used to parasitising the rest of the world…
Erdoğan is preparing for the future
Ahead of Turkey’s local elections, incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) team are stepping up their efforts against their opponents in the upcoming campaign. The Central Election Commission of the Republic of Turkey has set the election date for the last Sunday in March 2024, which falls on 31 March. The CEC document states that “the decision was made unanimously” after a meeting of the commission’s presidium, the government publication Rasmi gazete reported…
Japanese prime minister uses relations with DPRK to save his domestic political ratings
Will Fumio Kishida be able to abandon his harsh rhetoric against Pyongyang and strengthen his popularity with Japanese voters, or is he counting on favour from the DPRK leadership? Not even a few months have passed since the Japanese Defence Ministry’s threatening statements to Pyongyang over North Korea’s test launch of a ballistic missile towards the Sea of Japan on January 14 this year. “The DPRK’s actions threaten the peace and security of our country, the region and the world. Such ballistic missile launches violate UN Security Council resolutions and pose a serious problem,”…
Netanyahu is losing power
Recently, international and regional media outlets have been increasingly circulating reports and news articles with condemnatory and even accusatory rhetoric against Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been heading Israel’s interim crisis cabinet since the events of 7 October 2023. This is not about the traditional Arab attacks on the Israeli prime minister, which have become a “classic” column in all Middle Eastern publications. At the moment, Israel’s allies from the Western bloc of states are recording losses from supporting Netanyahu’s line. For example, the UN training centre URNWA…
Turkey manoeuvres on rising financial flows
It is no secret that politics is a concentrated expression of economics. This thesis is most relevant for Turkey’s foreign policy course, which changes its direction mainly depending on rising financial flows. The Turkish economy, which has been in deep recession in recent years, is heavily dependent on foreign currency interventions and various kinds of credits and loans. It should be recalled that President R.T. Erdogan put his own state in a debt hole by adhering to a conservative economic model that envisaged…
East India Campaign - Colonization of Hindustan 2.0
The United States behaves in Asia – on a foreign continent – as hosts, and not at all as guests, and is trying in every possible way to demonstrate this to all regional states, including those capable of laying claim to leadership there, such as China. In relation to India and Pakistan, Washington generally behaves like a colonialist. Pakistan is still outraged by the September visit of US Ambassador to the Islamic Republic Donald Bloom to Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), which the US side covered up as a study of the region’s resilience to climate change…
US Shuts Down China’s Confucius Institutes
US authorities see them as “vehicles of the Chinese Communist Party’s global propaganda and malign influence.” The U.S. Government Accountability Office has put a big fly in the ointment of bilateral US-China relations ahead of the planned meeting between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the November APEC summit in San Francisco. According to the agency, the number of Confucius Institutes operating in the United States and promoting Chinese language and culture has decreased significantly over the past four years, from 96 to 5. According to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office…
The US and Australia accuse China of ramping up the pressure in the Asia-Pacific region
US President Joe Biden has criticized Beijing over the Taiwan issue shortly before a visit to Washington by the Chinese foreign minister. The directness of the accusations which the US leader hurls at China, while continuing to express confidence in a restoration of constructive dialog with Beijing, never ceases to amaze. Another pearl among Joe Biden’s recent high-profile statements can be found in the joint written statement issued on October 26, following the bilateral talks between himself and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese concluded the previous day in the US capital…
Tokyo’s annual political charade
On September 14 an international conference was held in Sapporo, the administrative center of the Japanese prefecture of Hokkaido, with the support of the Japanese government. Its subject was the development of tourism to support the cultural heritage of indigenous peoples – in particular, the minority Ainu people, who are the indigenous inhabitants of the Japanese islands of Hokkaido and Honshu. These indigenous people, who typically have pronounced European-like facial features, have for centuries had to defend themselves against the aggressive Yamato minzoku…
Whether Russia needs a “peace treaty” with Japan
In June of this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law according to which the victory over militaristic Japan will be commemorated in Russia on September 3. The State Duma passed the law, the Federation Council approved it. The newspapers of the Land of the Rising Sun wrote lengthy stories in which the alleged territorial problem in some way reappeared because of this fact, which significantly hurt the Japanese ego. The Kishida administration chose a stance antagonistic to Moscow and backed anti-Russian sanctions in order…