Category: Uncategorized

By Vijay Prashad

Dear friends and colleagues,

The United States and Israel launched a war of aggression against Iran in February of this year. For six months, US missiles and bombs have fallen upon civilian and military targets inside the country. Hospitals, schools, energy facilities, and neighbourhoods have been struck. The 168 schoolgirls killed in Minab have become the terrible symbol of this war. Iranians have been forced to live under the constant expectation of another attack, while Iranian families outside the country endure the peculiar agony of watching the destruction from afar. This follows on three years of Israeli genocide in Gaza, which has been carried out due to the relentless military support of the United States.

Iran did not begin this war. The United States and Israel did. Iran is resisting an armed attack upon its territory and its people. That elementary fact must determine the timing, language, and political responsibilities of anyone who writes about Iran at this moment.

It is in this context that I read your open letter to Iran’s political prisoners.

Among you are former political prisoners (such as Angela Davis) and a current political prisoner (Mumia Abu-Jamal). I have stood in agreement with many of you on most of the great questions of our time. Of course, there are elements of your letter with which I agree, but I feel that this letter at this time plays a politically damaging role. Just when the United States and Israel are on the back foot, this letter can provide the kind of political confusion that mystifies the actual political dynamic on the ground: Iran has the strategic advantage, having transformed the US-Israeli question (should Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons) into an Iranian question (should Iran allow commerce through its territorial waters unimpeded). That provides the background of the Left’s moral clarity, the war of aggression that has failed and that has put Iran as well as its neighbours into a discussion about regional security rather than imperial security.

But this letter, from the Global North, provides the kind of ideological cover that the US loves: if the US has lost, then let all sides lose and let all sides be at fault.

The central image, two blades of a scissors, is evocative but erroneous. It suggests that one of the blades is the Islamic Republic and the other blade is the United States and Israel, with the Iranian people being cut by the two of them. The error of the scissors is not merely that its blades are unequal. It is that the image makes the aggressor and the attacked appear as parallel sources of the same danger, stripping away the history and hierarchy that connect them. US imperialism is not simply one oppression alongside another. It is the force that has encircled Iran, devastated the region, armed Israel, imposed sanctions upon an entire population, and now brought war to Iranian territory. Your letter places the aggression and its target in the same moral frame.

The United States maintains over 900 hundred military installations outside its borders, imposes sanctions upon entire populations, finances and arms Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and has destroyed or destabilised country after country. Iran, whatever criticisms one might make of its political system, has never launched wars of aggression. The state born from the 1979 Revolution has not launched wars of conquest, but it has instead endured invasion from Iraq at the behest of the West, encirclement, sanctions, sabotage, assassinations, and now direct attack. The two blades are not equivalent. One is the blade of imperialist war. The other, whatever its internal contradictions, is the state and society being cut.

Hollowness

The open letter argues that there is a ‘false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism’. I was interested in the use of the adjective ‘hollow’.

First, Iran’s actual defence of itself. The assassination of Commander Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad, Iraq in 2020 marked a decisive stage in the escalation that culminated in the February 2026 illegal attack on Iran. Soleimani was the architect of Iran’s forward strategy, namely, to build a defensive shield through pro-Iranian armed groups that would attack Israel and US military positions from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Palestine, and other countries. From 2020, the US and Israel systematically went after that network by trying to destroy Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansar Allah, and end the use of Damascus as a base for many of these groups as well as Syria and Iraq as a logistical lifeline from Iran. Having weakened this shield, the US and Israel felt emboldened to attack Iran. But they did not calculate that Iran has built a mechanism to hit the US bases in the Gulf Arab states and that Iran would restrict access to the Strait of Hormuz.

The use of these mechanisms by Iran put it at a strategic advantage over the United States and Israel (the latter which has subsequently receded from the foreground of this war). Iran’s anti-imperialism has not been ‘hollow’ at all but has in fact enabled the Iranian people to protect their country from an imperialist take-over. This is a significant feat that is being celebrated across the formerly colonised world as one of the most consequential strategic reversals suffered by the United States since its defeat in Vietnam in 1975 (the withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq are of a different character than this strategic upper hand by Iran).

Second, in 1979, the Iranian revolutionaries chanted, Today Iran, tomorrow Palestine. Indeed, despite the crackdown on the Left within Iran in the immediate aftermath of the revolution and with the formation of the Islamic Republic, the commitment to Palestine remained firm. Iran has never even hinted at normalisation with Israel and indeed has been forthright in its defence of the Palestinian cause. No other country in the region has been as committed to the Palestinian freedom movement, and none has paid so high a price for that commitment.

Why have the United States and Israel been obsessed with Iran since 1979? Not because of any question of democracy (Iran has an electoral political system, although one shaped by the Guardian Council and limitations on political participation – just as the democratic claims of the United States are constrained by oligarchic power, racial exclusion, and the domination of money). Not even because of any nuclear threat (the International Atomic Energy Agency has not established that Iran possesses an active nuclear-weapons programme, while Iran’s leadership has repeatedly declared nuclear weapons religiously prohibited).

The reason they hate Iran is because it is defiant, and its defiance includes its position for the Palestinian cause.

One can have any view on Iran, of course, but to call its anti-imperialism ‘hollow’ at this moment is inaccurate.

The US must retreat

The open letter closes with two demands: first that the Iranian state must ‘stop their inhumane practice of death and incarceration now’. Common opposition to the death penalty, which I share, does not place the United States and Iran in the same historical or political position, nor does it justify subordinating the immediate demand that the aggressor end its war to a general indictment of the country under attack. During this period of the US illegal war on Iran, the United States put nineteen people to death by lethal injection, but the letter says nothing about that (nor about the genocidal treatment of Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli versions of Guantanamo – such as Sde Teiman, about which Wesam Afifa has written so movingly; the only statement is to say that Iran uses ‘the same logic of domination’ as Israel, which is a very strange formulation). One can oppose the death penalty. One can demand due process and humane treatment for prisoners. One can listen carefully to Iranian workers, women, minorities, and political activists. But internal criticism cannot be detached from the concrete conditions in which it is made.

The second demand of the open letter is that the US and Israel ‘must end their barbaric wars and brutal sanctions that knowingly devastate our communities’. We are in total agreement here. But the letter is not addressed to the United States but to Iranian prisoners. That is another curiosity of its formulation. The signatories are mainly US nationals. Why not write to their own government? The letter devotes most of its analytical energy to constructing a common carceral logic, while the demand directed against the imperialist aggressors is compressed into its final sentence. The formal condemnation of the war does not undo the political architecture of the letter, which gives parallel status to the US-Israel war of aggression and the Iranian prison system.

Frantz Fanon taught us that anti-colonial struggles do not unfold under conditions of their own choosing. States placed under permanent threat of invasion, sabotage and regime change develop profound internal contradictions, including security institutions that can turn coercion against their own people. You ask ‘global civil society and anti-imperialist activists and organisations’ to ‘put pressure on the Islamic Republic by challenging its narrative’. That is, in sum, asking the people of the world to take a position that would weaken Iran now when it is standing tall against the war of aggression. There is a time to make a demand and there is a time to act in solidarity. This is the time of solidarity with Iran, and not a time to make a claim that advantages the aggressor imperialists.

