The fact that the US had become less reliant on oil imports was very important for sustaining the position of the US dollar as the global reserve currency, because it is the fact of the global trade in oil being priced in dollars that is the main foundation for that reserve currency position, thereby enabling the US economy to keep growing in a way that is fuelled by debt. That growth strategy is now under serious threat unless the USA can control oil supply and prices in other parts of the world. This ‘necessity’ places the current US refusal to leave Iraq and its theft of oil from Syrian oil wells in context, and makes it easier to understand the intense pressure being placed on Iran and Venezuela in particular. The aggression is actually sign of strategic weakness, verging on desperation. In other words, this is a major geopolitical turning point. It is for this reason that the US is pushing for an end to the oil price war:

A combination of economic and structural problems hound China and contribute to its problems with the world, other than the ongoing trade controversy with the United States. Solving the problem requires a comprehensive approach that we have not yet seen in China or abroad. Now Chinese savings – standing at about 50% of income, the highest in the world – plus foreign reserves of more than US$3 trillion, and administrative restrictions are paying for and safeguarding an immense mountain of debt mostly accumulated after the 2008 financial crisis. This debt is mostly unknown, hidden in the accounts of provincial and county administrations, and with State-Owned Enterprises (SOE).

The nuclear rhetoric and armed forces’ activities of Russia and NATO in 2013-2015 have revived the danger of nuclear war that looked totally unthinkable only five years ago. Moreover, after a quarter century pause, Russia and the United States are again on the verge of a massive and multichannel cycle of the arms race, as pointed out by Robert Legvold, a respected U.S. scholar of Soviet and post-Soviet foreign policy: “The United States and Russia, in modernizing all three legs of their nuclear triads, have reopened a potential competition between offensive and defensive systems and introduced new destabilizing technologies, such as conventionally armed strategic missiles theoretically capable of striking the other side’s nuclear weapons, thus blurring the firebreak between conventional and nuclear warfare.”

Technology has dramatically increased the speed at which decisions must be made, expanded the spectrum of military thought (from the strategic to the planetary), and focused more attention on innovative thinking and risk-taking. This report, Russian Military Thought: Concepts and Elements, considers technology’s impact on military thought while also considering the latter’s historical legacy passed from the Soviet to the Russian period. Two issues are thus at play in the report, traditional ones and those associated with information-age advances. Initially, the report examines several concepts from the Soviet era still in vogue today, such as the forms and methods of warfare, forecasting, and the initial period of war, among others. The past remains important for the present and continues to affect the way Russia analyzes its situational context. Next, how these basic concepts are applied to information-age advances are examined.

It is now clear to all but the most blinkered partisans that Washington has botched its initial response. Missteps by key institutions, from the White House and the Department of Homeland Security to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), have undermined confidence in the capacity and competence of U.S. governance. Public statements by President Donald Trump, whether Oval Office addresses or early-morning tweets, have largely served to sow confusion and spread uncertainty. Both public and private sectors have proved ill-prepared to produce and distribute the tools necessary for testing and response. And internationally, the pandemic has amplified Trump’s instincts to go it alone and exposed just how unprepared Washington is to lead a global response.

People didn’t really understand and didn’t really believe what was happening in China.China reacted slowly but then effectively to the spread of the virus. It brought it under control, and the flu didn’t become the Chernobyl moment for China many foreign pundits predicted. Here there is something deeper at work. It is the image the Chinese elites want their country to project. With the myth of “China’s century” or the “resurgence of the nation” and the triumph of the “Chinese dream,” the country’s leaders talk to their people but also to the world. Beijing is attempting to de facto export an ideology. It is riding a Weltanschauung that is antithetical to the Western paradigm, which is based on the geopolitical, economic-commercial, and cultural centrality of the United States. This is not an explicit attempt – like exporting communism during the Cold War – but a different, subtler, and at times unconscious endeavor, and has similar if not wider outcomes.

China seguirá acercándose a América Latina, potenciando las áreas en curso si bien ponderando más fríamente sus expectativas. Esto puede conducir a una moderación de los proyectos a tomar en consideración. Aun así, la región sigue siendo un entorno relevante en materia de energía y seguridad alimentaria y un mercado clave para sus exportaciones, cada vez con más valor agregado. La gestión por parte de China de este nuevo contexto toma buena nota del cambio en la correlación de fuerzas político-ideológicas en la región y del punto de inflexión que están experimentando los mecanismos de integración, en especial la CELAC, en los que había cifrado importantes esperanzas, y ahora sin ningún papel relevante como mecanismo de cooperación y coordinación política. EEUU tiene más aliados que en ningún momento desde 2000 y busca recuperar su influencia. Esto le pondrá las cosas más difíciles a Beijing

This drain of influence might slow down if only a “new West” led by Europe that combined power and values reached out to powers such as India or Japan to build global alliances. But a major lacuna lies in the United States’ contempt of multilateralism and a rules-based order. Equally, Washington’s push for trade-offs to advance its unilateral confrontations – be it with Russia and China or Iran and Venezuela – fails to strike a chord with its top Western partners, the majority of whom are averse to any form of confrontation, least of all with Beijing.

En los últimos cincuenta años, cambios de gran trascendencia en América Latina y el Caribe, así como transformaciones igualmente destacadas en el interior de Estados Unidos y a todo lo largo de la arena internacional, han mudado de manera significativa las relaciones interamericanas.1 Durante los años ochenta (conocidos como “la década perdida”), el declive económico de la región, junto con las reorientaciones más importantes de las políticas públicas, redujeron algunos aspectos de esa redefinición, mientras que aceleraron otros. Algo similar ocurrió tras el colapso de la Unión Soviética a principios de los años noventa, hecho que dejó a Estados Unidos como la única superpotencia en el mundo.

Por más de una década China ha puesto a prueba la tradición hegemónica estadounidense sobre América Latina y el Caribe. En palabras de Lauren Paverman: “Se podría decir que China saltó la cerca que custodiaba al patio trasero de Estados Unidos en su intento por capitalizar el impresionante inventario de recursos naturales que esa región ofrece” (“China looks to Venezuela for energy security”, Worldpress.org, 11 October 2011).