Author: Barry

By Dae-Han Song

At the NATO Summit, South Korea’s President Lee Jae-myung proposed a “Korea-NATO Defense Industry Partnership 2.0” based on a bilateral procurement plan that would give Korean companies access to its $9.9 billion market. Previously, during the G7, President Lee Jae-myung promised President Donald Trump construction of ten ships for the US Navy. Both of these moments are part of Lee’s vision to make South Korea the fourth largest arms exporter, which it achieved in 2025 by rearming Europe, and hopes to continue by meeting the unfulfilled demand from a fall in Chinese and Russian arms exports.

In a world where defense budgets are ballooning (driven by war and Trump’s warmongering that US allies increase their military spending), the Lee Administration sees weapons production—along with semiconductors and aerospace—as a strategic industry that can grow South Korea’s economy, a type of Military Keynesianism. Yet, while effective in achieving short-term gains, when confronted with global warming, arms production (especially to profit by emboldening US imperialism) pours gasoline on a planet already burning from war and global warming. As such, it, ultimately, denies us the world that we must build for all of us to survive and thrive.

Short-Lived

Undeniably, Lee’s pragmatism has yielded results, starting with winning over Trump’s support: much to the chagrin of pro-Trump/pro-Yoon forces in South Korea, Trump offered Lee enthusiastic support in the latter’s visit to the US. Furthermore, during Trump’s tariff war against the world, Lee’s negotiating team won some relief from tariffs (despite the US’s free trade agreement commitments) by offering $150 billion to Make American Shipbuilding Great Again (MASGA): effectively, a promise to help the US deal with its backlog of maintenance and construction of ships for its Navy, including for Trump’s golden fleet. Furthermore, Lee’s cooperation with Trump around expanding semiconductor foundries in the US laid the foundation for the current AI boom in South Korea that fueled the KOSPI index to break through record highs.

Yet, if his pragmatism has effectively navigated the present, it is unable to chart a path out of it.

Not only is there a risk that once US semiconductor producers expand their capacity they will crowd out Korean companies and effectively burst Korea’s AI bubble (the KOSPI is recovering after just plummeting by 10%), but untrammeled reckless production of chips for energy and water guzzling data centers exacerbates our looming global warming threat. Most critically, building closer relations with Trump by further arming him and staking South Korea’s fortunes on exporting weapons mires South Korea deeper into war and destruction. Arming the United States with ships, critical minerals refining, and semiconductor chips enables the United States’ unilateral military and economic aggressions against the world as it wages its New Cold War.

Invest in Sustainability, Not Destruction

Ultimately, military spending diverts funds from the green transition and accompanying jobs we so desperately need. More specifically, the world spends almost $3 trillion on war, while the global funds for a just transition are short by $2 trillion.

Furthermore, its reliance on heavy industrial production (e.g., steel, critical minerals), daily operations (e.g., fuel for ships, planes, bases), military exercises (flying a B-52 for an hour equals driving for 7 years), and the actual destruction from war (e.g., Iran, Gaza) results in further environmental degradation and global warming. If the militaries of the world were one country, they would constitute the fourth largest greenhouse gas emitter. The US military alone emits more than 140 individual countries.

Building the Future Today

The Tricontinental Institute for Social Research defines the future as not an extension of the present into next year or the next decades but as a break with it. For the rest of us to achieve the future, it must be wrested from the hands of those that seek to perpetuate the present order even if it means global destruction. While the path towards the future is not clear, we must, nonetheless, prepare for it by building up our movements. This organizing can and must take many forms to fit the time, place, and conditions that we are embedded in.

This means that we must build up international solidarity against Trump’s unilateral aggressions around the world. That is what drives the International Strategy Center’s work organizing solidarity for Cuba, organizing events around Cuba’s medical solidarity and transition to renewable energy.

At a time when South Korean progressives have been unable to capture the public imagination. Building a movement for the future can also require playing the long game and planting roots deeper into communities. During a recent local campaign to elect Justice Party’s Hwang Kyung-san for the district council, organizers focused on building long-term community projects rather than simply on mobilizing the vote. Elections offered a brief moment when politics was in the air. So, organizers took to the streets, approached and engaged strangers in sidewalks, bus stops, parks, and follow-up phone calls to talk about issues that directly improved their lives: district services for single-person households, a center for victims of digital sexual violence (in this age of AI); a subway system; a night hospital for children; increased neighborhood busses. Organizers started with issues in one’s communities and then expanded and connected to the rest of society and the world.

This provides us a concrete, albeit small, step towards the future and one of the countless many that are needed across Korea and the world to realize those qualitative shifts that can accumulate towards a rupture with our present.

Those that exploit and cannibalize the present like to say that politics is the art of the possible. To them, we invoke the words of the late Marta Harnecker and declare that we fight to make the impossible today, possible tomorrow. The future depends on it.

By Vijay Prashad

When United States president Donald Trump announced that the ceasefire with Iran was over and ordered a new round of attacks, he attempted to present the resumption of violence as the inevitable consequence of Iranian misconduct. The reality was more complicated. The ceasefire had not been a peace agreement between two reconciled powers, but it was an armed truce between a United States determined to constrain Iran and an Iranian state determined to preserve its sovereignty, its nuclear energy rights, its missile capability, and its regional influence. The violence returned because these fundamental contradictions remained unresolved.

Trump’s declaration that the ceasefire was finished was therefore both a military threat and an instrument of coercive diplomacy. The United States struck Iranian military and coastal targets, while Iran responded against US military installations and interests across the Persian Gulf. The Strait of Hormuz once again became the central theatre of confrontation. Washington insisted upon an unrestricted right of passage for ships under its protection, while Tehran maintained that vessels entering waters under Iranian jurisdiction would have to follow agreed transit procedures. What appeared in the headlines as a dispute over shipping routes was, in fact, a dispute over who possessed the authority to govern one of the world’s most important maritime passages.

The renewed US assault was serious, but it did not develop into the much larger retaliatory campaign that Washington had reportedly prepared. The United States halted a planned campaign against as many as 170 Iranian targets, as sources told our team at Transition Protocol (a new podcast of which I am a founding member). We argue that Trump’s announcement that the ceasefire was over should be interpreted primarily as coercive signalling rather than as the commencement of an unrestricted war. Public reporting in the days that followed showed continued military exchanges, including extensive US strikes, but it also confirmed that diplomatic mediation continued alongside the fighting. The military confrontation and the diplomatic process were not separate stages. They operated simultaneously, with each side attempting to improve its position at the negotiating table through pressure on the battlefield.

This combination of violence and negotiation is characteristic of Trump’s foreign policy. He threatens overwhelming destruction, authorises attacks, declares victory, and then searches for an agreement that he can present as the capitulation of his adversary. Yet Iran has refused to provide him with such a spectacle. Tehran has negotiated, but it has not surrendered. It has accepted temporary arrangements, but it has not accepted the destruction of its strategic capabilities; it has made tactical concessions where necessary, while maintaining that the United States cannot obtain through bombing what it has failed to secure through diplomacy.

The most important development after the renewed fighting has therefore been the reconstruction of a cessation of violence. The diplomatic channel operated by Qatar has remained active, while Pakistan and Oman have continued their own efforts to prevent further escalation. Qatari negotiators have repeatedly travelled to Tehran and have conducted discussions in coordination with the United States. Public reporting has confirmed Qatar’s central role in the talks, as well as preparations for another round of indirect negotiations. Regional media reported that these negotiations were expected to resume this week, although the location and precise format remained unsettled. This diplomacy does not represent a return to the situation that existed before the war. It reflects a new strategic reality produced by the war itself. The United States has demonstrated its immense capacity to destroy Iranian infrastructure, but Iran has demonstrated that such destruction cannot be contained within Iranian territory. Any sustained attack on Iran immediately affects US military bases, Gulf monarchies, maritime commerce, energy prices, and the political stability of the wider region. Washington possesses the capacity to inflict enormous damage, but Tehran possesses the capacity to broaden the consequences of that damage.