Dear friends, neutrality or a third space does not exist in the midst of a war of aggression. Would we write such a letter to the Vietnamese government in Hanoi during the US war of aggression, or to the Cuban government which is now facing a terrible strangulation by the United States? Why direct this intervention against Iran at this moment? Why challenge Iran just when it has the United States and Israel on the back foot? Is it necessary to ask Iran to become perfect before you defend its right to survive?

At this hour, solidarity begins with a clear demand: the United States and Israel must end their illegal war, and they must retreat.

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 Bert De Belder

To mark the 100th anniversary of Fidel Castro’s birth and express our solidarity with Cuba’s battle against the strengthened commercial, financial and energy blockade, I was in Havana to participate in the International Colloquium “Fidel: Legacy and Future” —along with 1,500 other participants from over 63 countries – including 500 Cuban scholars, intellectuals, artists and students.

Fidel Castro was honored as an architect of the struggle for liberation against colonial occupation, exploitation and oppression of the Global South. And for his vision that led to groundbreaking social programs in the areas of education, healthcare and housing, making Cuba—despite a criminal blockade—a beacon of social justice.

At the Colloquium, we heard the vivid and moving voices of former and current government officials and diplomats from all over the world about Fidel’s vision and its translation into concrete achievements that changed people’s lives. Shows of great respect, gratitude and strong solidarity came from trade unions (including from France (CGT), Italy (CGIL), Australia or Canada), freshly graduated medical doctors at Cuba’s international medical school ELAM, organizations of women, youth and indigenous peoples from every corner of the globe, with large delegations from Latin America (including Brazil’s Movement of the Landless MST), from Africa and from Asia, particularly from the socialist countries Vietnam, Laos and China.

For more than 60 years, Washington has sought to strangle Cuba with an economic, financial, and commercial blockade that is nothing less than economic warfare. This blockade denies the Cuban people access to food, medicine, fuel, and essential technologies—a collective punishment condemned by the international community for mocking international and humanitarian law. Worse, today, this blockade is taking on genocidal proportions with the US military siege and threats of outright intervention by the authoritarian war cabinet of Donald Trump and Marco Rubio.

In the face of this, we saw a determined Cuban people, government and Communist Party. The leaders of party and government were present all throughout the debates, conferences and workshops, listening to, discussing with and thanking the audience with great openness and modesty – but also with great determination, unity and mobilization to fight the blockade and “beat the beast”, to resist and to win the battle against US imperialism.

The closing session took place at the famous Karl Marx Theater in the city center, and was a special gift – not to the internationals, but to the common people from Havana, with many workers and families from the neighborhood in attendance – including the95-year old Raúl Castro. The entire evening was a musical, in which the Pioneers (Cuba’s children’s organization) asked the older generations of academics, scientists, sportsmen and women and artists how they should build the future under the new and challenging conditions. Through songs, interviews, stand-up comedy, and a lot of interaction with the excited audience, who spontaneously sang along to the Silvio Rodríguez songs.

Moving about in our tricycles, we chatted with ordinary Cubans in Havana’s streets, among the fishermen at the world-famous Malecón seafront boulevard, or at the marketplace. They all differed in their opinions of what was worst about Cuba’s dire situation, and on its causes. But no one blamed Fidel – their all-time hero, with most would agreeing that the US blockade has to end.

Cuba’s leadership at all levels lent their ear to the people’s grievances and expectations. They mingled with the workers, the street vendors, the agricultural workers, the youth. They assisted local authorities and mass organizations to find solutions – albeit temporary and ultimately insufficient. Government ministers and party cadre are sent to far-flung provinces to coach local authorities. No, the government and party leaders are certainly not confined to a ‘bubble’ in isolation from their people’s daily reality, they have a hands-on approach to help, to fight, and to win.

They appealed to all present the formation of the largest possible unity to defend Cuba’s – and the world’s – right to defend and build their own homeland and culture, independence, sovereign path of development, and socialism. In the words of Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel, Cuba’s fight is about defending humanity as a whole. I came back from Cuba with greater rage against the murderous US imperialist, in its Trumpian form, asphyxiation of Cuba. Yet, I was also injected with hope and optimism that Fidel’s legacy is not bygone, but is here to stay, in Cuba and beyond, for today and tomorrow.

By Vijay Prashad

The gravest danger in the present war is not that Iran has already decided to manufacture a nuclear weapon. There is no verified evidence of such a decision. The danger is that another major US escalation could convince Tehran that remaining a non-nuclear state inside the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) no longer provides protection, recognition, or even the elementary security that the treaty was supposed to guarantee. Washington may therefore produce precisely the outcome that it claims to be trying to prevent.

Iran is approaching its NPT red line. Withdrawal from the treaty is no longer discussed merely as rhetorical retaliation. Iranian institutions, including parliament, have examined it as a practical response to attacks upon safeguarded nuclear facilities, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s failure to condemn those attacks, and the suspicion that information gathered through inspections has found its way into US and Israeli targeting processes. In late March 2026, a triple-urgency bill proposing Iran’s withdrawal from the NPT was uploaded to the Iranian parliament’s legislative system, although it had not yet been debated or adopted.

The NPT permits withdrawal when a state concludes that ‘extraordinary events’ have jeopardised its supreme interests. Iran can plausibly argue that the bombing of its nuclear facilities by nuclear-armed states constitutes precisely such an event. Iranian officials who advocate withdrawal have stressed that such a step would not necessarily signal a decision to manufacture a bomb. Alaeddin Boroujderdi, a member of parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, argued in March 2026 that Iran should leave the NPT while insisting, ‘We are not seeking a nuclear bomb’. Such a move would, however, terminate or radically reduce the inspection system through which the IAEA monitors Iran’s nuclear material. That distinction is legally significant but strategically thin. Once Iran has left the treaty, restricted inspectors and increased enrichment, other governments will necessarily assume that it is preparing a weapon.

Reporting by Transition Protocol shows that Iran has decided to move its uranium stockpile to 90-percent enrichment. Iran had accumulated roughly 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent before inspectors lost the ability to establish the location and condition of the entire stock. Uranium enriched to 60 percent is already far beyond the level ordinarily required for civilian power generation, although it is not in itself a nuclear weapon. Enriching this material to approximately 90 percent would bring it into the range conventionally described as weapons-grade.

Conversations with people in Iran have revealed that Iranian authorities have instructed the nuclear establishment to prepare to process much of this material towards 90 percent if the United States escalates again. Enriching uranium, converting it into suitable form, constructing an explosive device and developing a deliverable weapon are related but distinct stages. Nevertheless, if the intelligence is accurate, the direction is unmistakable. Another major US attack could cause Iran to leave the NPT, enrich uranium to weapons grade, and move to threshold deterrence. Tehran might then assemble a device without testing it, or it might conduct an underground or demonstrative detonation to remove any doubt that it had crossed the threshold. Such a detonation would constitute an entirely new stage in the history of West Asia. But it would be the consequence of an existential war, not evidence that Iran had always secretly intended to reach this point.

Korea vs. Libya

The choice Iranian strategists confront is increasingly described through two precedents: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Libya.

Libya surrendered its embryonic nuclear and missile programmes in 2003. It transferred equipment and documents to the United States, accepted intrusive inspections, and sought normal relations with the West. Washington and London presented Muammar Gaddafi’s decision as proof that disarmament would produce security and international rehabilitation. Eight years later, NATO used a United Nations resolution ostensibly intended to protect civilians to conduct a war for regime change. The Libyan state was destroyed, and Gaddafi was captured and killed.

The DPRK followed the opposite course. It withdrew from the NPT in 2003, tested a nuclear device in 2006, and gradually developed a survivable nuclear and missile capability. North Korea has endured sanctions, isolation, military exercises and repeated threats. Yet no US government has attempted a full-scale invasion or regime-change war against it. Washington negotiates with Pyongyang under conditions fundamentally different from those it imposed upon Baghdad, Tripoli, or Tehran because the consequences of attacking the DPRK cannot be confidently controlled.

The lesson drawn in Tehran, Pyongyang, and elsewhere is devastatingly simple: Gaddafi relinquished his deterrent, opened his country and received no durable guarantee against Western attack. His compliance removed an obstacle to regime change rather than ensuring Libya’s sovereignty. This is not an endorsement of nuclear proliferation. Nuclear weapons are instruments of mass destruction, and their abolition remains a human necessity. It is an explanation of the strategic calculation produced by Western conduct. The nuclear powers have failed to fulfil the NPT’s disarmament bargain, protected Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal, attacked non-nuclear states, and demanded that selected adversaries remain permanently vulnerable. They have turned nuclear possession into the most credible insurance policy against forcible overthrow.

Iran has so far resisted this logic. Its official position remains that nuclear weapons are religiously prohibited, militarily unnecessary, and incompatible with its declared doctrine. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi reiterated after earlier attacks that Iran had not abandoned this policy and continued to regard the production, stockpiling and use of weapons of mass destruction as inhuman and un-Islamic. He also explained that Iran raised enrichment to 60 percent to demonstrate that threats and pressure would not compel capitulation. Yet doctrines are not immune to changes in material circumstances. If a state is repeatedly attacked while observing a prohibition, and if its attackers openly discuss destroying its government (even with nuclear weapons), its leaders will inevitably reconsider whether moral restraint has become strategic exposure. The debate within Iran has already moved from whether nuclear weapons are desirable to whether nuclear latency may become indispensable for national survival.

Should Iran cross the threshold, it would almost certainly present the decision as the construction of a shield, not preparation for an offensive war. Iran has repeatedly said that it does not seek territorial conquest, nuclear coercion, or attacks upon neighbouring peoples. Its immediate purpose would be to convince Washington and Tel Aviv that no campaign to destroy the Iranian state could proceed without unacceptable consequences.

A deterrent, however, cannot be made entirely safe by declaring it defensive. Other governments cannot know future intentions with certainty. An Iranian weapon could stimulate nuclear hedging by Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Egypt or others. Israel might attempt a preventive attack before Iran completes weaponisation. The transition period – between enrichment to 90 percent and establishment of a credible deterrent – would be particularly dangerous. Miscalculation could produce the catastrophe that all parties claim to oppose.

That is why the decisive responsibility now lies with the states choosing whether to escalate. If the United States attacks again, intensifies an economic siege designed to break the Iranian state, or makes negotiations indistinguishable from an ultimatum, it will strengthen those in Tehran who argue that the Libyan road ends in death and only the DPRK road guarantees survival.

Iran appears to be preparing to endure rather than capitulate. It is hardening its command arrangements, preserving missile and drone capacity, and organising for a prolonged economic war. Tehran’s wager is that it can absorb immense pressure until the US coalition confronts mounting military costs, commercial disruption, and political disagreement (particularly after the US mid-term elections in November). The nuclear question now sits inside that wider strategy of survival.

The choice is therefore stark. Washington can accept a verifiable agreement that recognises Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear technology, guarantees non-aggression, and restores credible inspection. Or it can continue a war that destroys the remaining constituency for restraint inside Iran. If it chooses escalation, it should not pretend to be surprised when Iran concludes that treaties provide no shield, inspections bring no safety, and only possession of the ultimate weapon prevents another Libya.

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 Vijay Prashad

Iraq’s government and people are caught in the crossfire. Their country is formally committed to keeping out of the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran, but its airspace has been violated during the war. Iraq between Iran, the Gulf monarchies, Türkiye and the main US military network in West Asia as well as US military bases in Erbil (in Iraq’s north). On 7 August, two of Iraq’s neighbours – Saudi Arabia and Türkiye – signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement with Pakistan that declares an armed attack on one signatory to be an attack on all and provides for closer defence planning and integrated capabilities. Iraq did not participate in this agreement nor was it mentioned by any of the high officials of the three participants as a potential member (although Egypt was mentioned). Silence on Iraq protects it from the pressures faced by its government, its resistance organisations, and the various social classes from the war.

The Mecca Agreement is not aimed at any state, as Türkiye’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said it targets no one and is open to countries that seek regional stability. Last year, Erdoğan signed an agreement with Iraq on a range of issues, including defense cooperation, and recently, the Saudi foreign minister Khalid bin Salman met with a senior Iraqi military official, First Lieutenant General Staff Abdul Amir Al-Shammari. Iraq is not isolated from this process but is in dialogue with all the major parties as it shepherds the departure of the US from most of its territory this year. Indeed, that withdrawal will be part of the formation of a new security architecture (rooted in the Mecca Agreement) that is designed for a post-US regional landscape. During talks between Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi and Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei it was clarified that the agreement is not designed against Iran but for precisely this near future. Amer al-Fayez, chair of the Iraqi parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee, has stressed precisely this point that the agreement does belong to the three states that negotiated it, but that does not mean Iraq will not be part of this post-US scenario.

Balance

Since the illegal US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the country’s political class has struggled to maintain a balance between its political and social proximity to Iran and its occupation by the United States. Since the premiership of Ibrahim al-Jaafari in 2005, the prime ministers of Iraq have been largely pro-Iranian (with the exception of Mustafa al-Kadhimi from 2020 to 2022); the new leader, Ali al-Zaidi, took a large delegation to Washington and then Tehran in July 2026, but whose overtures for peace went nowhere. There are indispensable relations between Iran and Iraq, although the country maintains close military and financial ties with the United States and growing connections with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states.

But neutrality can be a policy only when the state possesses the capacity to enforce it. The United States’ 2003 invasion destroyed the old state apparatus; the 2014 collapse before ISIS deepened dependence on external assistance and popular mobilisation. Today the legacy of occupation is visible in a political order where sovereignty is continually negotiated among Washington, Tehran, Ankara, Gulf capitals and domestic forces. Iraq’s exclusion from integrated air defence and intelligence arrangements may preserve diplomatic flexibility, but it also leaves the country more exposed to violations by every side. Iraq’s air-defence weakness, divided institutions, and multiplicity of armed commands reduce its freedom of action.

Resistance

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq is not a single army, but an umbrella for organisations with different chains of command, political relationships, and degrees of incorporation into the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF). The PMF is formally part of Iraq’s security system. Among the most influential organisations in the PMF are the Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba, and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada (whose leaders, respectively, Ahmad al-Hamidawi, Akram al-Kaabi, and Abu Alaa al-Walai, are designated by the US as terrorists). These groups command tens of thousands of fighters and their arsenal includes short- and medium-range rockets, attack and reconnaissance drones, artillery, anti-armour weapons and logistical networks extending toward the Syrian border.  Thus far, these organisations have been largely quiet.

However, statements from these groups over the past months indicate that if Washington expands its assault on Iran, then they will attack US bases and interests in Iraq and in the region. Al-Nujaba figures described the confrontation with the US presence as continuing so long as foreign troops remain on Iraqi soil. Over the past months, the US and Saudis have struck PMF sites. Consequentially, the PMF has decentralised command and created mobile launch capacity. By all accounts, these groups are prepared to strike the US targets within Iraq and to create disruption near the Syrian border if called upon. An April 2026 mass rally in Baghdad shows the public sentiment that favours the views of the PMF.

There is an ongoing debate inside Iraq over the disarmament of these factions, which are legally part of the army. Some of the factions are open to dialogue, while others argue that they will continue to hold their ‘resistance arms’. Those who are interested in dialogue argue that they will only dissolve themselves into the armed forces if the United States withdraws its troops and if Iraq acquires effective air defences. The government’s September 30 timetable (both for the end of the US presence in Iraq and for advancing state control of weapons) has therefore become the hinge of the crisis. A delayed withdrawal would strengthen the factions’ argument for retaining arms and a coercive disarmament drive during a regional war could provoke internal confrontation. There is no appetite in Iraq for the dismantlement of these groups, which emerged out of the fight against the US occupation and have a genuine social base in Iraq (they cannot, therefore, be disparaged as ‘Iranian proxies’).

Options

Conversations with Iraqi officials makes it clear that the government wants to mediate between Washington and Tehran and would prefer not to be drawn into the conflict. The government of al-Zaidi has made it clear that it would not like to see the PMF attack US targets in Iraq or to use Iraqi territory to strike US positions in the Gulf Arab states. The threshold of action by the PMF, however, will not be determined by al-Zaidi’s government but by the scale of US escalation against Iran, attacks on Iraqi forces, and whether the foreign-troop withdrawal proceeds. Once that threshold is crossed, US bases and interests would be the most probable targets, followed by a cycle of retaliation inside Iraq.

Almost 90% of state revenue comes from oil exports, which pass through the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Exports of Iraqi oil fell from 3.5 million barrels a day before the conflict to about 200,000 barrels a day in early August. Some tanker movement has resumed, but as of 17 August, passage remains constrained and below normal levels. Iraq had arranged the export of 750,000 barrels of oil per day through the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline through Türkiye, but this is far below what the state and society require. Airspace closure, restricted shipping, storage bottlenecks and interrupted imports threaten salaries, pensions, and welfare payments. On 5 August, hundreds of public employees demonstrated across six of Iraq’s nineteen provinces (from Baghdad to Basra to Babil). University and schoolteachers have begun small-scale agitations, with the threat that these protests could become ‘an open civil sit-in and a work stoppage’.

Clarity is not on the cards for Baghdad. There are far too many commitments across the social classes, with the workers eager for an end to this conflict so that they can get paid, and yet for the citizenry eager for their state not to once more bend to the wishes of the United States. Debates are active on social media and in the bazaars, where these different viewpoints are not necessarily rooted in sectarian or political affiliations. The country that was made a battlefield by the illegal US invasion in 2003 has a strong reason to refuse another imperialist war on its border and to be dragged into that war against is wishes. The immediate danger comes from the US-Israeli widening of the war, which would provoke the PMF to attack US bases in Iraq. But, if the US keeps to the 30 September deadline and removes these bases, then Iraq’s territory will be less of a target and Iraq’s political debates can advance beyond the question of the US withdrawal (which has been the core issue for the past twenty years).

By Dae-Han Song

Trump offered to scale down the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise (carried out annually by the US Forces in Korea (USFK) and Republic of Korea (ROK) military). In Trumpian style, the decision was framed as everything all at once: punishment against South Korea for its tepid response on Iran; and as a conciliatory gesture to North Korea. And, the decision, in Trumpian fashion, fell flat on its face. Rather than feeling the pressure, the Lee Administration embraced the decision. Rather than embracing the decision as a conciliatory gesture, North Korea rejected it. So, what happened?

First of all, it’s important to note that Lee’s Democratic Party has always attempted to improve inter-Korean relations. Reducing the scale of USFK-ROK military exercises was always one way to achieve this. If Korean Democratic Party administrations don’t explicitly ask for a scaling down from the US, it is for fear of raising eyebrows in the US and triggering backlash among South Korea’s conservatives. From Lee’s perspective, Trump reducing the scale of the military exercises is not a punishment. It’s a gift.

Why has North Korea rejected this gesture as insufficient? Well, first of all, the haphazard, last minute (the day before) aspect of the decision marks it more as a tacked on after thought rather than a well placed gesture. Nonetheless, in the past North Korea embraced such small gestures.

This is because military exercises have a social impact on North Korea. A simple hypothetical elucidates this point. If China together with Canada conducted military exercises with tens of thousands of soldiers using live ammunition and simulating decapitation tactics against the White House, it’s hard to imagine the US going about its day dismissing the military exercises as a routine measure to freshen up military readiness. After all, as the Center for Strategic and International Studies notes: an actual attack could start off masked as an exercise.

If the US would feel threatened in such a scenario, then North Korea feels the very real threat exponentially more. Not only does the United States have the strongest military in the world, South Korea’s military budget is 27 times greater. Furthermore, North Korea still remembers the utter destruction the US inflicted upon it. US planes dropped more bombs during the Korean war—overwhelmingly in North Korea—than in all of the Pacific Theater combined. By 1952, there were no targets for US planes to bomb.

And while the Ulchi Freedom Shield and the Freedom Shield exercises are the biggest, military exercises against North Korea are carried all year round. The largest of these exercises put North Korea into maximum alert bringing its society to a halt. This is because North Korea’s military isn’t simply for defense, they are also employed in construction and in industry. Furthermore, counter-measures have to be mobilized, expending even more of its energy and resources.

So, if it accepted these gestures in the past, why did North Korea reject it this time? This can partly be explained by the dramatic improvement in North Korea’s geopolitical and economic position in the region. As the US-led San Francisco System of regional bilateral alliances and NATO are fracturing the world into competing blocs, North Korea consolidated a “blood alliance” with Russia by sending North Korean troops to Russia. As a result, the once crippling US sanctions can no longer isolate and pressure North Korea. In other words, as North Korea aligns with China and Russia, the US leverage and pressure against it decreases. In fact, North Korea’s economy is booming.

Faced with his disastrous war in Iran, Trump is trying to win some PR points before the US November election. In the long-run, he wants to pull North Korea away from China’s camp. Yet, there is little reason for North Korea to break with these relations in exchange for promises that the US might never carry out, as history overwhelmingly shows, including Trump pulling out of negotiations with Kim Jong-un at the last minute in 2019. Furthermore, nothing guarantees that an agreement will be approved by Congress. And, even as it does, that it could survive a post-Trump Administration. The US Democrats are already showing themselves to be worse hawks against North Korea than the Trump administration.

