Alibaba’s Jack Ma has warned that the ongoing US-China trade war could last at least 20 years. As we’ll see, it’s actually more like 30 – up to 2049, the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Steve Bannon always boasted that President Trump was bound to conduct a “sophisticated …
Continue reading Here Comes the 30-Year Trade War
Springtime in Korea. Peace and love have erupted all over the mountainous peninsula as the leaders of the two rival nations seek to end the nearly seven decades of hostility between them. One can’t underestimate the passionate longing felt by most Koreans on both sides of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) for some form of reunification …
It can’t get more symbolic than that. The leaders of the two Koreas this week clasped hands atop the highest mountain on the peninsula, vowing to unite in peace. The ball is now in Washington’s court to help deliver that peace. This year has seen several diplomatic milestones already in the rapprochement between North and …
Continue reading Korea’s Historic Peace Move Puts Onus on Washington to End Conflict
![China's President Xi Jinping, second left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, second right, making bliny [Russian pancakes] as they visit the Far East Street exhibition on the sidelines of the 2018 Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on Sept 11, 2018. Photo: Russian Presidential Press and Information Office handout / Anadolu Agency](https://astutenews.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/putin-xi-pancakes.jpg?w=900)
Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin were involved in a joint cooking venture. Pancakes with caviar (blin, in Russian), chased down with a shot of vodka. It just happened at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. Talk about a graphic (and edible) metaphor sealing the ever-evolving ‘Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership’. For a few years now the Vladivostok …
Continue reading Greater Eurasia Coming Together in the Russian Far East
It is not possible to speak of “Donald Trump’s foreign policy” for the simple reason one can never tell whether the president or his minders are running it. Contradictions, reversals, and turns-on-a-dime have abounded since Trump took office. But this administration’s strategy abroad has assumed a discernible shape in recent weeks, whoever may be managing …
Continue reading The Trump Administration’s Spoiler Foreign Policy
The planned migration of 15,000 South African Boers to Russia is forcing the host country to choose between welcoming these new arrivals for humanitarian reasons or complicating their efforts to flee for geopolitical ones. Racist Misperceptions RT just published an article quoting a Rossiya 1TV report about a delegation of 30 South African farming families …
Continue reading South Africa’s Boers Are Putting Russia on the Horns of a Dilemma
History may have registered stranger geoeconomic bedfellows. But in the current OPEC-plus world, the rules of the game are now de facto controlled by OPEC powerhouse Saudi Arabia in concert with non-OPEC Russia. Russia may even join OPEC as an associate member. There’s a key clause in the bilateral Riyadh-Moscow agreement stipulating that joint interventions …
Continue reading How the Iran Sanctions Drama Intersects with OPEC-Plus
Trump wrote on Twitter that suspending US-South Korean wargames was entirely his own initiative because of how expensive and provocative the drills are during a time of such sensitive denuclearization and peace negotiations, rebuffing critics who claimed that he was selling out to North Korea while getting nothing of tangible significance in return. This move …
Continue reading Suspending US-South Korean Wargames Isn’t “Surrendering” to North Korea
An implicit coalition of corporate media, Democratic partisans and others loyal to the national security state are actively hostile to any agreement that would endanger the continuation of the 70-year-old Cold War between the United States and North Korea. The hostility toward Donald Trump on the part of both corporate media (except for Fox News) …
Continue reading An Elite Coalition Emerges Against a Trump-Kim Agreement