The framework for the renewed negotiations also appears to have survived the latest round of violence. The fourteen-point memorandum of understanding developed from the earlier Lucerne and April negotiations remains the operational foundation of the diplomatic process. The current disputes concern the sequencing of measures, compliance, guarantees, verification, and implementation rather than the wholesale abandonment of the framework. This distinction is important. Trump may declare that the ceasefire is over, but the diplomatic architecture constructed beneath the ceasefire has not necessarily disappeared. Negotiators do not appear to be beginning again from an empty table. They are attempting to rescue an existing arrangement from the contradictions embedded within it. The central questions concern when Iran will take particular nuclear or maritime measures, when the United States will lift sanctions or suspend attacks, what guarantees will prevent another breach, and which regional states will supervise implementation.

The Strait of Hormuz remains the most immediate of these questions. The dispute is often presented as a simple conflict between Iranian efforts to close the waterway and US efforts to keep it open. Yet the actual mechanics appear to be more intricate as the negotiations distinguish between an approved transit corridor and a prohibited corridor closer to Oman. Iran has not claimed an unlimited right to stop all maritime commerce, but it has instead demanded that commercial vessels follow a designated route whose use would acknowledge Iranian authority and reduce the possibility that civilian shipping could provide cover for hostile military operations. The United States has attempted to resist any arrangement that appears to legitimise Iranian control over transit. Iran, meanwhile, regards the routing system as a practical expression of sovereignty. This apparently technical disagreement therefore contains the entire political conflict in miniature. Washington believes that its military power gives it the right to determine the rules of passage. Tehran believes that geography, international law, and national sovereignty give Iran an unavoidable role in determining those rules.

Iran’s Four Strategic Gains

Iran’s first major strategic gain is that it has made this role impossible to ignore. No regional security arrangement can now be built around the exclusion of Iran. Even governments that remain close military partners of the United States understand that an attempt to permanently isolate or destroy Iran would place their own cities, ports, energy facilities, and development projects at risk. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan do not share identical interests, but each has reasons to prevent the conflict from becoming unlimited. Conversations with high officials in Pakistan and Qatar indicate that the diplomatic process includes Pakistani and Omani mediation alongside electronic coordination involving Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. This multilateral architecture has not been fully confirmed in public reporting, but the broader pattern is visible. Regional governments are no longer content to wait for Washington to dictate the terms of war and peace. They have inserted themselves into the negotiating process because they will bear the consequences if it fails.

Iran’s second strategic gain lies in the restoration of deterrence. Before the war, politicians in Washington and Tel Aviv frequently spoke as though Iran could be bombed without producing consequences beyond its borders. That illusion has been destroyed. Iran has shown that it can continue launching missiles and drones after sustained attacks on its military infrastructure. It has demonstrated the capacity to threaten US installations throughout the region, and it has shown that the safety of maritime trade cannot be separated from Iranian security. Even when its forces have been damaged, Iran has retained sufficient capability to impose costs on its adversaries or that Iran won a conventional military victory. Its cities and military facilities suffered substantial damage, and Iran’s economy remains under severe pressure from sanctions, disrupted trade, inflation, reconstruction costs, and the prolonged militarisation of public life. The Iranian people have paid a heavy price for decisions made in Washington and Tel Aviv, as well as for the weaknesses and contradictions of their own political system.

Yet war must be assessed politically and not merely by counting destroyed installations. The United States entered the confrontation seeking to compel Iran to abandon the essential foundations of its strategic autonomy. It wanted Iran to accept permanent restrictions on its nuclear programme, the dismantling of its missile capabilities, the weakening of its regional alliances, and the subordination of its maritime rights. These objectives have not been achieved. Iran has been injured, but it has not been politically subdued.

Iran’s third strategic gain is connected to the nuclear question. Repeated warnings from Iranian officials reveal that continued US and Israeli attacks could lead Iran to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Such a withdrawal would not automatically mean that Iran had decided to construct a nuclear weapon, but it would remove the central legal and inspection framework through which Iran has maintained its status as a non-nuclear-weapon state.

This warning is not merely a general expression of anger from the Iranian parliament or security establishment. The message originated in the Office of Mojtaba Khamenei and was transmitted to Washington through a Pakistani backchannel. This fact, reported by Transition Protocol, suggests that the NPT warning has been authorised at the highest level of the Iranian state and is being used as a calibrated instrument of deterrence. The message would be clear. If the treaty does not protect a member state from attack, and if nuclear facilities under international inspection can still be bombed, then the incentives for remaining within the treaty begin to erode. Iran is therefore attempting to transform its possible withdrawal from the NPT into leverage for stronger security guarantees. It is warning that continued coercion will not produce greater nuclear transparency, but less.

Iran’s fourth strategic gain is political. The United States and Israel expected military pressure to fragment the Iranian state and deepen internal divisions. Instead, foreign attacks have strengthened the politics of national defence. Iranian society contains significant disagreements over economic management, political freedoms, social regulation, and the character of the state. These contradictions have not disappeared. Nevertheless, attacks from abroad have allowed the Iranian leadership to present the defence of the political system as inseparable from the defence of the nation. The danger for Washington is that each new attack strengthens the argument within Iran that negotiation without deterrent power is meaningless. Those who advocated compromise can be told that the United States used negotiations merely to prepare new military operations, and those who argued for strategic restraint can be told that restraint invited aggression. Trump’s breach of the ceasefire has therefore reinforced the very forces inside Iran that Washington claims it wishes to weaken.

The reconstructed cessation of violence remains precarious. It could collapse through deliberate action or miscalculation. A disputed ship movement, a missile launched by an allied force, an unacknowledged Israeli attack, or a US attempt to alter the terms of the maritime arrangement could restart the cycle. The negotiations this week will therefore have to address not only the great questions of sanctions and nuclear policy, but the practical mechanisms required to prevent local incidents from escalating into regional war. The central fact, however, is already evident. Trump broke the ceasefire, but he could not escape the negotiations. The United States returned to military force, but military force did not eliminate Iran’s capacity to retaliate, negotiate, or shape the regional order.

Iran has suffered grievously, yet it has preserved the essentials of its strategic position. It remains a sovereign state with substantial military capabilities, considerable diplomatic influence, control over decisive geography, and the ability to prevent its enemies from imposing a cost-free war upon it.

The new cessation of violence is not peace. It is an acknowledgement of limits. Iran has learnt again that agreements with the United States cannot be defended by paper guarantees alone, while the United States has learnt again that bombing Iran does not produce Iranian surrender. Between these two conclusions lies the narrow road back to diplomacy, guarded by missiles, crowded with mediators, and overshadowed by the knowledge that the next breach could be more difficult to contain than the last.

By Balram Banskota and Jeong-eun Hwang

On 4 March 2026, a US military vessel torpedoed and sunk the unarmed Iranian frigate IRIS Dena off the southern coast of Sri Lanka. The illegal strike killed over 80 and injured over 30 Iranian sailors, who were returning home after participating in the Indian Navy’s flagship biennial multilateral naval drill, Exercise MILAN, and the International Fleet Review, in Visakhapatnam.

The Sri Lankan authorities mobilised to rescue the sailors and grant them safe passage. The sinking of the IRIS Dena by a torpedo strike is the first such incident since World Anti-Fascist War (World War II), and a significant escalation of the New Cold War in Asia.

Ironically, the attack coincided with the 55^th anniversary of the UN declaration of the Indian Ocean as a Zone of Peace – a proposal championed by Sri Lanka and Tanzania in the heyday of the Non-Aligned Movement.

Centre of Gravity

Asia today sits at the heart of a New Cold War being imposed by the US on the region. With the People Republic of China as its principal engine, the centre of gravity of the world economy has shifted to Asia. Asia is home to approximately 60 percent of the world population. Between 2015 and 2025, the region contributed to 70 percent of global economic growth. Much of this growth has been driven by production – over 57 percent of world manufacturing value added come from Asia.

While industrial success has brought significant gains in social indicators, it has also been uneven, often failing to transcend peripheralisation. In 2022, Sri Lanka became the first country in Asia to default on its sovereign debt in the 21^st century – Sri Lanka is now undergoing its 17^th IMF programme. According to the World Bank, nine countries in Asia are in debt distress, and 6 are undergoing IMF programmes. Despite its economic weight, Asia remains dependent on the dollar and lacks regional alternatives to the Bretton Woods institutions.

