International

Cold War Reloaded: US missiles are threatening Moscow from Germany

by Wolfgang Effenberger*

(10 December 2021) Following the Western-orchestrated coup in Kiev at the end of February 2014, the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) pamphlet 525-3-1 “Win in a Complex World: 2020–2040” was adopted in October 2014.

Sino-Russian collusion over Taiwan and Ukraine seems improbable but isn’t

by M. K. Bhadrakumar*

(30 November 2021) The “feel-good” from Tuesday’s virtual meeting1 [16 November] between President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping leaps out of the US-Russian summit in Geneva in June. Biden’s talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently sought to create a “stable and predictable” relationship with Russia but there is talk of war today.

Two times twenty years

The new treaty between China and Russia

by Wilfried Schreiber,* Germany

(18 November 2021) In view of the disaster of the twenty-year Western military presence in Afghanistan, an event on the political-diplomatic level has gone unnoticed in this country, but its geostrategic dimension is just as significant. It is the extension of the "Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China" for another 20 years. The treaty extension of June 2021 and the joint declaration of both countries could be useful in coming to terms with the war in Afghanistan.

China in the light of the German leading media

Spreading colonial stereotypes and creating an enemy stereotype

Own report of the editorial staff of “German Foreign Policy”

(18 November 2021) A recent study gives the China coverage of the German leading media a disastrous report. According to a comprehensive analysis presented by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (Die Linke), the predominant reporting on China is “characterised by an increased use of clichés and stereotypes, some of which date back to colonial times”.

Biden’s Taiwan gaffe meant no harm

by M. K. Bhadrakumar *

(5 November 2021) The probability is that the US President Joe Biden committed yet another diplomatic gaffe at a CNN town hall last Thursday [21 October] that Washington had a commitment to come to Taiwan’s defence if it were attacked by China.

Yet, like Biden’s gaffes usually, this one too was not without an element of deliberateness. Biden was even insistent. Indeed, there is an ongoing debate in the US on this topic and Biden tapped into it.

Reflections on Events in Afghanistan – 29

Taliban is the winner at Moscow conference

by M. K. Bhadrakumar*

The Moscow meeting of ten regional states and the Taliban officials on 22 October has produced an outcome that by far exceeds expectations. The salience of the consensus opinion is four-fold, as reflected in the joint statement issued after the event: