International

“How the USA conquered Europe”

Extract from the book “Fatal Friendship” by Werner Rügemer*

(21 February 2025) (CH-S) In the following “Swiss Standpoint” documents the first chapter of the book published in 2023 by the German journalist and non-fiction author Werner Rügemer. Particularly in the current state of upheaval, it is worthwhile for a better understanding of what is happening to look at historical aspects of the connections between the USA and Europe from different angles.

This is an analysis by a German publicist who has been dealing with historical, social, economic and political developments and grievances on both sides of the Atlantic since the 1980s.

“The geopolitical incompetence of the Europeans is staggering”

by Guy Mettan,* Geneva

(21 February 2025) If you want to understand what is happening in the world, it is useless to listen to the experts who abound on our radio and television channels. They live in a parallel world that has nothing to do with current international realities. Even American commentators are sometimes overwhelmed.

Netanyahu entraps Trump in a quagmire

by M. K. Bhadrakumar,* India

(14 February 2025) Seldom, if ever, one gets to pick up the threads of what one had written 3 days back as conjectures. But my prognosis that “the sea side view” of Gaza is mesmerising President Donald Trump and his special envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff, two great real estate developers of modern times, is literally so. See my blog “Trump turn is bad news for West Asia”, Indianpunchline.com, February 3, 2025.

Russia-Iran treaty signifies a ‘breakthrough’ in ties

by M. K. Bhadrakumar,* India

(7 février 2025) Russia and Iran, as two immediate neighbours and great powers with a glorious history, had a difficult, chequered relationship through centuries. It goes to the credit of Iranian pragmatism that it learned to live with the consequences of Tsarist Russia’s expansionism rather than getting locked in eternal enmity. In some ways, it also shared the plight of China at the hands of predatory powers. Such bitter experiences inevitably get embedded in a nation’s psyche.

The run is on

Clearance sale in Syria

by Karin Leukefeld,* Germany/Syria

(7 février 2025) The US, the EU, Israel, Turkey and their Arab partners in the Gulf – Saudi Arabia and Qatar – have achieved what they set out to do 20 years ago. The Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad no longer exists; the new rulers are those who have been armed and trained by the “Friends of Syria” since 2011 with tens of billions of US dollars. “Sanctions are a slow-acting poison, like arsenic” explained Joseph Borrell, then EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, to the EU Parliament in February 2023. “It takes time for them to take effect, but they are irreversible.” Unilateral economic sanctions imposed on Syria by the European Union and the United States have destroyed the country’s economy. Millions of US dollars paid to government and military defectors have paid off.

The predictable collapse of pan-European security

Combination of ignorance and dishonesty of the Western political media elites

by Professor Glenn Diesen,* Norway

(2 February 2025) The international system during the Cold War was organised under extremely zero-sum conditions. There were two centres of power with two incompatible ideologies that relied on continued tensions between two rival military alliances to preserve bloc discipline and security dependence among allies. Without other centres of power or an ideological middle ground, the loss for one was a gain for the other. Yet, faced with the possibility of nuclear war, there were also incentives to reduce the rivalry and overcome the zero-sum bloc politics.