Flood and Fury

Today, West Asia has become home to one of the most acute humanitarian crises of the 21^st century – the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, which is perpetrated by the state of Israel with the backing of the United States and Europe. Over 70,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli strikes since 7 October 2023. The life expectancy in Gaza has nearly halved from 75 to 40 years.

The war on Gaza has escalated into a regional war, intensified by the fall of the Baathist government in Syria and the rise of US-backed government of Ahmed al-Sharaa. Israeli strikes have expanded to southern Lebanon and, with US backing, to Iran, in total violation of international law. The assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in September 202 and Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei in February 2026 marked significant escalations of imperialist aggression in the region. Yet the resistance of the Iranian people reveals the desperation of imperialism which struggles to achieve its political goals despite use of arms.

The Double Bind

Asia is enmeshed in a garland of over 270 US military bases. These bases stretch from the Persian Gulf states in the west, to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, to the chain of bases along Philippines, South Korea, Japan, Guam, and the Marshall Islands in the east. These bases are supplemented by a complex network of partnerships and military agreements such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad (2017), AUKUS (2021), the Pacific Deterrence Initiative (2021), and the US-Japan-South Korea Trilateral Agreement (2023).

This military architecture is part of the US ‘strategy of denial’ designed to encircle China and constrain its development. The contradiction at the heart of the strategy is that the hosts of US bases and partners of these agreements themselves have a strong measure of economic interdependency with China. The US drive towards militarisation therefore creates tensions rather than resolving them and diverts precious resources into the pockets of military contractors rather than investment in education, healthcare, infrastructure and production. Peace and development in Asia require a strategy of regionalism and multilateralism, led by the peoples of the region.

The ‘Gen Z’ Question

Amid war in West Asia and militarisation in the East Asia, the political and economic crises in South Asia have been multiplying. The crisis of neoliberalism has led to uprisings toppling governments in Sri Lanka (2022), Bangladesh (2024), and Nepal (2025). These uprisings have been attributed to the amorphous category of ‘Gen Z’, which masks more than it reveals. Slogans about corruption, nepotism, and authoritarianism reveal deep discontent, but stop short of identifying the principal contradiction of imperialism and its economic structures.

In reality, the countries of South Asia are witnessing social discontent driven by youth unemployment, rural-agrarian crises, climate change, and migration. The resulting social embers pose opportunities for social transformation or imperialist co-option. In Nepal and Bangladesh, these uprisings have led to a drift towards the right. In Sri Lanka, the left eventually came to political power but has been unable to advance an alternative economic agenda.

Hands off Asia!

It is in this context that the International People’s Assembly, with the support of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, hosts the “Hands off Asia! A People’s Call for Sovereignty and Solidarity” in Colombo on 16, 17, and 18 July. The conference brings together, movement leaders, scholars, and diplomats from seventeen countries across the region in a dialogue about the pressing issues of the current conjuncture.

The conference aims to: 1. Build a shared understanding of the imperial attack on Asia; 2. Create a space where movements, parties, people’s organisations, and thinkers can share their experiences of struggle and build lasting working relationships, 3. Develop a shared programme of demands; 4. Deepen the political understanding of Asian organisations by connecting everyday struggles to the bigger picture of imperial domination; and 5. Produce a more nuanced and cohesive understanding that can guide the next stage of united anti-imperialist work across the continent.

The people of Asia know the cost of imperialism and remember the many historic struggles and revolutions across Asia – from the Arab Revolt (1917–1918), to the Chinese Revolution (1949), to Vietnam’s Resistance War Against the US (1955–1975). The same fight against imperialism is being waged today on many fronts, from Gaza to Colombo to Okinawa. Hands off Asia!

The above article was produced by Globetrotter. Balram Banskota is a veteran communist and a leader of the Nepali Communist Party. Jeong-eun Hwang is the general secretary of the International Strategy Centre in Korea. Both organizations are part of the International Peoples’ Assembly (Asia).

By Biljana Vankovska

The debate over whether NATO is ‘brain-dead’ or merely ‘living-dead’ misses the point. Both metaphors assume that the Alliance can be understood simply through the lens of institutional vitality. Ankara suggests something different: NATO is neither healthy nor dead. It increasingly resembles a zombie—an organisation that has lost much of its strategic coherence while remaining fully capable of generating instability, militarisation and confrontation.

As the Ankara summit displayed, the representatives of the NATO member-states managed to get together in full composition and provide a family photo for historical archives. It seems to be the biggest achievement, since nobody can say for sure that there will be another summit next year (at least, while Donald Trump is still in office). Beyond carefully staged displays of unity, however, the summit exposed an alliance struggling to reconcile growing internal fragmentation with ever-expanding geopolitical ambitions.

The Summits have lost any meaning in terms of producing strategic thinking and vision of the collective security. Many commentators were puzzled by the emptiness of the event, which was organized in two parts: the first day of the Summit was entirely focused on the arms fair (the so-called Defense Industry Forum), while the second one was meant to appease the master (the US President) and to avoid any major scandal. NATO is a grouping of Western nations that have accepted vassalage as the only way to stay together. They are not partners and allies, but vassallies (as Ali Borhani usually points out).

The 2025 Hague summit set the goals for the military-industrial investment fund by raising the military allocation to 5% of countries’ GDP. That was the Emperor’s whim, not supported by any serious security and threat analysis – only by greed. The Hague Declaration was essentially a political programme centred on unprecedented military spending. Ankara produced little more than a progress report. Its brevity reflected not efficiency but the absence of any new strategic consensus. Yet, nobody can say for sure how realistic this collective commitment is. The Ankara show was ‘stolen’ by two key actors: CEOs of the biggest arms manufacturer corporations and expectedly, Donald Trump, who (again) had the role of the main clown in the circus. He literally grabbed the opportunity (during his 24-hour stay in Ankara) to belittle allies and provoke the adversaries, or better to launch another wave of attacks on Iran and threaten Greenland (and Denmark). Both CEOs and Trump went home pleased.

Many analyses cautiously remind that the order books for new armament deals may remain just that – books of wishes that can hardly be met in the coming year. After all, the US arms manufacturers would always give priority to Trump’s (i.e, US) demands over their deal commitments with other countries. The Alliance is not only poor in terms of strategic vision for the new world but also in terms of depletion of its military arsenals, and particularly the raw materials and rare minerals necessary to produce the required weaponry. Probably the only novelty in this respect is reliance on Ukraine and its direct involvement in these business deals, with few assurances that the Russians would allow that to happen. NATO’s official language remains that of collective defence. Yet its practical agenda increasingly revolves around industrial mobilisation, long-term confrontation with Russia, and preparations for a wider geopolitical competition extending far beyond the Euro-Atlantic area.

A deeper analysis of the extremely brief Declaration is hardly necessary due to its expected content and very superficial wording, which did not need a spectacle and a summit to be drafted. NATO continues on the path it began in 1949, to sell a narrative of deterrence and collective self-defence while going on its imperial march, commanded by the Americans. The six-paragraph Declaration adds nothing new, except that it reiterates the well-known goals of the organization, which hardly manages to control its global appetites, while struggling to secure its own (European) security. In sum, they stress the validity of the most famous article of the Washington Treaty, Article 5, as if the entire existence of the grouping depends on it. It’s partly true because the greatest nightmare of European leaders is that they may be abandoned as little children by the great ‘Daddy’. There was almost a loud sigh of relief when Trump appeared and signed the document. According to some European analysts, the relief was due to the fact that allegedly Europe bought some extra time to establish its own defence capabilities and ‘emancipate’ from the USA.

The summit opened not with strategic deliberation but with the Defence Industry Forum. The symbolism was difficult to ignore. Defence corporations occupied centre stage before political leaders even began discussing security policy (each of them having only three-minute speech to address the summit). This reversal captures an important transformation: military production is no longer merely an instrument of strategy but increasingly its driving force. Security policy follows industrial capacity as much as the other way around.

The family photograph temporarily concealed profound disagreements among the allies. Yet, they left with two contradictory ideas about the Alliance’s future (American and European ones). Yet it is hard to talk about single European security vision. Eastern and Baltic members perceive existential threats from Russia; Southern members in the Balkans remain preoccupied with instability across their region; Türkiye increasingly pursues autonomous regional ambitions; Germany still struggles to reconcile its economic interests, historical memory and geopolitical role. Meanwhile, Brussels speaks of “strategic autonomy” while simultaneously deepening dependence on American military leadership. Finally, we have a rather complex political, party, and societal dynamic for each of them. Viewed from this perspective, the family photo of the Ankara summit showed not only elderly and physically weakened leaders, but also those with hardly any significant public support in their respective countries (let alone the already former British PM).