Ultimately, none of this rules out the possibility of Trump and Kim meeting or even of coming to some sort of agreement. North Korea is a fiercely independent country that refuses to be beholden to any country. Thus, it does not want its national sovereignty dependent on any other country, even if it is Russia or China. Thus, meaningful relations with the US would allow it greater independence.

The scaling down of the USFK and ROK military exercises should be welcomed. Yet, on its own, it is simply not enough against the US history of broken promises and against the US drumming for war in the region. Ultimately, peace in Korea will have to depend on peace in the region. Peace in the region can only be achieved by dismantling the US San Francisco System of bilateral military alliances.

The above article was produced by Globetrotter. Dae-Han Song is a part of the International Strategy Center and the No Cold War collective and is an associate at the Korea Policy Institute.

By Vijay Prashad

In August, right-wing billionaire Abelardo de la Espriella took office as Colombia’s president and vowed to move an agenda of the far right even though he won by less than a percentage point over the left-wing candidate Iván Cepeda. It is characteristic of the far right of a special type to adopt any mandate and pretend that they have the authority to transform their society into their toxic swamp. Of the twenty states generally thought of as being part of Latin America, eleven now have governments of the far right: Argentina (Javier Milei since 2023), Bolivia (Rodrigo Paz since 2025), Chile (José Antonio Kast since 2026), Colombia (de la Espriella since 2026), Costa Rica (Laura Fernández since 2026), Ecuador (Daniel Noboa since 2023), El Salvador (Nayib Bukele since 2019), Honduras (Nasry Asfura since 2026), Panama (José Raúl Mulino since 2024), Paraguay (Santiago Peña since 2023), and Peru (Keiko Fujimori since 2026).

Most of these leaders are not from the old conservative circle but are part of a new generation (Noboa is the youngest of the group, born in 1987) with an average age of 52. These are men and women who represent the old oligarchies of Latin America, the old families with deep colonial roots and with vast properties, but these leaders do not have an aristocratic sensibility or come from the established conservative political parties. They are libertarian in nature with naked fealties to the United States and its agenda. They fashion themselves as patriots, but patriotism is cast aside for absolute loyalty to Washington and its corporations.

Shoot to Kill

The far right emerges out of a long tradition of the oligarchy’s lawless violence, which dates to the genocide against the indigenous through to the military dictatorships of the Operation Condor era. Impunity for violence has been the hallmark of this class and its political representatives, and so the current far right is nothing if not authentic to its class and its forebearers. Laura Fernández was born in 1986 the year before Costa Rica’s president Óscar Arias won the Nobel Prize for Peace for his work in conflict resolution in Central America (Costa Rica rid itself of its military in its 1949 Constitution). At her inauguration in May 2026 Fernández said that she would have an ‘iron-fist response’ to crime and that her ‘hand will not tremble’. After Gustavo Petro’s attempts to bring peaceful resolutions to conflicts in Colombia, de la Espriella came to office with the view that ‘criminals can take bullets too’, suggesting a return to the state of war.

Nayib Bukele’s tough-guy approach to crime has profoundly influenced Latin America’s far right, turning El Salvador’s mass arrests, military deployments, emergency rule, and meg prisons into a regional political model. Leaders and candidates from Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, Chile, and elsewhere increasingly present crime as a war requiring exceptional state power rather than conventional policing and social policy. Bukele’s popularity has helped normalise promises of militarised streets, harsher sentences, expanded prisons, and weaker procedural protections. Although critics document arbitrary detention and human rights abuses, admirers portray his methods as proof that decisive, authoritarian leadership can restore order where democratic institutions appear ineffective. Thus far, the far right of a special type has portrayed its illiberal approach to criminality, in fact to the neighbourhoods of the poor, as the only effective solution to the narco-mafias and petty criminals of the barrios.

Reversal of Social Gains

Across Latin America, the Angry Tide is attempting to reverse feminist gains by restricting abortion and contraception, dismantling institutions addressing gender violence, attacking sex education, and portraying feminism as a threat to the traditional family. In Argentina, Javier Milei’s government closed the Ministry of Women, stopped distributing abortion medication nationally, and cut contraceptive and teenage-pregnancy programs, thereby leaving formal rights increasingly inaccessible, particularly to poor and working-class women.

In Chile, far-right legislators have proposed forcing women to hear the foetal heartbeat before obtaining one of the country’s narrowly permitted abortions, while several new bills would punish allegedly ‘false’ accusations involving rape, sexual abuse, and domestic violence. These proposals could allow an accused person to pursue a complainant after a case is dismissed and therefore intimidate survivors; in class terms, this threat falls hardest on working-class, rural, migrant, and Indigenous women who lack lawyers, money, and institutional protection, strengthening patriarchal control while making access to justice more dangerous.

Blindness to Genocide

The far right not only sees lawless violence as its currency today, but it routinely celebrates the history of the conquistadors against the native peoples of the Americas as well as the entire panoply of Western civilisation (as Milei did in his speech at Davos in 2024). Blindness to genocide is the habit of the far right, which is why it has absolutely no compunction about close relations with the United States and its policy to seek the subordination of the entire hemisphere of the Americas to Washington’s interest. When Washington says that the road to close ties with itself must go through Tel Aviv, the governments of the far right hasten to forge close relations with Israel – despite the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians.

In June 2025, Argentina’s Ambassador to Israel, Rabbi Shimon Axel Wahnish, announced something called the Isaac Accords, which are designed to bring Latin American countries into a close relationship with Israel. The announcement came nearly two years into the genocide, although the actual Isaac Accords were formally established in April 2026 in Jerusalem. While Argentina and Israel are the only formal signatories, in May, a conference in Buenos Aires brought together officials from Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Uruguay who signed a statement calling for the expansion of the Isaac Accords. Short of that, diplomatic relations with Israel have been restored by Bolivia (2025) and Colombia (2026), with Venezuela (2026) renewing consular services.

Development of Underdevelopment

Within presidential palaces and in legislatures, the governments of the far right have been working on economic agendas worked out by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the US Treasury Department. The agenda is simple: ensure that Western-based multinational corporations have easy access to raw materials from Latin America, protect the investments of these corporations, allow the oligarchy to participate in the theft of social wealth, and discipline the wider population through the actuality of immediate austerity and the promise of future wealth.

Most of the countries governed by the far right (Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, and Paraguay) are under IMF facilities, with other countries on the radar for future programmes of the IMF. What is key is not the IMF programme per se, but a new push by the IMF to ensure investment-oriented deregulation. Argentina’s Large Investment Incentive Regime (RIGI), passed into law in 2024, provides the framework for laws that are being passed across Latin America – with the IMF loan programme, such as in Bolivia, dependent on the passage of these laws to protect (mostly foreign) investment in the country. RIGI, a long-term bargain, attracts large foreign investments by granting corporations sweeping tax, customs, currency, and regulatory privileges for up to 30 years. It socialises environmental and economic risks while privatising profits, weakening public revenue, and limiting future governments’ ability to regulate capital. The working class receives no equally strong guarantees of stable employment, good wages, local production, or public benefits, while multinational investors gain greater power to extract Argentina’s resources and move profits abroad.

