Note: This article appeared first in Transform, Issue no 5, November 2018 which can be ordered from the Public Reading Rooms website at www.prruk.org The general direction of Trump’s foreign policy was clear from the very beginning. His campaign slogans were well known: ‘America First’ in order to ‘Make America... Continue reading

Even if obstacles remain to the launch of a full-blooded Cold War with China, there is now no equivocation that this is the intent of major sections of the current US administration and is at the heart of Pentagon strategising. The recently retired Commander of US forces in Europe, Lt Gen Ben Hodges, told the Warsaw Security Forum in October, that he thought ‘it is a very strong likelihood that we will be at war with China’ within 15 years. This is not just dangerous thinking for China, but for the whole world. No one should be in any doubt that if the US launched a war or generalised aggression towards China that this could be confined to a ‘Pacific theatre’; it would present a threat to the whole world. Continue reading

The one thing that can be said with absolute certainty about the historic first meeting between North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and South Korea’s Moon Jae-in is that it took place despite Donald Trump’s policies towards North Korea, not because of them. It was not sanctions or Trump’s threats that drove... Continue reading

Despite the razzamatazz of Trump’s visit to Asia, the verdict of the international news media was unanimous: the trip had simply served to underline the US’s declining influence in Asia; a decline that Trump is blamed for accelerating by ceding leadership to China on the crucial issues of contemporary geopolitics:... Continue reading

Shinzo Abe and his right wing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) swept to an outright victory in Japan’s snap General Election at the weekend. His LDP/Komeito Party ruling coalition won over two-thirds – 313 – of the seats in the lower house of the Japanese Parliament. Taken together with the coalition’s... Continue reading

Once again tensions between the US and North Korea over the latter’s nuclear programme have reached a dangerous boiling point, as North Korea carried out its largest-ever nuclear test in early September. As with previous missile and nuclear tests by the DPRK, this test was accompanied by provocative rhetoric, threats... Continue reading

A significant initial impact of the crisis that Trump has whipped up over North Korea was to push security issues up the agenda in South Korean politics, aiding the US in speeding up the deployment of Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) and boosting the poll ratings of the more... Continue reading

Despite the rhetoric from Trump, North Korea's nuclear weapons programme is still no great threat, and the tensions on the peninsula could still be settled if the US was willing to offer a reasonable peace deal with security guarantees, underwritten by China and South Korea, in return for Pyongyang ending its nuclear weapons programme. The current crisis is of the US's making to pressure China, persuade South Korea to agree to the stationing of THAAD, and influence the South Korean presidential elections to push security issues up the agenda. Continue reading

The furore in the US and Europe over Trump’s relations with Russia is not just a storm in a teacup but the manifestation of a serious fight at the heart of the US foreign policy establishment over how the US should orient strategically to Russia in the context of the... Continue reading

The most accurate summary of the outcome of this presidential election is not that Trump won – he did not win over a big swathe of Democrat votes on a racist basis, he lost votes overall – but that Clinton lost. Her right wing, establishment politics could not galvanise an electorate that rejects Trump, but wants a radical change that offers hope for the future. Clinton only offered business as usual. Continue reading

The US foreign policy establishment is reeling after its strategy to reassert itself in Asia and contain the rise of China received a hammering from an unexpected quarter – its long-term ally, former colony and reliable stooge, the Philippines. Roderigo Duterte, having replaced former president and US acolyte, Benigno Aquino,... Continue reading

On 12 July, the Arbitration Court at The Hague handed down judgment on the case brought under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) by the Philippines against China. In a pre-arranged declaration, the Court ruled comprehensively against China’s claims in the South China Sea. From the... Continue reading

At the end of October the USA escalated tensions in the South China Sea by sending an American destroyer within the 12-mile coastal limit of Chinese held islets. Having been threatening to take some form of action against China in the South China Sea for several months, the US action... Continue reading

Obama’s November week-long, whistle stop tour of Asia – attending the Beijing APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation) summit, the ASEAN meeting in Myanmar and the G20 in Australia – was intended to re-launch America’s crucial Asia-Pacific (aka China) strategy, in the doldrums since Obama’s aborted 2013 trip cancelled in the context... Continue reading

Discussing China with George Galloway on his Sputnik programme last Sunday. It starts 14 minutes in. Continue reading

The United States has launched a confrontation with China that it is attempting to project as of Cold War dimensions. Its clear aim is to isolate China diplomatically and politically, threaten it militarily, force it to divert investment from the productive economy to military spending, exclude it from world markets... Continue reading