Erdogan is mesmerized by Calilph Selim but, unlike Machiavelli, he doesn’t fear him; he wants to emulate him By Pepe Escobar posted with permission and first posted at the Asia Times Once upon a time in Anatolia, in the late 13th century a Turkic principality – one of many shaped in the wake of the Mongol invasion of the 1240s – consigned the Seljuk Turks to the past and emerged
By Pepe Escobar with cross-postings Henry Kissinger, 97, Henry the K. for those he keeps close, is either a Delphic oracle-style strategic thinker or a certified war criminal for those kept not so close. He now seems to have been taking time off his usual Divide and Rule stock in trade – advising the combo behind POTUS, a.k.a. Crash Test Dummy – to emit some realpolitik pearls of wisdom. At
Pepe Escobar for The Saker Blog Picture yourself about to meet a girl with kaleidoscope eyes… No. Sorry. Actually picture merry lines of code in the R programming language – wallowing in a happy valley of game theory models which would not preclude Goth or New Romantic Walkyrie dancin’ to the 12-inch version of Bauhaus’s Bela Lugosi is Dead. Imagine this reverie coming about because of a “pin!” in your
The New Great Game 3.0 is just beginning with a hat tip to Tacitus and dancing to the Hindu Kush groove By Pepe Escobar with permission from the author and first posted at Asia Times One cannot but feel mildly amused at the theatrical spectacle of the US troop pullout from Afghanistan, its completion day now postponed for maximum PR impact to 9/11, 2021. Nearly two decades and a staggering
If we need a date when the West started to go seriously wrong, let’s start with Rome in the early 5th century By Pepe Escobar with permission and first posted at Asia Times In 2020, we saw the enshrinement of techno-feudalism – one of the overarching themes of my latest book, Raging Twenties. In lightning speed, the techno-feudalism virus is metastasizing into an even more lethal, wilderness of mirrors variant,
None of the actors can admit that revival of JCPOA pales compared with the real issue: Iranian missile power by Pepe Escobar and first posted at Asia Times Few people, apart from specialists, may have heard of the JCPOA Joint Commission. That’s the group in charge of a Sisyphean task: the attempt to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal through a series of negotiations in Vienna. The Iranian negotiating team
By Pepe Escobar and first posted at The Saker Blog Putin’s address to the Russian Federal Assembly – a de facto State of the Nation – was a judo move that left Atlanticist sphere hawks particularly stunned. The “West” was not even mentioned by name. Only indirectly, or via a delightful metaphor, Kipling’s Jungle Book. Foreign policy was addressed only at the end, almost as an afterthought. For the best
Xi Jinping’s Boao Forum speech marked his latest appeal for an open global economy and against US-led decoupling By Pepe Escobar with permission and first posted at Asia Times In times of grave geopolitical trouble it’s up for a true statesman to step up in the global podium and defuse a noxious Cold War 2.0 atmosphere. President Xi Jinping did deliver with his keynote speech at the annual Boao Forum
by Pepe Escobar and widely cross-posted It’s not by accident that the Hegemon is going no holds barred to harass and try to smash Eurasian integration by all means available. It’s a scorpion battle inside a vortex of distorted mirrors inside a circus. So let’s start with the mirrors in the circus. The non-entity that passes for Ukrainian Foreign Minister traveled to Brussels to be courted by US Secretary of
The Triple Yoda, Nikolai Patrushev, hopes cooler heads can avoid sanctions such as the SWIFT ‘nuclear option’ By Pepe Escobar posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times The Beltway was always fond of describing the late Andrew Marshall – who identified emerging or future threats for the Pentagon and whose proteges included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz – as Yoda. Well, if that’s the case, then
By Larchmonter445 for the Saker Blog Early on in the introduction to “Raging Twenties”, Pepe Escobar points to the change, the disruption that confronts the Established Elites who for 30 years ruled the globe with a free hand: “The Empire we have been taught to accept as a fact of life is irretrievably losing its leadership position—and will have to deal with much pain implicit in the acceptance of an
By Pepe Escobar, posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times Ukraine and Russia may be on the brink of war – with dire consequences for the whole of Eurasia. Let’s cut to the chase, and plunge head-on into the fog of war. On March 24, Ukrainian President Zelensky, for all practical purposes, signed a declaration of war against Russia, via decree No. 117/2021. The decree establishes that retaking
By Pepe Escobar – Book Review for The Saker Blog Nearly 20 years after 9/11, Germany and the German-speaking world are being hit by a formidable one-two. A ground-breaking study by gifted independent financial journalist Lars Schall, Denken wie der Feind – 20 Jahre Ausnahmezustand 9/11 und die Geopolitik des Terrors (“Thinking Like the Enemy – 20 Years State of Emergency, 9/11 and the Geopolitics of Terror”) is being published
by Pepe Escobar posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times The extraordinary confluence between the signing of the Iran-China strategic partnership deal and the Ever Given saga in the Suez Canal is bound to spawn a renewed drive to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and all interconnected corridors of Eurasia integration. This is the most important geo-economic development in Southwest Asia in ages – even more crucial
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Newly announced China-Iran strategic partnership deal shatters US sanctions while paving the Belt and Road from East to West By Pepe Escobar posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times Capping an extraordinary two weeks that turned 21st century geopolitics upside down, Iran and China finally signed their 25-year strategic deal this past Saturday in Tehran. The timing could not have been more spectacular, following what we examined in
The unipolar moment is six feet under, the hegemon will try to break Eurasian integration and there’s no grownup in the room to counsel restraint By Pepe Escobar, posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times Let’s start with comic relief: the “leader of the free world” has pledged to prevent China from becoming the “leading” nation on the planet. And to fulfill such an exceptional mission, his “expectation”
With a Russia-China-Iran triple bitch slap on the hegemon, we now have a brand new geopolitical chessboard By Pepe Escobar posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times It took 18 years after Shock and Awe unleashed on Iraq for the Hegemon to be mercilessly shocked and awed by a virtually simultaneous, diplomatic Russia-China one-two. How this is a real game-changing moment cannot be emphasized enough; 21st century geopolitics
Wang Yi and Yang Jiechi will seek to make shark’s fin soup out of Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan at the Anchorage summit By Pepe Escobar with permission and first posted at Asia Times. Leviathan seems to be positioning itself for a geopolitical Kill Bill rampage – yet brandishing a rusty samurai high-carbon-steel sword. Predictably, US deep state masters have not factored in that they could eventually be neutralized
Still in the legal woods and not daring to project as a revolutionary leader, Lula should nonetheless never be underestimated By Pepe Escobar with permission and first posted at Asia Times A surprising Supreme Court decision that, while not definitive, restores Lula’s political rights has hit Brazil like a semiotic bomb and plunged the nation into a reality show being played in a wilderness of shattered mirrors. At first, it
