China, and to an extent Russia have demonstrated that America can be rebuffed, and their example has emboldened other countries to make choices it couldn’t before. In 1956 Allen Dulles, the then Director of the CIA was addressing a meeting in Asia of the newly formed Non-Aligned Nations. The NAN was comprised almost entirely of…
Farmerless farms manned by driverless machines, monitored by drones and doused with chemicals to produce commodity crops from patented genetically engineered seeds for industrial ‘biomatter’ to be processed and constituted into something resembling food. Data platforms, private equity firms, e-commerce giants and AI-controlled farming systems. This is the future that big agritech and agribusiness envisage: a…
What Moscow is really asking for is to redraw the borders of influence between Russia and the West. One of the most frequently asked questions about U.S.-Russian relations over the last few years has been “have we hit rock bottom?”. No matter how bad things seem, about every six months a few Congressmen with questionable…
Military superpower Russia, having had enough of U.S./NATO bullying, is now dictating the terms of a new arrangement. Coming straight from President Putin, it did sound like a bolt from the sky: “We need long-term legally binding guarantees even if we know they cannot be trusted, as the U.S. frequently withdraws from treaties that become…
Russia and China are proof that an alternative basis of international relations is possible. And fortunately, both are strong enough to prevail for the sake of peace. For many observers around the world, the cordial and cooperative relations between Russia and China are inspiring, precisely at a time of mounting international tensions and belligerence. Russia’s…
It is the first time that others are dictating to the West rather than being instructed on how to conform to American red lines. There was an almost audible sigh of relief echoing around western corridors. Though there were no breakthroughs in the Team Biden-Putin virtual meeting, the talks not surprisingly, were heavily focussed on…
