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Daily Archive: February 10, 2020

February 10, 2020

Beyond Ukraine: America’s Coming (Losing) Battle for Eurasia

Academic historians reject anything smacking of inevitably. Instead they emphasize the contingency of events as manifested through the inherent agency of human beings and the countless decisions they make. On the merits, such scholars are basically correct. That said, there was something – if not inevitable – highly probable, almost (forgive me) deterministic about the two cataclysmic world wars of...
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February 10, 2020

Neocolonialism and Geopolitical Rivalry in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka’s historical narrative has been defined by geopolitical rivalry, external aggression and internal resistance to that aggression. The early historical era experienced successive waves of invasion from South Indian kingdoms. These were followed by European conquest and consecutive rule of the coastal lowlands by the Portuguese (1505-1666), the Dutch (1666-1796) and the British (1796-1815). There have been numerous sea...
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February 10, 2020

A Neoliberal Legacy: America’s Fascism Problem Runs Much Deeper Than Trump

After the supposedly post-racial presidency of Barack Obama, what passes for the liberal punditry discovered that racism had arisen in the homeland. They never felt so good feeling bad about racism, denouncing what they identified as its primal cause – Mr. Trump, who was sullying that “shining example” of the United States of America. Obscured were those historical antecedents of this...
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February 10, 2020

Italy and the Changing – But Not Waiting – World

Recently the French President, Mr. Emmanuel Macron, admitted that NATO should be considered cerebrally dead. Such a statement, although influenced by the search for domestic consent, certainly reflects a deep impatience with European and Atlantic limitations by French intellectuals in general. These statements also reflect the fact that France realises that the international framework has become multipolar, with the new...
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February 10, 2020

One World Digital Dictatorship

Dystopian classics are back into the spotlight, like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984. They have roared back onto bestseller lists due to whistleblowers’ exposés of government imperialism and totalitarian surveillance of their citizens and foreigners. While the kakistocracy and dystopian surveillance state depicted in 1984 undoubtedly reflected, to some extent, contemporary sociopolitical realities, Orwell extrapolated worst-case scenarios set as warnings for...
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