The Alliance stresses its ambitions, such as “360-degree approach to security” (wide enough to implicitly embrace China and other parts of the world) and defeating Russia on the battlefield. One should not forget to mention the nuclear security that has been normalized as something “thinkable” – not by choice but most probably by escalation (incited by the Europeans). Furthermore, the Declaration used the rhetoric of threats toward states “out of area” (such as Iran and its state and nuclear sovereignty). Ukraine was portrayed simultaneously as a victim, ally, and prospective business partner in the military-industrial complex. Donald Trump actually pledged the U.S. would give Ukraine a license to build its own Patriot interceptors, a long-sought goal for Kyiv as a global shortage of the missiles and intensifying Russian strikes leave its cities exposed. For the time being and in the future (as Russia is pointed out as the key adversary) the Article 5 beneficiary is de facto only Ukraine. (Here one should take into account the implicit dismissal of Turkiye’s security concerns (vis-à-vis Israel, for instance). The normalization of NATO relations with Syria’s Jolani was just one signal that NATO is a community of rather flexible values.

The Ankara Declaration ends with expressions of gratitude to Turkiye for organizing efforts, which could be taken as a less important protocol matter. However, in return, President Erdogan sent a symbolic message. Most of the recipients were puzzled, surprised or even as odd with such an unusual gift. They failed to understand the true message of the ‘modern Sultan’. Erdoğan’s personalised vintage revolvers symbolised more than Ottoman nostalgia. They reflected Türkiye’s increasingly autonomous geopolitical identity, simultaneously inside NATO yet increasingly unwilling to define itself solely through Western strategic priorities. Ankara thus illustrated another paradox: an alliance expanding its military ambitions while becoming progressively less cohesive politically.

The Check president Babiš complained to the press that during the summit “everybody talks about war, everybody talks about armaments, but not once did I hear the word peace.” Ankara will not be remembered for any major strategic innovation. It may instead be remembered as another step in NATO’s slow transformation into an alliance whose ambitions continue to expand while its political cohesion steadily erodes. History offers many examples of declining powers becoming more dangerous precisely because they struggle to adapt to changing realities. Zombie alliances, like zombie empires, rarely disappear quietly. Their greatest danger lies not in their strength, but in the instability they generate while refusing to recognise that the world around them has fundamentally changed.

Yet Ankara also reminded us that another political imagination survives. Beyond the official summit, peace movements, trade unions, socialist organisations and anti-war activists gathered to challenge the logic of permanent militarisation. Their voices were largely ignored by mainstream media, but they represented something absent from the summit itself: the conviction that security cannot be built through endless preparation for war. In an age increasingly defined by military competition, that may be the most important political message of all.

By Vijay Prashad

On June 23, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel released one of the most devastating reports ever produced by a UN investigative body on the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Its title is almost unbearable to read: The Essence of Childhood Has Been Destroyed. Behind the title lies an accusation of extraordinary gravity. The Commission concludes that Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children and that these actions amount to genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in the Gaza Strip, alongside war crimes in the occupied West Bank.

The report is not an emotional appeal. It is a painstaking legal document built upon witness testimony, forensic evidence, satellite imagery, military analysis, medical records, and years of documentation. What it presents is not merely another catalogue of civilian casualties. It argues that the killing, maiming, starvation, detention and psychological destruction of Palestinian children cannot be explained as collateral damage. Rather, the Commission concludes that children themselves have become deliberate targets of Israeli military policy. The implications of such a finding reach far beyond Gaza. They raise fundamental questions about the future of international law itself.

A Report of Extraordinary Gravity

The Commission estimates that since October 2023, at least 20,179 Palestinian children have been killed and more than 44,000 injured. Approximately thirty per cent of all Palestinians killed have been children. These figures alone place the Gaza war among the deadliest conflicts for children in modern history. Yet the report’s importance lies not simply in the numbers but in its conclusions regarding intent.

It documents repeated instances in which children were shot by snipers, attacked by drones, struck while seeking food or water, or killed despite posing no military threat – as should have been obvious. It examines the repeated use of high-yield explosives in densely populated civilian areas long after the predictable consequences for children had become undeniable. It details attacks on maternity hospitals, neonatal wards, schools, orphanages and shelters. It also examines the blockade of food, water and medicine, showing how starvation, disease and the collapse of medical services have become instruments of war directed against an entire civilian population whose youngest members are the most vulnerable.

The Commission investigates Israeli detention practices involving Palestinian minors. Children arrested in Gaza and the West Bank describe torture, sexual violence, degrading treatment and disappearance into detention facilities without information being provided to their families. Such abuses, the report concludes, form part of a broader system of collective punishment directed against Palestinian society across generations. The UN Commission report is not novel on this, even though the findings are devastating. They corroborate previous reports by Save the Children (Palestinian Children in Israeli Military Detention Report Increasingly Violent Conditions, 29 February 2024) and, long before this genocidal campaign that began in 2023 by UNICEF (Children in Israeli Military Detention, February 2013). In his recent book, Survivors of the Darkness, the Palestinian journalist Wesam Afifa documents the horrendous violence of the Israeli concentration camps set up for Palestinians, including children.

Perhaps the UN report’s most chilling conclusion is that the destruction extends beyond physical death. Childhood itself has become a battlefield. Psychological trauma, orphanhood, repeated displacement, hunger, interrupted education and permanent disability together amount to what the Commission describes as the destruction of ‘the essence of childhood’.

A Pattern Long Documented

The Commission’s findings did not emerge suddenly. For nearly two years, Palestinian journalists have documented children pulled from collapsed buildings, infants dying in incubators without electricity, families wiped out in airstrikes and children shot while attempting to retrieve food or water. Many of those journalists paid with their own lives. Gaza has become the ‘deadliest conflict ever for journalists’, reported Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. Yet, despite extraordinary danger the journalists continued documenting events that much of the world preferred not to see.

International human rights organisations reached similar conclusions long before this recent UN report. Save the Children repeatedly warned that Gaza had become one of the most dangerous places on earth to be a child. Defence for Children International–Palestine documented repeated shootings of children in circumstances that raised serious questions about military necessity. Human Rights Watch investigated attacks on schools, hospitals and refugee camps. Amnesty International examined repeated strikes that appeared to violate the principles of distinction and proportionality under international humanitarian law. UNICEF repeatedly warned that children were being killed and injured on an unprecedented scale. None of these organisations described isolated accidents. They identified recurring patterns that demanded independent investigation. The new UN report effectively consolidates this vast body of evidence into a single legal assessment.

In January 2024, the International Court of Justice found that South Africa’s case alleging genocide by Israel was plausible and ordered provisional measures requiring Israel to prevent acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, preserve evidence, and facilitate humanitarian assistance. Subsequent orders strengthened these requirements as conditions in Gaza deteriorated. Although the Court has not yet ruled on the merits of the genocide case, it has repeatedly recognised the grave risk faced by the Palestinian population and the continuing obligations imposed upon Israel under international law. The new Commission report provides further evidentiary material that will inevitably shape future legal proceedings.

The Silence of the Israeli State

Perhaps equally striking has been the nature of Israel’s response. Rather than seriously engaging with the evidence assembled by the Commission, Israeli officials once again dismissed the report outright, describing it as politically motivated and fundamentally biased. They rejected its conclusions in their entirety without offering substantive rebuttal of the specific incidents, witness testimony, or forensic evidence presented by investigators. Every state has the right to defend itself against allegations. But serious allegations require serious answers.

If children were not deliberately targeted, the burden rests upon the Israeli authorities to explain why thousands of children have died in circumstances repeatedly documented by journalists, humanitarian organisations, medical personnel, and now a UN Commission of Inquiry. Why have hospitals, maternity wards, schools and refugee shelters been struck again and again? Why have humanitarian convoys repeatedly come under attack? Why have children continued to die even after ceasefire arrangements? Why have military investigations produced so little accountability? Simply repeating accusations of institutional bias cannot substitute for factual explanation. The refusal to engage with evidence has itself become a disturbing feature of this war.

