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Multipolar World

Birthing A New International Order

Writing in his cell as a political prisoner in fascist Italy after World War I, the philosopher Antonio Gramsci famously declared: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” A century later, we are in another interregnum, and the morbid symptoms are everywhere. The U.S.-led order has ended, but the multipolar world is not yet born. The urgent priority is to give birth to a new multilateral order that can keep the peace and the path to sustainable development. We are at the end of a long wave of human history that commenced with the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama more than 500 years ago.

Maduro Declares Economic Emergency Against US Tariff War

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro signed an economic emergency decree on Tuesday, April 8, during a televised meeting with telecommunications and economic leaders. He framed the move as a response to what he called a US-led “tariff war” destabilizing global trade systems, alongside the revival of the “maximum pressure” strategy aimed at suffocating Venezuela’s economy. The decree, pending approval by the National Assembly, seeks to bolster Venezuela’s economy amid escalating international tensions and US aggression. President Maduro accused the US of dealing a “definitive and total blow” to international trade institutions, including the World Trade Organization (WTO), in an effort to impose “single hegemonic dominance” over global economic rules.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi Holds Press Conference On Foreign Policy

The year 2024 saw profound changes in the international landscape as well as remarkable progress in China’s reform and development. Under the stewardship of General Secretary Xi Jinping, China made important progress in its diplomacy. We fostered a good external environment for China’s high-quality development, brought much-needed stability to a changing and turbulent world, and made new and solid strides in building a community with a shared future for mankind. This year, the international situation is still full of challenges. But the mission of China’s diplomacy remains unchanged.

Southcom’s Double-Speak; Every Accusation Is A Confession

Admiral Alvin Hosley demonstrated selective outrage over the fear of multipolarity in the Western Hemisphere. The Southcom commander confirmed the official US military doctrine for the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region on February 13, before the Senate Armed Services Committee. In a poorly disguised assertion of US hegemony, Hosley envisioned, “an enduring commitment to democratic principles…to engender security, capability, democratic norms, and resilience that fuel regional peace, prosperity, and sovereignty.”

US Seizing Panama And Greenland Aimed At China

While a recent interview with the newly confirmed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio began with promising slogans, it quickly unraveled into threats of overt aggression, including outright calls to seize the Panama Canal and annex Greenland from Denmark under an implicit threat of military force. While the change in presidential administration is purely superficial, the intense urgency it pursues continuity of agenda with is not. It reflects the rapid rise of China, Russian resilience in the face of US proxy war in Ukraine, and an expanding multipolar world overwriting the US-led unipolar world order at ever-increasing speeds.

The Boomerang Effect: Shortsighted Policies Cause Decline Of US Hegemony

The world is changing rapidly, driven by the necessity of creating alternative institutions to counter US domination and aggression. As the multipolar world rises, it is a critical time for the United States to re-evaluate and change its policies and practices in order to remain an active member of the global community. Clearing the FOG speaks with Ben Norton of Geopolitical Economy about the ways that US policy, the Washington Consensus, have backfired and what the growing US deficit means. Norton outlines what can be done to counter the current path the US is taking.

On The Eve Of Trump, Iran And Russia Launch Historical Deal

Timing is everything in geopolitics. This past Friday in Moscow, only three days before the inauguration of US President Donald Trump in Washington, top BRICS member leaders Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement, detailed in 47 articles, twice as many as in the recent Russian–North Korean deal. This strategic partnership is now set in stone just as the – unpayable - humongous debt of the US government reaches an unprecedented $36.1 trillion, equivalent to $106.4k per American, and just as the US share of the global economy falls below 15 percent for the first time, based on World Bank/IMF figures.

The Geopolitical Dimensions Of The US BOLIVAR Act

Awaiting approval by the US Senate, the bipartisan bill titled “Banning Operations and Leases with the Illegitimate Venezuelan Authoritarian Regime Act,” known by its forced acronym “BOLIVAR Act,” represents a milestone in the institutionalization of illegal sanctions against Venezuela. This law aims to—under a legislative and bipartisan framework—perpetuating the executive orders that have operated as the core of the economic and financial coercion policy against Venezuela over the past ten years. Within the law, the definition of the term “person” as a legal object establishes an expansion of the scope of sanctions, covering everything from individuals and private entities to governmental bodies and their extensions, thereby creating a vast catalog of potential targets on an international scale.