The return of a testosterone leadership will not be able to solve the problems of the people of Latin America; but it has the capacity toxify social relations by turning people against each other and therefore weakening their capacity to build their own society. Their goal is total social transformation, not merely the enactment of this or that legislation. This is a fierce counter-revolution against the gains made by the impact of the Cuban Revolution and by the Bolivarian current. Contradictions will emerge, no doubt, but slowly and cautiously amongst a population divided by precariousness and new forms of social piety.

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 Michael Wongsam

In Europe, massive front page hysteria is being whipped up by the racist far right and mainstream governments around the fake “spontaneous” “immigrant incursion” into Ceuta, which is in fact an operation deliberately organised by the U.S., Israel and Morocco, in collaboration with European racists, and which shows the depths of cynicism and positions against the interests of the people of Europe taken by Israel and the far right in Europe.

Abundant videos and other materials show how this spontaneous “incursion” was physically organised by the Moroccan dictatorship to aid a campaign by the U.S. and Israel which is described in detail below.

Spain, Israel and Iran

The trigger for these events is that the Spanish government has strongly condemned Israel’s massacres in Gaza. Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu therefore made clear Israel would take action against Spain due to this, stating: “I do not intend to allow any country to wage a diplomatic war against us without paying an immediate price.”

Yair Netanyahu, son of Benjamin Netanyahu, openly posted in advance on X what the nature of this action would be: “Let’s make a deal, we won’t fund NGOs in your country calling you to give away Ceuta and Melilla, and you will ‘stop’ funding NGOs in our country that calls us to give away Judea and Samaria.”

Spain has also refused to cooperate with the U.S. in its military attack on Iran, refusing to allow the U.S, to use the U.S. military bases in Spain, for example Naval Station Rota and Morón Air Base, to attack Iran. In summary Spain’s is the main government in Europe which has taken positions on some important questions independent of the U.S. and Israel.

The U.S. and Spain

Trump, has made quite clear, strongly, that the U.S. intended to take action against Spain because of this refusal to submit to U.S. policy.

On 3 March, standing beside German Chancellor Merz in the White House, Trump openly attacked Spain’s government for its criticism of the U.S. war against Iran and its refusal to allow the U.S to use U.S. military bases in Spain to attack Iran.

Trump declared this to be “unfriendly” and said he had directed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to “cut off all dealings with Spain,” calling the country “unfriendly” and criticizing its leadership. “We’re going to cut off all trade with Spain,” he told reporters. “We don’t want anything to do with Spain.”

Speaking alongside NATO Secretary General Rutte on 24 June, Trump declared, ““Spain is a horror show, Spain is terrible.” Rutte then immediately replied that Spain was an “isolated incident” within Europe, assuring Trump that the other European NATO members had provided logistical support for the U.S. in its attack on Iran. “I really want to emphasise this point, between 4,000 and 5,000 US aircraft took off from European air bases.”

Morocco

The so called “refugee incursions” into Ceuta began exactly along the lines threatened by Israel. Videos show the so called “refugees” being trucked to the border regime by Moroccan lorries­—Morocco is the most closely aligned state to Israel in North Africa. The so-called “refugees” crossed with no baggage whatever, and the great majority almost immediately returned to Morocco after crossing the border. In short, Morocco, the U.S. and Israel, actually created a supposed “immigrant incursion” so it could be exploited by the racists and far right in Europe against Spain’s government.

Once Morocco and the Western media had whipped up a frenzy around this “incursion” a number of what were probably genuine refugees then joined in leading to around 80 deaths as people attempted to swim to Ceuta. These were just as much collateral victims of the cynical manoeuvres of the U.S., Israel and the Moroccan dictatorship, as poor and desperate people from North Africa, Sudan, Syria and elsewhere have been used before, and as people continue to be killed every day in desperate attempts to escape from countries such as Libya that were wrecked by NATO attacks.

Trump and other U.S. government officials then immediately rushed to declare “I saw Spain yesterday, and I watched the catastrophe that took place. It was a — it looks like an invasion of a country” and blaming it on “weak law, bad management”. The “mainstream” European governments then whipped up hysteria around an incident they were perfectly well informed was fake in order to serve their own pro-Israel/pro-U.S. policy.

Israel’s offensive in Africa

The background to the Ceuta events is that Israel is engaged in a counter-offensive against those states who are seen to be the main opposition to their genocidal and expansionist policies in Palestine and Southern Lebanon. These are, notably, in Europe Spain, and in Africa South Africa. In South Africa, whilst there is no smoking gun, it is strongly believed that there is Israeli support— including financial support—for the anti-migrant ‘March and March’ movement, and alignment with the white led secessionist forces in the Western Cape. See for instance “Israel’s Not So Hidden Hand In South Africa’s ‘March & March’ Chaos”. In the U.S., in line with this, the Trump administration has been supporting white South African racists by granting them entry into the U.S. as supposed refugees from anti-white discrimination.

As well as seeking to punish Spain for its government’s opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and the U.S. and Israel’s war against Iran, the U.S. is also concerned to stop African states growing economic, and other forms of co-operation, with China and Russia in North and West Africa.

In short, Israel and the U.S. have both been carrying out hybrid warfare against the governments of both Spain and South Africa. The U.S., in particular, is determined to attempt to remove governments that oppose it on any significant policies. The entirely non-spontaneous events around Ceuta are part of that.

China, Russia and Africa

China and Russia maintain good relations with both Morocco and Algeria and have to navigate the strained relations between Morocco and Algeria over Western Sahara. Morocco was attracted to sign the Abraham Accords in part, in addition to Morocco’s overall policy, by Trump’s offer to recognise Western Sahara as part of Morocco.

The U.S. is attempting to exploit this entire situation to its advantage. For instance, Algeria has been giving support to the Front de Libération de l’Azawad  (FLA) in northern Mali, which calls for independence for the region, and recently broke off diplomatic relations with Mali following a border incident—these relations have since been restored under the urging of Putin and Lavrov. Additionally, the Polisario Front of the Western Sahara, fighting against Moroccan occupation, are suspected of providing support to both the FLA and the explicitly al-Qaeda affiliated Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM).

While the troubled relations between Algeria and Mali were continuing, Morocco offered the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) a secure route to the Atlantic, overcoming their landlocked condition due to the hostility of many Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) members and the existing insecure route through Senegal. This has since become less of an issue following the improvement of relations between Burkina Faso and Togo, which gives them access to the port of Lome.

At the same time, the U.S. conducted a diplomatic offensive towards Mali, sending several diplomatic missions to conduct talks, but as these have produced very few concessions by Mali to U.S. demands, the U.S. has recently resorted to threatening to bomb Mali.

The operation against Spain by the U.S. and Israel

This is, therefore, a combined offensive against Spain by Israel and the U.S. in cooperation with the European racists and far right. The latter, while claiming to be against refugee “invasions”, and to be shocked by the events in Ceuta, in fact were very content to see this (fake) refugee “incursion” being organised by Morocco to serve the interests of Israel and the U.S. It further illustrates the degeneration produced by Zionism in its attempt to turn the Jewish community internationally, historically a bastion of opposition to not only antisemitism but all forms of racism, to collaboration with the racist, and actually deeply antisemitic, far right in Europe.

These events show how wrong it is to see various crises internationally (Gaza, Iran, European far right) as separate. They are in fact part of an integrated attempt by the U.S. and Israel to attack any force internationally standing up to their policies.