International humanitarian law rests upon the principle that states are accountable for their conduct. Accountability becomes impossible when every investigation is dismissed before its evidence is even examined.

Justice S. Muralidhar and the Duty of the Judge

The findings of the UN Commission also remind us of the importance of judges who understand that the law is not merely a technical instrument but a defence against arbitrary power. Few Indian judges have embodied that principle more consistently than Justice S. Muralidhar, who as UN Commission on Human Rights, chaired this new report’s committee.

Justice Muralidhar earned a reputation over decades as one of India’s most respected constitutional jurists, particularly in cases involving civil liberties, communal violence, and the protection of vulnerable communities. He was one of the principal judicial voices in implementing accountability after the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom, insisting that impunity could not become the norm merely because the crimes were politically inconvenient. His commitment to constitutional duty became internationally known during the communal violence in northeast Delhi in February 2020. As hospitals struggled to treat victims trapped by the violence, Justice Muralidhar and Justice Anup J. Bhambhani convened an extraordinary midnight hearing at Justice Muralidhar’s residence. The Delhi High Court ordered the police to ensure the safe passage of the injured to hospitals and directed immediate emergency medical treatment. Later that day, Justice Muralidhar sharply questioned the failure of the Delhi Police to register cases against political leaders whose inflammatory speeches had been widely circulated, reminding the authorities that the country could not permit ‘another 1984’.

Within hours of these hearings, the Government of India notified Justice Muralidhar’s transfer to the Punjab and Haryana High Court, although the recommendation for his transfer had formally been made by the Supreme Court Collegium earlier that month. The timing generated widespread concern among lawyers, retired judges, and civil society organisations, who regarded the episode as raising troubling questions about judicial independence.

Justice Muralidhar’s career illustrates an essential principle of the rule of law. Courts do not exist to ratify the conduct of governments. Their function is to examine evidence without fear or favour, especially when the victims are those with the least political power. The same principle animates the work of the UN Commission of Inquiry. Its conclusions may be contested, but they cannot simply be dismissed because they are politically inconvenient. The proper response to serious evidence is serious engagement. That is the first obligation of any state that claims to respect the rule of law.

The Test Before Humanity

The UN Commission’s report is ultimately not only about Israel or Palestine.

It asks whether the international legal order created after the defeat of European fascism still possesses the moral authority to defend children from organised violence. If more than 20,000 children can be killed while the institutions of international diplomacy continue largely as normal, then the promise embodied in the Genocide Convention, the Geneva Conventions, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child stands gravely diminished. The report will not end the war. It cannot restore the lives already lost. But it establishes a historical record that will become increasingly difficult to erase. Long after governments change and military campaigns conclude, this record will remain. History remembers those who committed atrocities. It also remembers those who looked away.

The above article was produced by Globetrotter. Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. He is the author of forty books, including Washington Bullets, Red Star Over the Third World, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, and How the International Monetary Fund Suffocates Africa, written with Grieve Chelwa. He is the executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, the chief correspondent for Globetrotter, and the chief editor of LeftWord Books (New Delhi). He also appeared in the films Shadow World (2016) and Two Meetings (2017).

By Bandile Mabuza

In the southern region of Africa, nestled between South Africa and Mozambique, lies the small kingdom officially known as the Kingdom of Eswatini, formerly Swaziland. Though often marketed internationally as a peaceful cultural monarchy and tourist destination, beneath the surface exists one of the world’s last remaining absolute monarchies — a political system where power is concentrated almost entirely in the hands of the king, while the majority of citizens endure poverty, unemployment, political repression, and democratic exclusion.

Furthermore, this is the only country in Africa which has no diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China but instead with Taiwan. This creates huge problems for Swaziland’s economy, meaning it cannot participate in the trade and investment with China which is a mainstay of development of the overwhelming majority of African countries. Instead its absolute monarchy prefers to gain subsidies from Taiwan. But this financing of the regime by means totally in contradiction to the country’s interests is entirely in line with, and buttresses, the ultra-repressive domestic character of the archaic regime.

For decades, the people of Eswatini have struggled to assert their political voice against an entrenched system that combines royal absolutism, legal repression, economic inequality, and militarized control. Despite repeated waves of resistance, the kingdom remains isolated from meaningful democratic transformation, and dissent continues to be criminalized.

The Structure of Absolute Monarchy in Eswatini

Eswatini is Africa’s last absolute monarchy under King Mswati III, who ascended to the throne in 1986 following the death of King Sobhuza II. Unlike constitutional monarchies where kings or queens serve ceremonial functions, the monarch in Eswatini exercises direct executive, legislative, and significant judicial influence.

The roots of this system can be traced to the infamous 1973 Decree issued by King Sobhuza II. On April 12, 1973, the king repealed the independence constitution, dissolved parliament, banned political parties, and vested supreme powers in the monarchy. The decree declared that political parties were “incompatible with the Swazi way of life.” From that moment onward, democratic political organization became effectively illegal.

Although the country adopted the 2005 Constitution decades later, many hoped it would initiate democratic reforms. Instead, the constitution largely consolidated royal authority while creating the appearance of constitutional governance. Political parties remain effectively excluded from participation in elections, and executive power remains centered around the king.

The monarch appoints the prime minister, cabinet ministers, judges, army leadership, police commissioners, members of the Senate, and numerous strategic officials. Parliament itself functions within severe limitations, lacking meaningful autonomy from royal authority. Chiefs loyal to the monarchy continue to exercise considerable control over rural communities, land allocation, and local governance.

The electoral system, known as Tinkhundla, is officially portrayed as a grassroots democratic model. In practice, critics argue that it depoliticizes society by prohibiting organized ideological competition and reducing elections to individual personalities rather than political programs. Citizens vote for individuals rather than parties, while the monarchy remains above political accountability.

Royal Wealth Amidst Mass Poverty

One of the most glaring contradictions in Eswatini is the coexistence of immense royal wealth alongside widespread poverty among ordinary citizens.

King Mswati III is known internationally for his lavish lifestyle. The monarchy maintains multiple royal palaces, luxury vehicles, private jets, and extravagant ceremonies funded directly or indirectly through public resources. Annual cultural events such as Umhlanga and Incwala receive substantial state attention and expenditure, while public hospitals frequently face shortages of medicine, understaffing, and deteriorating infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Eswatini consistently records some of the highest unemployment and poverty rates in Southern Africa. Youth unemployment remains catastrophic, particularly among graduates and rural youth. Many citizens survive through informal labor, subsistence farming, or migration to neighboring South Africa in search of employment.

The crisis is especially visible in rural areas where access to healthcare, sanitation, quality education, and economic opportunities remains deeply unequal. In many communities, families struggle with food insecurity while elites connected to the monarchy accumulate wealth and political influence.

This inequality has fueled growing frustration among young people, workers, students, and pro-democracy activists who increasingly question the legitimacy of a political order that concentrates national wealth and power in the hands of a small royal elite.

Repression and Criminalization of Dissent

Political repression remains one of the defining characteristics of governance in Eswatini. Activists, journalists, trade unionists, students, and opposition figures have long faced surveillance, intimidation, detention, torture allegations, exile, and imprisonment.

Central to this repression is the Suppression of Terrorism Act of 2008, a law widely criticized by human rights organizations for its vague and broad definitions of terrorism. The law has repeatedly been used against pro-democracy activists and organizations demanding political reforms.

Under this legislation, groups associated with democratic struggle have been labeled terrorist organizations, enabling the state to arrest individuals for political association, slogans, publications, or activism. Critics argue that the law effectively criminalizes dissent rather than protecting public safety.

Prominent activists and Members of Parliament have faced arrest and persecution over the years. Others have fled into exile due to fears for their safety. Journalists operating inside the kingdom work under intense pressure, with self-censorship becoming common due to fear of state retaliation.

Security forces — including the police and army — are frequently accused of excessive force against protesters. Demonstrations are often dispersed violently, and emergency-style policing has become normalized whenever mass mobilization emerges.

The judiciary itself has faced criticism for lacking full independence, especially in politically sensitive cases involving activists or constitutional challenges against royal authority.

