Salman Rafi Sheikh

Finland’s inclusion in, and the consequent expansion of, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), has supposedly brought much joy to the Western world supposedly fighting Russia for the protection of democracy and human rights. The real purpose of this fight, as we already know, is to preserve the West – mainly, the US-led – dominated post-Second World War world order, which assumed the shape of unilateral US hegemony after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. With Russia – and China – delivering the hitherto clearest shock to this unilateral hegemony of the US, the latter is doing all it can to win more and more allies…

For a very long time, most Western states – and financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – have framed China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a massive “debt trap” that China is using to establish its geopolitical tentacles across the world. For Washington, China’s spread threatened its own unilateral hegemony that it…

Could this just be a coincidence that the US has begun conducting airstrikes on Syria right after the announcement of a China brokered peace deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia? Following the announcement of this deal, it was revealed that the Saudis are also in talks with the Syrians to normalise ties. The China factor, it seems, is reshaping the Middle East in ways…