Is the U.S., preoccupied with a pandemic and a depression that medical crisis created, prepared for a collision with China over Beijing’s claims to the rocks, reefs and resources of the South China Sea? For that is what Mike Pompeo appeared to threaten this week. “The world will not allow Beijing to treat the South…
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has unveiled what he calls a “moral foreign policy,” attempting to limit other nations’ power to declare unalienable human rights. The aim, as usual, is legitimizing the American empire’s abuses. The 60-page preliminary report, released on Thursday, is the product of a year’s work from an advisory panel Pompeo…
In the past year there have been protests in Hong Kong that were aimed locally and at the Beijing government. There were two deaths: one of a student who fell from a high-rise car park, and one of 70 year-old man who was hit by a brick thrown by a black-clad protestor. To the disappointment…
This is not a column defending Donald Trump. Across my career, I have said more positive words about the scolex family of intestinal tapeworms than I have said about Donald Trump. (Scolex have been shown to read more.) No, this is a column about context. When The New York Times reports anonymous sources from the…
It is difficult to find anything good to say about Donald Trump, but the reality is that he has not started any new wars, though he has come dangerously close in the cases of Venezuela and Iran and there would be considerable incentive in the next four months to begin something to bolster his “strong…
Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met for seven hours at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii with the chief architect of China’s foreign policy, Yang Jiechi. The two had much to talk about. As The Washington Post reports, the “bitterly contentious relationship” between our two countries has “reached the lowest point in almost half…