The 27 Demands and the Rise of Modern Resistance

The democratic struggle in Eswatini has evolved across several important historical moments.

One of the most significant early milestones was the 1996 mass workers’ uprising and the “27 Demands.” Organized largely through trade unions and civic organizations, the demands called for democratic reforms, labor rights, freedom of association, constitutional reform, and an end to political repression.

The protests represented a major challenge to the monarchy’s authority and demonstrated growing dissatisfaction among workers and ordinary citizens. Although the state resisted fundamental change, the movement laid the foundation for modern pro-democracy organizing in the country.

The 27 Demands became symbolic because they connected economic suffering with political exclusion. Protesters argued that poverty, unemployment, and underdevelopment were inseparable from the absence of democratic accountability.

Waya Waya 2012: “Enough is Enough”

Another defining chapter emerged during the 2011–2012 uprisings commonly referred to as Waya Waya — meaning “we are going.”

Inspired partly by global protest movements and worsening economic conditions, students, workers, youth, and political activists mobilized against austerity, inequality, corruption, and authoritarian rule.

The movement exposed the depth of frustration among the population, particularly young people facing hopelessness and unemployment. Calls for multiparty democracy intensified, while state security forces responded with arrests, intimidation, and suppression.

Although the movement did not overthrow the system, it significantly reshaped political consciousness among a new generation of activists. Social media, underground organizing, and civic mobilization became increasingly important tools of resistance.

The 2021 Uprising: Bloodiest Crackdown in Modern History

The most explosive confrontation between the state and citizens occurred in 2021, during what became the bloodiest unrest in modern Swazi history.

The immediate trigger involved demands for political reforms and the right to submit petitions calling for democratic change. Tensions escalated rapidly after the death of university student and activist Thabani Nkomonye under suspicious circumstances, which many citizens believed symbolized broader state impunity and injustice.

Mass protests erupted across the country, particularly among youth. Demonstrators demanded democratic reforms, an elected prime minister, accountability, and an end to authoritarian rule.

The state responded with overwhelming force. Soldiers were deployed into communities, live ammunition was reportedly used against civilians, and numerous reports emerged of killings, torture, beatings, and arbitrary arrests.

Human rights organizations estimated that over one hundred people lost their lives during the crackdown, though exact figures remain contested due to restricted information flows and fear among witnesses. Many activists were forced into hiding or exile, while others were detained.

The 2021 unrest fundamentally altered the political landscape. For many citizens, it shattered the image of Eswatini as a peaceful and stable monarchy. Internationally, the uprising drew renewed attention to the kingdom’s democratic crisis.

A Nation at a Crossroads

Today, Eswatini stands at a historic crossroads. On one side remains a deeply entrenched absolute monarchy determined to preserve centralized authority. On the other stands a growing democratic movement driven largely by workers, students, youth, civic organizations, and political activists demanding accountability, dignity, and political participation.

The struggle in Eswatini is not simply about replacing one ruler with another. At its core, it concerns the fundamental question of whether citizens should possess the right to determine their political future, organize freely, criticize power without fear, and participate meaningfully in governance.

Despite censorship and repression, the voices calling for democratic transformation continue to grow louder. Yet many citizens remain trapped between fear and hope — fear of state violence and persecution, and hope that one day the country may transition toward a more democratic and socially just society.

Africa’s last absolute monarchy remains a kingdom marked by contradiction: immense royal authority alongside widespread suffering; cultural pride alongside political exclusion; silence enforced by fear, yet resistance sustained by generations unwilling to surrender the dream of freedom.

By Biljana Vankovska

These are difficult times for anyone who has consistently criticised NATO. From the era of ‘defending the Free World’ against communism, through the age of ‘humanitarian intervention’ and the ‘Global War on Terror,’ to today’s supposedly existential struggle against almost the entire non-Western world, the Alliance has repeatedly reinvented the narratives that justify its existence. The language changes; the underlying logic does not. NATO remains indispensable, and every new enemy (whether discovered, exaggerated, or actively produced) becomes further proof of its necessity.

For decades, critics coming from anti-militarist, anti-hegemonic or left perspectives had to work hard to deconstruct this mythology against the combined efforts of political elites, mainstream media, academic institutions and security experts. The intellectual task itself was never particularly difficult. The contradictions, hypocrisies and devastating consequences of NATO’s interventions have remained visible long after the bombs stopped falling. What required courage was speaking against the prevailing consensus.

Ironically, today the Alliance’s own leaders have become its most effective truth-tellers. Donald Trump has repeatedly stripped away the moral language that traditionally surrounded NATO. Mark Rutte, the Alliance’s Secretary General, has become equally candid, while Germany’s Chancellor and France’s President increasingly speak with remarkable openness about Europe’s military future. Yet the privilege of telling the truth about what NATO has become belongs only to those in power. As the repression of protest movements ahead of the Ankara summit demonstrates, citizens may know the truth about this military giant—but they are not expected to organise against it.

The Ankara Summit has not even begun, yet its conclusions are already known. The phrase ‘historic summit’ has become so overused that it has almost lost its meaning. Some observers expect the ‘Europeanisation’ of NATO, with European allies assuming greater responsibility for financing and leading the Alliance. But this remains largely rhetorical. Europe cannot replace the United States as the Alliance’s military backbone. It can, however, willingly tighten the noose around its own neck—and perhaps around the world’s. While Atlanticists remain preoccupied with the Washington-Brussels relationship and whether Trump truly intends to reduce America’s commitment, a more significant transformation is taking place within Europe itself. New military coalitions are emerging inside NATO. The Baltic states and Poland increasingly pursue their own security agenda, driven by historical grievances and profound Russophobia. Sweden and Finland, once symbols of neutrality, have rapidly embraced militarisation, with Helsinki now even permitting the deployment of nuclear weapons on its territory (American weapons, naturally, making these states ever more deeply integrated into Washington’s strategic architecture). Similar regional military configurations are quietly taking shape in the Balkans, where Croatia, Albania, Bulgaria and Kosovo increasingly speak of strengthening their own defence cooperation: NATO within NATO.

What truly distinguishes NATO 3.0, however, is not merely its willingness to name Russia and China explicitly as strategic adversaries or to proclaim its global ambitions. Rutte himself has explained that NATO is indispensable because it enables the United States to project power globally through Europe. Europe, in other words, functions as both a platform and force multiplier for American global strategy (as shown by the Epic Fury operation).

More revealing still is the language in which NATO now describes itself. Rutte proudly speaks of a ‘defence industrial revolution.’ The expression is revealing. Just as the First Industrial Revolution transformed production through factories and mechanisation, NATO 3.0 seeks to reorganise military production on an entirely new scale, not primarily for defence, but for permanent profitability. Behind the rhetoric of ‘collective security,’ ‘strategic autonomy,’ and ‘deterrence’ lies a far simpler reality: NATO increasingly functions as a mechanism for transferring unprecedented amounts of public money into private corporate hands.

Hence NATO 3.0 represents yet another mutation: an alliance whose principal historical mission increasingly appears to be the permanent militarisation of Western economies, and most probably, a new war with Russia.

The timing is remarkable. For decades, governments insisted that public finances required austerity. Hospitals, universities, pensions and social welfare supposedly had to accept painful budget discipline. Suddenly, none of these fiscal constraints apply to military expenditure. Deficits that were politically impossible for healthcare or education have become entirely acceptable for weapons procurement. Defence spending is no longer presented as a burden but as an investment strategy and an excellent possibility for job openings (they don’t mention the expanded graveyards that usually go along with warfare).

This raises further profound questions. If cloud computing, artificial intelligence, satellite communications and autonomous weapons are increasingly developed by private technology corporations, who ultimately controls national security? If governments become structurally dependent upon commercial providers, where does democratic accountability remain? When military procurement begins to resemble venture-capital investment, who actually benefits from permanent insecurity? These questions receive surprisingly little attention.

Instead, we hear only the language of emergency. Europe must rearm immediately. Industrial production must accelerate. Procurement rules must be simplified. Military investment cannot wait. Yet history teaches us that emergencies rarely remain temporary. Exceptional measures gradually become permanent forms of governance. Under conditions of continuous perceived threat, extraordinary military spending begins to appear normal, while demands for investment in education, healthcare or social justice suddenly become fiscally irresponsible.