At present the most immediate task is to expose what is really occurring with the fake “refugee incursions” into Ceuta, to show the cynicism and anti-popular positions of the European racists and far right, and the collaboration being shown with them by the U.S., Israel and Western media. Strategically Spain needs to remove the specific opening for such activity by getting out of its enclaves in North Africa, Ceuta (whose proper name in Arabic is Sabta) and Melilla, which are remnants of Spanish colonialism.

By Atul Chandra

They came to Jantar Mantar in cockroach masks, throwing back at power a word that power had used against them. On July 25, 2026, after weeks of protest, a twenty-six-day hunger strike by Sonam Wangchuk, baton charges, tear gas and the closure of 18 Delhi Metro stations, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan submitted his resignation. By late afternoon on July 25, India’s students and young people had forced one of the cabinet’s most powerful figures from office.

Who are the cockroaches?

On May 15, 2026, during a Supreme Court session, the Chief Justice of India, Surya Kant, described the unemployed youth who ‘attack institutions’ as “youngsters like cockroaches”. The comment sparked anger amongst young people, and a creative response: the formation of the Cockroach Janta Party, a place for the young “cockroaches” to come together and organize their rejection of the system. Within twenty-four hours of its formation, the Cockroach Janta Party generated unprecedented momentum.

Founded on May 16, 2026 as a digital clapback to the judge’s jibe, the Cockroach Janta Party drew over twenty million online followers within a fortnight. But, it did not just accumulate followers. It published manifestos on different aspects of Indian political life, such as how Chief Justices are appointed, what electoral integrity should be, demands for media that is free and independent from corporate houses like Adani and Ambani, and on the national examination system. The CJP ran a nationwide “Pradhan Go Back” campaign centered around an indefinite sit-in at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. As part of the sit-in, several activists were on hunger strike, including Sonam Wangchuk who sustained his hunger strike for 26 days. The youth and student movement also organized a mass mobilization of tens of thousands to march to Parliament on July 20, 2026.

In just two months, it forced a breakthrough that had eluded even the most resilient peasant and farmers movements, human rights advocates, independent journalists, and opposition groups over a decade of struggle.

The weight of that should be neither understated nor misread. For twelve years the Modi government has treated concessions as weakness. It outlasted the largest farmers’ mobilization in the country’s history, and when it repealed the three farm laws in November 2021 it kept its agriculture minister in place to pilot the repeal himself. It absorbed the anti-CAA protests, the female wrestlers’ sit-in, and the agony of Manipur without losing a minister. Pradhan, only weeks earlier, had called the students “a B-team of terrorists” out to “divide the country”, a charge sharpened by his own past: he entered politics protesting a paper leak in 1997. That a government so practiced in refusal has given up a cabinet post marks a genuine shift in the balance of forces.

The long apprenticeship of Indian democracy

The young have carried this burden before. India’s students have repeatedly tested whether the republic’s promises mean anything, and each time expanded them. When the colonial state partitioned Bengal in 1905, students tore up the circular threatening them, walked out of government colleges, and built a parallel “national education” that survives today. When Gandhi called for non-cooperation in 1920, they emptied the Raj’s classrooms and founded Jamia Millia Islamia. In 1942, with the Congress leadership in jail, it was students who hoisted flags over secretariats and ran Usha Mehta’s underground Congress Radio.

After independence, the pattern deepened into something more than protest.

In 1965, students across Tamil Nadu rose up against the imposition of Hindi. The state killed scores of them, then reversed its language policy and lost two Union ministers from the region. In the winter of 1973 to 1974, a hostel fee rise in Ahmedabad became the Nav Nirman Andolan, which forced out Gujarat’s chief minister Chimanbhai Patel and dissolved the assembly. That current ran to Bihar, where a student agitation drew in Jayaprakash Narayan, hardened into the movement Indira Gandhi answered with the Emergency, and returned in 1977 to remove her. A student union led the Assam agitation of 1979 to 1985 and compelled a national government to sign an accord; Osmania University’s students were central to the birth of Telangana in 2014. None of this was won by decorum but by pressure, by forcing the state to answer to people it preferred to ignore. That is what deepening a democracy means.

The visible concession and the structural test

Here the sober reading begins. Across all these cases runs a single pattern: the state gives up the visible while the structural becomes the real terrain of contest. The anti-CAA and NRC protests of 2019 and 2020 imposed a real cost. The nationwide National Register of Citizens was shelved and has not been developed, while the government is still telling Parliament that no decision has been taken. Yet the Citizenship Amendment Act itself was passed and its rules notified in March 2024. The movement won a pause, not a repeal.

Pradhan’s exit sits inside this same logic, and the government has moved quickly to be seen taking action. In the days around the resignation, the Union Cabinet cleared a tougher anti-paper-leak bill, doubling prison terms and raising fines to ten crore rupees, with fast-track trials promised within three months, while the National Testing Agency dismissed forty-seven officials and announced an overhaul of its outsourcing model.

So far, the measures taken are focused on punishment and personnel, aimed at those who breach the system rather than the system that produces the breach. Whether the promised overhaul delivers a meaningfully new structure, or refurbishes the same commodified examination process that turns the futures of millions into a market of coaching fees and leaked papers, is precisely what remains to be seen.

While student leaders have now called off the protests at Jantar Mantar after securing government commitments to drop police cases and compensate affected families, the retreat from the streets is best understood not as the final settlement of a grievance, but as a conditional pause – leaving the broader account of structural reform still waiting to be drawn up.

Unity is the real target

What made the victory possible also marks its point of greatest vulnerability. Its strength lay in a solidarity that cut across the lines ordinarily used to fragment popular anger, a constituency defined not by caste, faith or region but by a shared material condition: the cheated aspirant, the graduate without work, the family that mortgaged land for a coaching fee. Grievances of that kind belong to everyone at once, which is why they unsettle a government fluent in communal arithmetic.

The record shows how such unity dissolves. In 1990 the mobilization against the Mandal Commission’s reservations (also known as Other Backward Caste reservations) split the student body along caste lines, upper-caste youth against the quota, Bahujan youth for it, and the common antagonist, an unaccountable state, slipped from view. The Assam movement built a formidable unity, but on an ethnic and exclusionary basis that ended in the massacre of some 2,000 Bengali Muslims at Nellie in Assam.

The instrument that breaks a movement of this kind is rarely the baton. It is the reminder to students that they are Hindu or Muslim, forward or backward, before they are the exploited youth. Pradhan’s charge that the protesters sought to “divide the country” inverts the real danger, which is that the country’s rulers divide the protest.

The apparatus that met them remains where it was. The lathis, the tear gas, the internet shutdown near Parliament, the facial-recognition cameras, and the automatic weapons at its gates were withdrawn only when the political cost of using them grew too high. A concession extracted under pressure lasts only as long as the pressure stays credible.

None of this diminishes the achievement. For the first time in twelve years an administration built on the appearance of invulnerability has been made to retreat by ordinary people standing together. But a retreat is not a rout, and a resignation is not a reckoning. The students have shown that the state can be moved. Whether it can be changed will be settled not at the moment of a minister’s exit but in the far longer contest over the structures left behind.

Atul Chandra is the Asia Co-Coordinator of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

The above article was originally published here by Breakthrough News.

