Salman Rafi Sheikh

For more than many weeks now, many Western leaders have been calling for blocking Russia out of the SWFIT payment system. The UK’s Boris Johnson thinks that this is a potentially good way of ‘punishing’ Russia. But the US/EU have not blocked Russia out of this global payments system yet. There are two reasons for this ‘reluctnace.’ First, even if the West decides…

For the past 4 years – especially since the US ‘trade war’ on China started by the Trump administration in 2017 – Washington has been seeking ways to contain, roll-back on its gains and encircle China. The US ‘trade war’ was not something entirely new; in fact, it was a continuation of the Obama administration’s ‘Asia Pivot’ that focused on shifting...

While the recent meeting between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi in Beijing may not in itself be an extra-ordinary event, its significance against the backdrop of the on-going tussle between Russia and the US/NATO is quite unmistakable – not only for Russia itself, but for the US/NATO as well. Even though Russia does not really need China’s help to defend...