While international relations were organized around two poles of power (East and West) after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the illusion of the end of the Cold War in 1991, the emergence of new centers of power in the Global South changes the situation. It is in this spirit that the prestigious think tank that we agree to call in other words “the Valdaï discussion club ”, based in Moscow, is organizing its second Russian-African conference (July 24, 2024 in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania), one year after the second Russia-Africa summit in Saint Petersburg (here).

Kenya’s antigovernment protests continues into the second month and are similar to Ghana’s in 2022, as both started from over taxation and worsening living standard, problems absent in South East Asia (e.g. Vietnam), which was also colonized. Kenya, Ghana, and Zambia have attempted development for 6 decades but lag behind Vietnam, which started developing under 4 decades ago. Clearly, Kenya and African countries need to change their development model from the World Bank/IMF’s neoliberal Ponzi for enriching western corporations.

The helicopter crash that resulted in the death of the eighth President of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, and the early elections of the ninth President, which resulted in the unexpected victory of the only reform-oriented candidate, Masoud Pezeshkian, has changed the political landscape in the country.

With the final accession of Belarus to the SCO, Mongolia found itself in the curious position of remaining one of the organisation’s two observers, and the only one whose high-level representatives attended the July 2024 summit in Astana. Nevertheless, Mongolia’s President and Foreign Minister have again spoken of preserving and developing the “proactive observer” tradition.

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s recent visits first to India and then, two weeks later, to the PRC, the two leading Asian countries, constituted a very remarkable development in terms of the unfolding situation in the Indo-Pacific region as a whole.

The internal political crisis in Iraq is the result of its occupation in 2003 by the United States and Great Britain. Washington is first reducing and then increasing (and vice versa) its military presence in Iraq, which is divided into three contradicting parts: Sunnis, Shi’as and Kurds. Heads of diplomatic missions are changing in Baghdad, but the essence of US diplomacy is not changing.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang’s trip to New Zealand, Australia and Malaysia was an important element in the complex “game” unfolding in the Indo-Pacific region, involving all the world’s leading powers. It took place in the second half of June.

During their first joint summit held in Niamey, the capital of Niger, on Saturday, the military leaders of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger signed a treaty according to which the trio became a confederation. This comes just a few months after their departure from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in January.

It seems like Mamuka Mamulashvili, the so-called head of the Georgian Legion*, is claiming that someone has tried to poison him, again, with sad pictures of him recovering from his hospital bed. Here we go again, the Georgian Legion* mercenary leader in Ukraine has allegedly been poisoned three times, according to him.

The White House is widely seen as being caught between a rock and a hard place, as it continues to attract harsh and widespread criticism internationally, from the domestic public, and from the powerful Israeli lobby in the US for its unjust unilateral indulgence of Israel in its bloodbath against the Palestinians of Gaza…

For several years now, something more important has been happening on the political scene in the West African region. It is the breakdown of dehumanizing colonial agreements and the rise of disapproval of French imperialism in the region, at the forefront, the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). As an expert in the geopolitics of governance and regional integration, it is important for us to take a close look at the resolution of the most anticipated first-ever summit of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), held on July 6, 2024, in Niamey, Niger.

The ongoing upgrades to the US-Japan military cooperation signals new regional developments. In reality, however, this upgrade is a continuation of the US strategy in the Pacific to build military outposts so that China can be deterred and tackled. On the one hand, it is militarizing Japan. On the other hand, the sale of weapons keeps bringing money to the US military-industrial complex. Ultimately, this alliance will do little to serve the purpose of ‘containing’ China.