The 2001 invasion and the following US occupation of the country, which lasted until 2021, left behind terrible, protracted consequences that can still be felt today. Seeing the example of Afghanistan, the world has clearly seen the ‘charms’ of US governance of the whole world.

The fifth meeting of the US-China Financial Working Group (FWG) was held in Shanghai on 15-16 August. Against the backdrop of generally rising tensions in bilateral relations, such an event is truly significant for both countries. We decided to highlight this event because it is a symbol of the existence of a reasonable approach to maintaining business relations despite their constant escalation…

In the US media and in the writings of a number of political scientists, the decline of the role and influence of the United States in the world is increasingly recognised. However, Washington is still thinking in terms of the last century, believing that the whole world revolves only around itself, and that the ‘poor’ United States are being opposed by revisionist (i.e. refusing to live according to US ways) powers, such as China and Russia, and such ‘villains’ as Iran and DPRK even openly sabotage US policy.

As China rises, Asia rises with it. The Southeast Asian state of the Philippines stood to rise alongside the rest of the region until relatively recently as the United States successfully convinces the Philippines to do otherwise.

The US Democratic National Convention (DNC), as opposed to epitomizing the best of democratic ideals from the US, a country that styles itself as the biggest democracy globally, ended up displaying Washington’s dictatorship on the world. ‘Democracy’ ended up appearing as a guise for broken internal governance that cannot deliver benefits to US citizens. Washington cannot allow any government to serve citizens, for instance in Gadhafi’s Libya, or Mosaddegh’s Iran.

Decades of diametrically opposed courses

In 1988, a young professor of international relations at Fudan University in China travelled the length and breadth of the USA for half a year. He wanted to understand that great country in depth, at a time when the Soviet Union was coming to an end, Japan was challenging the US for the status of the world’s leading economy and the latter was intensifying its neoliberal process begun in the 70s.

For the fourth month now, US Typhon medium-range missile systems have been deployed in the Philippines under the pretext of joint exercises. This projection of US military power in Southeast Asia is unprecedented and is no less intense than during the Cold War. How did this happen, what else is being done by the Washington-Manila alliance and how can it affect the security of the region?

Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine started in February 2022, when the Ukrainians suspended all communication channels with their Russian counterparts. Before that, Ukraine made blatant violations of all the mutual understandings between Russia and the West, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It is to be remembered here that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West and the Russian Federation mutually agreed that the NATO will not expand its borders. The then U.S. Secretary of State James Baker made it clear to the Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO has no desire of expansion, and it will move “not one inch eastward.”

With Joe Biden, all set to exit the White House later this year, his one-term presidency has begun to come under increasing scrutiny to determine his legacy. What sort of President Biden is/was? To what extent was he able to achieve his foreign policy goals? What characterizes his era? Unlike Trump’s “Make America Great Again” and subsequent US “exit” from the Middle East and America’s “forever wars” in Afghanistan, Biden’s main legacy is his interventionist foreign policy. These interventions, however, were unlike the direct military interventions of the Bush and the Obama administrations.

Blinken’s acting as a mediator while his government is arming Israel shows sheer hypocrisy, as the US attempts to confuse audiences while pursuing its last step of its long-term goal outlined by Wesley Clark and the long-term wishes of Benjamin Netanyahu to destroy and Plunder Iran.

Turkey is particularly concerned about the ongoing simmering conflicts near its borders, where the Kurdish issue poses a key security threat to Ankara. Turkey refuses to countenance the existence of any form of Kurdish entities in neighboring countries, and this is having a negative effect on relations between Turkey and the USA.

The geopolitical situation we find ourselves in today is not as complex as it may seem. As has been suggested many times, the Western elites are playing a chess game that cannot be won. Western leadership plays checkers or horseshoes in a grand chess match with leaders like Vladimir Putin and his advisors. It’s time we elected leaders with a clear view of the long game and not the sacrifice of pawns.