By Benyasiri Eimviriyapong and Fatima Shahzad

Over 70 delegates from 43 organizations across 17 countries gathered in Colombo from 16-18 July for the ‘Hands Off Asia’ conference, organized by the International Peoples’ Assembly and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. The choice of venue was no accident. Four years ago, Colombo was the world’s cautionary tale; sovereign default, fuel queues, a presidential palace occupied by its citizens. But Sri Lanka’s crisis was never uniquely Sri Lankan, it was the compressed experience of what much of Asia lives in slow motion: production structures designed under colonialism to serve the core, debt that disciplines every budget—from the national to the household—and an international order that punishes any attempt to escape it.

Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda,’ the former Prime Minister of Nepal, described this moment as a ‘degenerating unipolar monopoly giving way to a multipolar opening that Global South countries have long desired’, but he remained cautious, adding that ‘direct political domination may have receded; but the mechanisms of domination have not.’ He described a techno-imperialism proper to the era of the fourth industrial revolution: control exercised through financial and structural dependence, military alliances, and increasingly through data, digital ecosystems, and algorithmic appropriation. Sovereignty, he insisted, must be ‘equally integrated’, meaning not merely a government of one’s own, but independence in finance, freedom from debt, and control over national resources, won through the active democratic participation of the peoples.

Dr. Dammika Patabendi, Sri Lanka’s environment minister, grounded the frame in his country’s rupture. The lesson Asia keeps teaching is that political independence does not deliver independence. Structural dependence survives the transfer of flags. A sovereign path means the freedom to formulate independent economic policy, to direct national resources toward national development, and to provide people with decent work. Vijay Prashad laid out the agenda plainly: ‘Hands off Asia is more than closing bases; it means allowing the people of Asia to determine their destiny. Hands Off Asia means socialism today’.

The conference grappled with the interconnected systems of imperial control; military, economic, political, and ideological. Taimur Rahman of Pakistan put a number to the drain: between 1960 and now, an estimated US$ 152 trillion has been extracted from the Global South. Jeff Xiong of China offered hope, explaining how the US blockade on semiconductors has failed, with Chinese companies developing AI models at only 1 percent of Silicon Valley’s cost. He made a plea for democratizing AI through millions of ‘barefoot AI developers‘, opening up doors and cultivating new productive and intellectual capabilities that were once reserved for the imperial core.

A View from Pakistan: IMF, Military Rule and the Left

Since partition, Pakistan has experienced military dictatorships every other decade on average. From 1970 to 2024, forcefully breaking democratically elected governments has become a rule rather than an exception in the country’s political landscape. Military rulers are notoriously associated with service of US imperialist interests in the region, ranging from the Afghanistan War under Zia-Ul-Haq to the War on Terror under Pervez Musharraf. However, the role of the left in leading mass struggles of workers, peasants, students and oppressed nationalities, remains little known. It was this historical perspective and analysis of the current situation which was presented at the conference by Progressive Students Federation (PrSF) and Mazdoor Kissan Party (MKP).

After a mere 8 years after formation, the Communist Party of Pakistan was banned by the state. Three years later, in 1958, Pakistan entered its first IMF program under General Ayub Khan’s regime. To this day, this number has gone to 25 IMF Structural Adjustment Programs. Debt-servicing takes up the second biggest chunk of annual government budget allocations. Despite harsh crackdowns, the Left remained a force to be reckoned with until the 1980s, building people’s power and shaping the country’s politics.

Workers in urban cities were organized in unions, taking over factories forcing the government to carry out significant nationalisation of the industrial sector. Peasants rose up in the countryside from Hashtnagar to Tandojam, in some cases successfully defeating landlords and redistributing the land. Left student organizations swept union elections throughout the campuses of Pakistan, demanding free education and championing anti-war politics. These were the movements feared by the ruling class, and were crushed through brutal military operations, imprisonment and bans to pave the way for imperialist wars and privatization.

The banning of student unions in 1984 dealt a deadly blow to not just the student movements but to Left organizing as a whole. The current generation has grown up without the memory of a democratic campus and without the concept of public education. Systemic depoliticization through the misalignment of student politics altogether and erasure of peoples’ history from our curriculums has robbed young minds from critical thinking and even hope. Much like other countries in South Asia, youth in Pakistan are living through the worst unemployment crisis and the rise of far-right nationalism.

Though movements around questions of militarization, democracy and political rights have emerged and are also facing criminalisation presently, they have not been able to successfully overcome fragmentation and unite various oppressed segments in the masses. It is in these conditions that the Left continues to fight not just to rebuild our organizations, but also win the battle of ideas to reclaim our history rooted in the anti-colonial and revolutionary tradition that seeks to break the chains of neocolonialism and develop socialism.

The View from Thailand: at the Crossroads of Empire

Thailand was represented at Colombo by the journal DinDeng, the Southern Peasants Federation of Thailand (SPFT) and the Assembly of the Poor. The kingdom has historically sat at the heart of the US military architecture in Southeast Asia, hosting some of the most significant economic, military and political infrastructure in the region. The ‘Hands Off Asia’ campaign makes clear that US military installations built to encircle China do not defend the communities that live alongside them, rather they put those communities in danger. Thailand knows this intimately. Our soil has long been used as a staging ground for US imperialism, from its atrocities in Vietnam to the secret bombings of Laos and Cambodia.  Today, US officers still are placed in the country’s command centres, while our people bear the costs: environmental destruction, displacement, and the theft of hope for our future generations.

Thailand’s left movement has repeatedly been crushed by this military with 13 coups since 1932, the most recent two being waged against the populist-left government of the Pheu Thai Party. Younger Thais, once seen as a vibrant pro-democracy force, are increasingly shifting toward right-leaning nationalism, not because they reject politics, but rather because they have been offered precisely what the Colombo conference identified as the problem: a liberal politics that refuses to challenge the entrenched reactionary status quo, refuses to confront military domination, and refuses to articulate a genuinely socialist alternative.

The Pheu Thai/Red Shirt mass movement represents something entirely different —an approach that has ended political innocence and embraced a cynical materialist understanding of twenty-first century struggle. It recognizes that reform without contest is merely temporary. The struggle for sovereignty cannot and must not be separated from the struggle against poverty, exploitation, and the twin arms of military and economic domination.

Thailand and Pakistan face the same choice as the rest of Asia: submit to this domination both externally and internally or build genuine people’s power. As the conference declared, sovereignty in the twenty-first century is an integrated condition spanning finance, technology, data, and defence. Asia, where the world’s economic centre of gravity is shifting, is where this battle will be decided. The generation that inherits Asia’s history of resistance must demonstrate that another path is possible. Socialism today is not merely for a better world, it is a socialist world, built from the red soil of struggles.

The above article was produced by Globetrotter. Benyasiri Eimviriyapong is an editor, translator, and propagandist at Dindeng, a journal and publishing collective which seeks to decode the semi-feudal, the semi-capitalist, and the semi-colonial of Thailand. Her professional focus is on ecology, state power, and the application of revolutionary feminist politics in daily life. Fatima Shahzad is the General Secretary of the Progressive Students Federation (PrSF) in Pakistan. She is also an artist and editor at Surkh Sawera, and an organizer of the Socialist Reading Group.

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.