Category Archives: Empire

U. S. & China are new Competitors in an old, obscure, but important island dispute

A tug of war between China and America in the Indian Ocean

Saltwire: Atlantic Canada News Service — Sept. 6, 2023

The Chagos islands, with Diego Garcia, Indian Ocean

Most of the international community regards the Chagos Islands as belonging to Mauritius, from which they were detached in 1965.
Henry Srebrnik, a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island, provided the following opinion article.

Is the sun about to set on Britain’s control of the Chagos Islands? This archipelago of around 60 islands can be found halfway between East Africa and Southeast Asia. They are over 1,500 kilometres south of India, and even further from Mauritius, from which they were detached in 1965.

The Chagos group is currently governed by London as the British Indian Ocean Territory, but most of the international community regards it as belonging to Mauritius.

Also at stake is the future of the indigenous population, the Chagossians, who were expelled from their homes in the 1960s and 1970s. For decades, Britain has blocked them from returning to their islands. For what reason? And why has this become the centre of a power struggle between the United States and China?

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Kristalina Georgieva: Can She Stop A New Cold War??

IMF chief cites her life behind Iron Curtain in warning Against a new Cold War

The Washington Post

By David J. Lynch
 — August 20, 2023

Kristalina Georgieva is head of the International Monetary Fund and is trying to keep the global economy from a costly splintering

Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, grew up under communism and understands the costs of a globe partitioned between adversarial powers.

She grew up in a time of scarcity and repression, living on the wrong side of the line that divided two superpowers. Now she fears a new era of rival blocs could lead the world to repeat the errors of the Cold War.

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What Just Happened In Russia? Gwynne Dyer’s Analysis

Russia: what just happened?

OPINION

Up until late afternoon Moscow time on Saturday, Russia was in a state of acute crisis, with Yevgeny Prigozhin pulling his Wagner army of mercenary soldiers out of Ukraine and sending some of them racing up the highway towards Moscow instead. Their task was to force Russia’s military leadership to quit for corruption and incompetence.

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Alfred McCoy on the Rise of China

[NOTE: In 2008, Al McCoy was a main speaker at a conference on U. S. torture that I helped organize. Both his talk and his academic record marked him as a scholar to reckon with on matters of foreign policy and empire. This record drew me to this new analysis of the rapid shifts of power and empire, especially in the context of the Ukraine war.]

The Rise of China (and the Fall of the U.S.?)

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By Alfred McCoy, a historian and educator. He is the Fred Harvey Harrington Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and author of To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change. O published at TomDispatch.

From the ashes of a world war that killed 80 million people and reduced great cities to smoking rubble, America rose like a Titan of Greek legend, unharmed and armed with extraordinary military and economic power, to govern the globe.

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