Security colonises politics. What emerges before our eyes is a model in which war itself becomes increasingly privatised. Private defence contractors, technology firms, logistics companies and AI developers become indispensable actors within the military ecosystem. Even warfare itself becomes increasingly remote. Artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and digital infrastructures allow military operations to be outsourced, automated and commercialised in unprecedented ways. War does not necessarily require mass mobilisation; it requires investment portfolios.

For small member states that expected welfare instead of warfare, the implications are particularly sobering. Increasing defence budgets is presented as solidarity with the Alliance, but in reality, it often resembles compulsory participation in a vast military-industrial investment scheme. Citizens finance weapons they neither produce nor control, purchasing protection against threats that are frequently amplified by the very geopolitical logic that sustains the system.

NATO has never been merely a military alliance within the UN-based international order. It has always been an expression of the Western strategic worldview. Today it is becoming something even more complex: a system where security policy, industrial policy, technological power, and capital accumulation increasingly merge. The Ankara summit will not only discuss defence and deterrence; it will reveal how deeply the future of capitalism, technology and organised violence has become intertwined. It will be yet another chapter in the political economy of permanent mobilization for warfare.

The above article was produced by Globetrotter. Biljana Vankovska is a professor of political science and international relations at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, the president of Synergia Orbi: Institute for Global Analysis in Skopje, and the most influential public intellectual in Macedonia. She is a member of the No Cold War collective.

Last week, a set of important reforms to Cuba’s economic and social fabric were presented, debated and approved by the Communist Party of Cuba’s Central Committee and by the National Assembly of People’s Power, Cuba’s parliament, both in extraordinary sessions. All in all, it concerns a package of broad-ranging economic and social transformations, with 176 reforms across 23 sectors.

No Cold War is of the opinion that to know and understand the measures adopted, and the multiple reasons and motivations behind them, it is important to read the extensive closing speeches delivered at both extraordinary sessions by Miguel Díaz-Canel, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic of Cuba.

They make clear that the objective of the operation is “to change what needs to be changed” in an increasingly complex and challenging international situation, in order to concretely improve people’s lives, while safeguarding and strengthening Cuba’s socialist construction.

Miguel Díaz-Canel’s speech to the Extraordinary Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party can be downloaded (PDF) here.

Miguel Díaz-Canel’s speech to the Third Extraordinary Session of the National Assembly of People’s Power can be downloaded (PDF) here.

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¡Viva Cuba Libre! Long live Free Cuba!

¡Viva el heroico pueblo cubano! Long live the heroic Cuban people!

¡Viva la soberanía de la nación cubana! Long live the sovereignty of the Cuban nation!

¡Socialismo o Muerte! Socialism or Death!

¡Patria o Muerte! Homeland or Death!

¡Venceremos! We will win!

By Vijay Prashad

The Iran–US Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) emerged not from reconciliation, but from exhaustion and strategic failure by the United States and its allies. It was the product of a war that had reached its political limits. Washington and Tel Aviv presented their illegal war of aggression as a necessary response to Iran’s nuclear energy programme, missile capabilities, and regional alliances. Yet behind this language of security lay a broader objective: to weaken Iran decisively and restore a regional order centred on unquestioned US and Israeli dominance.

For more than two decades, successive US administrations had sought to contain Iran through sanctions, diplomatic isolation, covert operations, cyberwarfare, and targeted assassinations. The recent war represented the most intense expression of this strategy. The assumption in Washington and Tel Aviv was that overwhelming force would cripple Iran’s military infrastructure, fracture its state capacity, provoke internal instability, and perhaps open the way for political transformation.

That expectation was not fulfilled. Iran suffered extensive damage to military facilities, infrastructure, and economic assets. Civilian life was severely disrupted. But the Iranian state did not collapse. Its command structures continued to function, its armed forces retained retaliatory capacity, and its leadership preserved enough cohesion to withstand the assault. Despite the murder of several key  leaders of the Islamic Republic, it remains in authority and its legitimacy has in fact been strengthened.

Equally important, Iran demonstrated that it could impose costs beyond its own borders. Missile and drone attacks reached Israeli territory and threatened strategic infrastructure across the Gulf Arab states. The conflict imposed by the US and Israel ended up with disrupted shipping routes, raised insurance costs, unsettled energy markets, and reminded governments across the world that instability in the Gulf cannot be contained within the region.

As the war continued, the gap between military power and political achievement became increasingly visible. The United States and Israel possessed overwhelming military superiority, but they could not convert battlefield pressure into decisive political outcomes. Iran remained intact; regime change did not occur. The Axis of Resistance – from Iran to the Mediterranean Sea – was weakened but not eliminated. Continued escalation promised greater destruction, but not strategic victory. Due to this fact, the MoU is not a final peace treaty. It is a provisional framework designed to halt direct hostilities, reopen channels of negotiation, and prevent the conflict from spreading further.

Its first and most immediate provision is a temporary cessation of direct military operations. The framework establishes a 60-day period during which the parties are expected to negotiate the terms of a more durable settlement. This pause does not resolve the underlying conflict, but it creates space to prevent accidental escalation and reduce the immediate risk of a wider regional war.

Second, the MoU centres on the Strait of Hormuz. This is the agreement’s most economically significant feature. Roughly one-fifth of globally traded petroleum passes through this narrow waterway. During the war, threats to shipping demonstrated both Iran’s geographic leverage and the vulnerability of the global economy to instability in the Gulf. The MoU treats maritime deconfliction not as a technical matter, but as a central pillar of regional and global economic stability.

Third, the agreement establishes a process for negotiations over Iran’s nuclear energy programme. Crucially, it does not impose immediate dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Instead, it opens discussions on enrichment levels, inspection mechanisms, monitoring arrangements, and the possible return of international technical oversight. This marks a shift from coercion to bargaining: Iran is not being treated simply as a target, but as a state whose consent is required for any durable nuclear arrangement.

Fourth, the MoU includes discussions on sanctions relief, oil exports, and the possible release or mobilisation of Iranian financial assets. The details remain contested. But the principle is clear: economic strangulation did not produce surrender. A sustainable settlement will require some degree of economic accommodation.

Fifth, the agreement reportedly includes regional deconfliction mechanisms, particularly around Lebanon. This reflects the fact that the conflict was never only bilateral. Iran’s regional alliances, Israel’s military operations, US security commitments, and the fragile balance in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and the Gulf are all connected. Any agreement that ignores this regional architecture will remain unstable.

The most revealing aspect of the MoU is what it omits. It does not demand regime change, it does not require Iran to abandon its missile programme, and it does not force Tehran to withdraw entirely from regional political and security affairs. In short, the agreement recognises Iran as a regional power whose interests must be negotiated, not simply bombed away.

The MoU exposes important differences between the strategic priorities of the United States and Israel. For Israel, the war was an opportunity to reshape the regional balance of power. Israeli policymakers have long regarded Iran as the principal obstacle to their strategic ambitions in West Asia. The weakening of Hezbollah, the fragmentation of resistance networks, and the isolation of Tehran were seen as necessary steps toward a regional order more favourable to Israel. The United States shared some of these objectives but operated under broader constraints. Washington had to consider not only military outcomes, but also oil markets, global trade, Gulf allies, domestic political pressures, and the risk of wider international involvement. As the costs mounted, US calculations increasingly diverged from Israeli maximalism.

The result is an agreement that many in Israel are likely to regard as insufficient. The war did not eliminate Iran as a strategic actor. It did not produce regime change. It did not destroy Iran’s capacity to influence events beyond its borders. Most importantly, it ended not with capitulation, but with negotiation. This outcome reveals a deeper problem for Israeli strategy. Military superiority can inflict enormous damage, but it cannot by itself produce political legitimacy or regional acceptance. Israel can strike targets across West Asia, but it cannot determine the political future of societies beyond its borders through force alone.

For the United States, the MoU represents the recognition of another reality: military dominance no longer guarantees political obedience. This lesson has been learned repeatedly in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and now once again in relation to Iran.

