Like any successful wheeler and dealer, Donald Trump knows how to make his clients feel valued. But, as Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron discovered last week, there’s a considerable difference between sincerity and salesmanship. PARIS – Barack Obama wasn’t very interested in Europe. Something which was made clear in 2010, when he didn’t even show…
At the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), the head of the US Treasury Department, Steven Mnuchin, touched upon a delicate subject: the financing of IMF and WB members by China and several other developing countries. He called these countries “non-transparent creditors” that do not coordinate their operations with…
On the Western Front a hundred years ago, a furious and decisive campaign was in progress. The great German Spring Offensive, often and rightly called the Ludendorff Offensive, was well into the process of launching about three million combat troops against the Allied lines. The Offensive would last from March 21 to July 18, 1918. The…
Between the US strikes on Syria in April and the recent developments on the Korean Peninsula, we are in somewhat of a lull in the Empire’s search for a new war to start. The always helpful Israelis, in the person of the ineffable Bibi Netanyahu, are now beating the drums for, well, if not a…
It may be too late. The president of the United States is now a veritable autocrat in the realm of foreign policy. He has been since at least 1945, when the last congressionally declared war finally ended. Wars in Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen (among other places) were all…
Experts have been arguing for years about what China has in mind by acquiring aircraft carriers, but instead of using them to confront the US’ Indian ally, it’s much more likely that the People’s Republic will rely on them as floating bases for providing “Lead From Behind” assistance to its African partners as they confront…