Biden’s ‘Samson Option’

It has been clear since the terror attacks in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001 — the date I choose to mark a great turn in the global order — that America’s abdication of its postwar hegemony was to rank high among the 21st century’s defining events. The questions from that day onward have been how the policy cliques in Washington would respond to such a change in America’s place in the community of nations and what they might do — how great the risks they would take — to avoid, or at least forestall, this world-historical shift. How chaotically or otherwise, to put this question another way, would the arrival of a new, post–American world order prove?

Biden’s APEC Summit Visit: ‘One More Slap In Face To Western Empire’

Outgoing US President Joe Biden was unable to score a diplomatic breakthrough of any kind last week during his appearance at the annual APEC Summit in Peru. The meeting between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping was pure formality, argues Jeff J. Brown, author of “The China Trilogy” and founder of Seek Truth From Facts Foundation. “The Chinese know that Biden is the quintessential lame duck. Being very Confucist and wanting to respect protocol, position and tradition, they met. But that is about all,” Brown says. According to him, what Xi told Biden during the meeting basically amounted to reiterating what the former previously told Donald Trump by phone earlier this month: “cooperation is mutually beneficial for both sides; as two leading world powers, humanity depends on us to do the right thing, and trying to limit China’s progress and development is bound to fail.”

Samir Amin On The Theory Of Multipolarity

It is almost universally recognized today that we are living in a multipolar world, symbolized by the continuing decline of U.S. hegemony; the economic stagnation of the imperial triad of the United States, Europe, and Japan; and the rise of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). But the historical and theoretical significance of this is in dispute. The foremost theorist of multipolarity was Samir Amin, through his concept of “delinking,” which he developed throughout his career. For Amin, the struggle against imperialism required a delinking from the law of value on the world level centered in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, and Tokyo, and its replacement by a more “polycentric” or “multipolar” world order, in which nations in the periphery of the system could reorient their economies toward their own nation-based value systems, thereby meeting their own internal developmental needs.

The BRICS Summit Should Mark The End Of Neocon Delusions

The recent BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia should mark the end of the Neocon delusions encapsulated in the subtitle of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 book, The Global Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives. Since the 1990s, the goal of American foreign policy has been “primacy,” aka global hegemony. The U.S. methods of choice have been wars, regime change operations, and unilateral coercive measures (economic sanctions). Kazan brought together 35 countries with more than half the world population that reject the U.S. bullying and that are not cowed by U.S. claims of hegemony.

The BRICS Summit In Kazan: A Manifesto For A Rational World Order

The Kazan Declaration of 23 October 2024, adopted at the 16th BRICS Summit[1] hosted by Russia in the city of Kazan on the Volga river from 22 to 24 October and attended by 36 countries[2], constitutes a pivotal moment for humanity. There is hope in the air, a certain optimism that we can gradually change the paradigm, marshal the world disorder, move away from bloc-mentality, abandon confrontational politics, phase out dependence on the US-dollar, and craft a coherent policy to enhance trade, social and cultural exchange in tandem with the Purposes and Principles of the UN Charter and in the spirit of the UNESCO Constitution

Why The SCO Summit In Kazakhstan Was A Game-Changer

Let’s start with the final declaration. As much as SCO members state “tectonic shifts are underway” in geopolitics and geoeconomics, as “the use of power methods is increasing, with norms of international law being systematically violated”, they are fully engaged to “increase the SCO’s role in the creation of a new democratic, fair, political and economic international order.” Well, there could not be a sharper contrast with the unilaterally-imposed “rules-based international order”. The SCO 10 – with new member Belarus – are explicitly in favor of “a fair solution to the Palestinian issue”. They “oppose unilateral sanctions”.

‘Falling Gently Away’: The G–7 In Italy

That Group of 7 gathering on the coast of the Adriatic June 13–15 was truly a doozy, I have to say. Readers might think it a waste of column inches to devote any linage to it, as many will surely have forgotten about it by now—not to mention those many others who did not know of it in the first place and so could not get as far as forgetting it. But this just is my point: The seven people claiming to be the world’s most powerful assemble for a summit and it is not worth our attention? Say whaaa? The significance of this year’s G–7, I mean to say, lies in its insignificance. Considering the mess these very folk have made of the world, this bears consideration.