Author: M Barbu

France’s Election Shouldn’t Have Been This Close

How Macron Lost the Left

Not so long ago, the war in Ukraine appeared to have made French President Emmanuel Macron a shoo-in for a second term. Polls showed that a majority of French voters trusted him to handle the crisis, and two weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, Macron garnered support from 31 percent of voters surveyed compared with just 18 percent for Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate who was in second place. The last time a French candidate enjoyed such a big lead in the run-up to a presidential election was more than three decades ago.

Russians at War

Putin’s Aggression Has Turned a Nation Against Itself

In early April, the coffin containing the body of 75-year-old Vladimir Zhirinovsky—the ultranationalist and populist who was a crucial pillar of the Russian state for two decades—was taken to the Hall of Columns in central Moscow for people to pay their respects. Sixty-nine years ago, it was there that Stalin had lain in state, in the process killing one last wave of Russians, who were crushed to death in the huge crowds that had gathered to bid farewell to the Soviet dictator.

A França de Le Pen: da “onda azul” ao tsunami

Le Pen tem dialogado com os franceses que se abstêm por estarem insatisfeitos com a oferta política dos partidos tradicionais (agora pulverizados), afirmando-se como a candidata que consegue não só ouvir o cansaço coletivo pós-pandémico, mas, também, o desespero social dos perdedores da mundialização.

‘Towards a Multipolar World Order’: Is This the End of US Hegemony?

The meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in the Chinese eastern city of Huangshan on March 30, is likely to go down in history as a decisive meeting in the relations between the two Asian giants.

The meeting was not only important due to its timing or the fact that it reaffirmed the growing ties between Moscow and Beijing, but because of the resolute political discourse articulated by the two top diplomats.

NATO: Whose Security?

Insanity has often been defined as trying the same thing over and over and getting the same result.

Case in point, Ukraine was seeking NATO membership to bolster its security. This membership would have come at the expense of Russian security, as Russian president Vladimir Putin made clear. To thwart NATO’s (i.e., the US’s) hegemonic ambitions and preserve its own security, Russia felt compelled to address its security concerns. When these Russian security concerns were treated with contempt by the US and Ukraine, Russia took action to protect itself.

The days of elite deals in Sudan should be over

It was only a year ago that Sudan—newly removed from the US terrorism list—was negotiating the terms of its upcoming debt-relief package and proposing ways to invest more than one billion dollars in promised international financial assistance toward propping up democracy. At the time, the world was still talking about the country as a potential model for others to follow on the road from dictatorship to democracy.