The Gulf Arab monarchies are among the most important observers of this agreement. Throughout the conflict, Gulf governments were caught between competing pressures. They remain dependent on US security guarantees and have expanded overt or covert relations with Israel. At the same time, they understand that any regional war with Iran places their own economic and social stability at risk. The disruption of shipping routes and threats to regional infrastructure made this vulnerability unmistakable. The Gulf states possess immense wealth, but their economies depend on secure maritime trade, stable energy exports, foreign investment, and the confidence of global markets. A prolonged war endangers all of these.

The likely conclusion for Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and Oman is pragmatic rather than ideological. They will continue to work with Washington. Some will maintain or deepen relations with Israel. But they will also seek channels with Tehran and avoid becoming direct platforms for escalation. This trend was already visible before the war. The Saudi–Iranian rapprochement facilitated by China in 2023 reflected a growing recognition that regional stability cannot be achieved through permanent confrontation. The war has reinforced that conclusion. The Gulf monarchies have learned that neither Iran nor the United States is going away. Their future depends not on choosing one side permanently against the other, but on managing the contradictions between them while protecting their own interests.

Whether Iran has won depends on how victory is defined. If victory means avoiding destruction, Iran did not win. The country suffered severe economic losses, infrastructure damage, military degradation, and human costs. The burden of the war fell heavily on ordinary Iranians. But strategic outcomes are not measured only by damage suffered. They are also measured by political objectives achieved or prevented.

The central objective of the United States and Israel was not merely to damage Iran. It was to fundamentally weaken Iran as an independent regional actor. On that measure, the campaign fell short. Iran remains sovereign and the government of the Islamic Republic remains in power. Its military capabilities have been reduced but not eliminated. Its diplomatic relevance has been strengthened by the fact that negotiations now revolve around securing Iranian consent rather than imposing foreign dictates. In this sense, Iran achieved what many states facing overwhelming military pressure have sought throughout history: survival. Survival is not romantic. It is often costly, brutal, and incomplete. But in international politics, survival can be the most important measure of strategic success.

The larger significance of the war lies elsewhere. The conflict demonstrated once again that destruction is not the same as power. Military force can demolish infrastructure, kill combatants, and impose suffering. What it cannot always do is produce political transformation. The United States and Israel possessed vastly superior military capabilities, yet they could not secure the political outcome they desired. The Iran–US MoU is therefore not a story of decisive victory by either side. It is the story of a war that revealed the limits of coercion. Iran emerges battered but standing. The United States and Israel emerge powerful but unable to dictate terms. The Gulf states emerge more conscious of their vulnerability. The region enters a new phase in which negotiations, rather than battlefield victories, will determine the next chapter of West Asian politics. That is the deepest political meaning of the MoU: military power can destroy, but it cannot always rule.

The above article was produced by Globetrotter and No Cold War. Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. He is the author of forty books, including Washington Bullets, Red Star Over the Third World, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, and How the International Monetary Fund Suffocates Africa, written with Grieve Chelwa. He is the executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, the chief correspondent for Globetrotter, and the chief editor of LeftWord Books (New Delhi). He also appeared in the films Shadow World (2016) and Two Meetings (2017).

By Gisela Cernadas, David Vine and John Bellamy Foster

U.S. President Donald Trump has proposed a $1.5 trillion military budget for the fiscal year 2027, which would increase by 44 percent the acknowledged budget for 2026. While a roughly $500 billion increase would be unprecedented in modern U.S. history, the idea that the military budget only recently hit $1 trillion is incorrect. U.S. military spending has exceeded $1 trillion for many years. Adding $500 billion (and potentially $200 billion more to fund war in Iran), as the president has proposed, would take the total military budget up to $2 trillion to $3 trillion.

A new report from the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), written by David Vine, John Bellamy Foster and Gisela Cernadas, argues that this widely reported number dramatically understates the true cost of maintaining the U.S. military. Using five different methodologies, the report estimates that total military spending in 2025 was between $1.5 trillion and $1.8 trillion and could be as high as $2.3 trillion when interest payments associated with military-related debt are included. The report concludes that the United States has been spending well above $1 trillion on military activities for many years, contrary to the common perception that this threshold was only recently crossed.

According to the analysis conducted by the POGO, the Hartung/Smithberger methodology produces the highest base estimate at $1,766,172,000,000, followed by the Wheeler approach at $1,727,634,000,000 and the figure reported by USAspending.gov at $1,717,989,509,643. The Cernadas/Foster and National Priorities Project methodologies yield comparatively lower base estimates of $1,494,236,125,000 and $1,477,081,000,000, respectively. When interest is incorporated, the totals increase substantially, ranging from $1,713,283,160,060 under the National Priorities Project methodology to $2,284,383,842,468 under the Cernadas/Foster approach. It should be noted that the National Priorities Project figure focuses on discretionary spending and excludes mandatory forms of spending; were the latter included, this estimate would align far more closely with the others.

Whether intentionally or otherwise, Congress, presidents, and the Pentagon have hidden the true size of the U.S. military budget for decades. Journalists, think tank analysts, academics, and other experts have, with rare exceptions, perpetuated the problem by reporting only a portion of true military spending; most are unaware of the costs they’re overlooking.

The problem with most conventional reporting is that there are hundreds of billions of dollars in military spending outside the Pentagon’s annual budget appropriated by Congress. Even a generally authoritative source of global military spending data such as the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) underestimates U.S. spending by overlooking significant sums outside what Trump calls the Department of War and related budgets. 

One major example is nuclear weapons spending, which represented around $33.5 billion in net spending for FY 2025. Although nuclear forces are controlled and deployed by the U.S. military, a significant portion of the budget for maintaining and modernizing the nuclear arsenal is allocated through the Department of Energy rather than the Pentagon.

Another large category of hidden spending involves veterans and military retirees. The costs of pensions, health care, disability benefits, survivor assistance, and other long-term obligations are primarily funded through the Department of Veterans Affairs and other federal accounts. These expenditures are direct consequences of maintaining military forces and fighting wars, yet they are typically excluded from military budget calculations.

Beyond veterans’ benefits and nuclear weapons, military-related spending can also be found within the budgets of the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State, and several other agencies. Programs ranging from military aid to foreign governments to certain homeland security functions contribute to national military capacity but often fall outside official defence budget totals.

A major significant issue is debt financing. Since the wars launched after 11 September 2001, the United States has relied heavily on borrowing rather than taxation to finance military operations. For this reason, some refer to the post-2001 wars as ‘credit card wars’. While analysts disagree on how much of the national debt should be attributed to military activities, including these costs pushes 2025 military expenditures well above $2 trillion under some methodologies.

Despite differences in definitions and data sources used by the authors, all five methodologies arrive at a similar conclusion: the commonly cited military budget substantially underestimates what the United States actually spends on war, military forces, and related activities. This suggests that the issue is not a matter of partisan interpretation but rather the result of longstanding budget practices that disperse military costs across numerous federal agencies.

Understanding the true scale of military spending is essential for democratic accountability. Citizens cannot effectively debate national priorities if they are presented with incomplete information about how public funds are allocated. If major expenses associated with military activities are distributed across multiple departments, the public may struggle to compare military expenditures with spending on other priorities such as education, housing, infrastructure, health care, or climate resilience.

If the United States is already spending between $1.7 trillion and $2.3 trillion annually on military-related activities, proposals for additional increases should be evaluated against that broader fiscal reality rather than against the narrower Pentagon budget alone.

Unfortunately, there remains ambiguity about the full scale of military spending given the poor state of Pentagon accounting practices, including its inability to pass a financial audit. Members of the public and members of Congress need a full accounting of the military budget to analyse, discuss, and debate the proper size of military spending both on its own and in relation to other non-military funding priorities.

To provide accurate spending figures, Congress should reform its budgeting practices and provide a true total military budget that combines all forms of military and war spending in one place and one true total figure. Congress also should stop appropriating, and thus hiding, money for the military in other agencies’ budgets. Until Congress begins reporting accurate numbers, members of the media and other analysts should stop repeating incomplete congressional spending data and tell the public what the country is really spending on the military and war.

The above article was produced by Globetrotter and No Cold War. Gisela Cernadas is an economist at the Centre of Economic Development Studies, National University of San Martin, Argentina, and a Member of the No Cold War collective. David Vine is a fellow at the Transition Security Project and former professor of anthropology at American University. John Bellamy Foster is an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Oregon.