High oil prices are a victory for Saudi Arabia, but a blow to the United States and China.
Oil prices reached their highest point since 2014 today.
The price of Brent crude opened above $87 a barrel. Brent crude is widely considered the benchmark for global oil prices.
In retaliation for a mysterious explosion along the Turkish-Syrian border, Turkey hit several Kurdish positions in the predominantly Kurdish town of Kobani in an attack that the Kurds call a “war rehearsal” aiming to test the water.
Turkey appears to be aiming to maintain high tensions in northeast Syria through a series of Turkish drone strikes targeting senior Kurdish figures.
Why Washington Must Reckon With the Devastating Inflation Its Policies Cause
Around the world, governments are grappling with inflation as supply chain disruptions and the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic contribute to higher prices for all types of goods. Western politicians have spent the last few months trying to assuage the fears of their constituents, who are unaccustomed to fast-rising prices. Just before Thanksgiving, U.S. President Joe Biden promised “coordinated action … to deal with the lack of supply, which in turn helps ease prices.” French President Emmanuel Macron promised a cash handout to French citizens to ease the pain. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has told Britons to get tough as there is “no alternative” to inflation.
Iran is closer than ever to being able to build a nuclear weapon. After President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal, Tehran began enriching uranium to higher levels and stockpiling more of it. As a result, Iran now has the capacity to make enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb in less than a month—compared with the roughly one year it would have needed to do so before the United States quit the nuclear accord in 2018.
Iran’s leaders and President Joe Biden’s administration both say they want to return to the 2015 deal, but the parties remain far apart on what nuclear steps or sanctions relief should come first and how far-reaching those steps would need to be. Every day that the talks drag on without resolution, Iran’s centrifuges keep spinning; in late December, European governments warned that “weeks, not months,” remained before restoring the old deal would no longer be possible.
The NATO alliance is ill suited to twenty-first-century Europe. This is not because Russian President Vladimir Putin says it is or because Putin is trying to use the threat of a wider war in Ukraine to force neutrality on that country and to halt the alliance’s expansion. Rather, it is because NATO suffers from a severe design flaw: extending deep into the cauldron of eastern European geopolitics, it is too large, too poorly defined, and too provocative for its own good.
The US and its allies are countering the re-emergence of China with a Sinophobic confection of new alliances, military threats, jingoism and false propaganda about a falsely claimed Uyghur Genocide in Xinjiang. However excellent health, infant mortality, maternal mortality, population growth and education outcomes in Xinjiang reported by China and confirmed by respected NGOs contradict Sinophobic US, UK and Australian claims of a Uyghur Genocide.
On 14 January, a breaking news story from the New York Times informed its readers: “U.S. Says Russia Sent Saboteurs Into Ukraine to Create Pretext for Invasion.”
Unsurprisingly, Washington “did not release details of the evidence it had collected.” Why did the NYT not question the withholding of evidence? Why even deign to report what so easily could be dismissed, by definition, as hearsay? Is that because the White House is a paragon of truth-telling? Did its erroneous reporting by disgraced writer Judith Miller that Iraq possessed weapons-of-mass-destruction precipitating a US-led invasion not teach NYT a lesson?
Throughout 2021, Americans were absorbed in arguments over mask mandates, school closings, and the meaning of the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Meanwhile, geopolitical hot spots were erupting across Eurasia, forming a veritable ring of fire around that vast land mass.
Let’s circle that continent to visit just a few of those flashpoints, each one suffused with significance for the future of U.S. global power.
For anti-government and anti-authority extremists, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a godsend. In many ways, it seems almost tailor-made for anti-government propaganda, exerting an almost magnetic pull on conspiracy theorists and other far-right extremists. The Omicron variant sweeping the globe has made vaccine mandates a global talking point, which has led a paranoid and growing fringe of extremists to threaten violence against healthcare workers, scientists and government officials in countries around the world.
American and Russian diplomats met in Geneva earlier this week, with numerous items on the agenda—a high-profile showcase of diplomacy designed to head off further escalation between Washington and Moscow.
Russia has continued its saber rattling, making bellicose statements even while negotiations continue apace.
The Kremlin’s increasingly aggressive posture in Europe has garnered pushback, particularly among Nordic countries and the Baltic states, which fear Russian encroachment.