China’s President Xi Jinping concluded his three-day state visit to the US on Friday, September 25, with hopes of enhanced cooperation and partnership between the world’s two largest economies.

Xi arrived in the US on Wednesday and received a large-scale welcome from President Donald Trump. Though this was their third in-person meeting it was Xi’s first state visit to the US in over a decade.

On Thursday, the leaders had a long in-person conversation in the White House and finished the day with a state dinner with 130 guests, including tech executives. Though the US is yet to release its version of the official proceedings, reports indicate they discussed a range of outstanding issues such as the dispute over trade and tariffs, cooperation in Artificial Intelligence, the issue of Taiwan, and the US-Israeli war on Iran. 

During the meeting with Trump, Xi called for strategic stability in the China-US relationship which will benefit both countries and the people around the world, Xinhua reported.  

“China and the US should be partners, not rivals,” Xi said. 

Xi’s statement comes at a time when the two countries are negotiating a longer trade deal after briefly facing each other in a tariff war last year. Both countries agreed to extend their temporary trade truce which halted the tariff war till January to give their negotiators more time.

The so-called Busan Trade Truce was set to expire in November this year.  

Xi hoped that “both sides would stay committed to the principles of mutual benefit and win-win cooperation and promote the sustained, stable and sound development of China-US economic and trade relations.” 

Technology and AI

Successive administrations in the US have characterized China’s advancements in technology and other economic sectors as a threat to American interests and have tried to curb them by restricting its access to technology.

In his attempt to address such apprehensions, Xi proposed that “both sides work towards a relationship featuring cooperation as the mainstay, moderate competition, manageable differences, and the promise of peace.” 

Talking about the competition in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Xi offered increased coordination and cooperation between the countries as a way of mutual benefit. 

While emphasizing that “two sides should maintain human control over AI technologies, uphold people-centered approach and the principle of using AI for good” he proposed greater exchange of information to “prevent any misuse and abuse of AI.”

Read more: The AI frontier asks to be paced: anatomy of a panic

Xi also expressed hope that Chinese companies “are treated fairly in the US” while inviting more US companies to invest in China. “Working together, we can lengthen the list of cooperation and shorten the list of issues” he underlined.

The US has sanctioned or put a large number of Chinese companies, including its AI firms on various watch lists in recent years, after accusing them of working with the Chinese armed forces or being involved in the so-called technology theft.

Notably, however, major US tech and finance executives such as Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Eric Yuan of Zoom, Kelly Ortberg of Boeing, Larry Fink of Blackrock, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Sundar Pichai of Google, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and Elon Musk of SpaceX and Tesla, were present at the state dinner for Xi’s visit hosted at the White House on Thursday, September 24, though no details of cooperation between US and Chinese tech firms have emerged.

Taiwan

Reiterating China’s resolve to “safeguard national reunification and territorial integrity,” Xi expressed hope that the US will “adhere to the correct position on opposing ‘Taiwan independence’ and handle the Taiwan question with caution.”

China has repeatedly accused the US of promoting the separatist cause in Taiwan, despite officially adhering to “one China policy.” The US under Trump has sold or agreed to sell billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Taiwan in complete disregard of China’s objections.

China has also accused the US and its allies in the region of promoting an arms race by deploying advanced weapon systems close to its borders.

Xi said if the US follows the correct position on Taiwan it “will enable both the countries to lay a solid foundation for their strategic cooperation and the development of their bilateral relationship.”

US-Israeli war on Iran 

China has refused to intervene or get involved in the US-Israeli war on Iran, despite Trump’s repeated calls for them to do so. China has maintained the war was unnecessary and repeatedly warned against its prolongation. It has supported the interim peace deal signed in June under international mediation.

Xi reiterated this position during his visit to the US, expressing hope that both Iran and the US would soon return to the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and end the war.

Xi claimed that “China-US cooperation may not solve every problem in the world, but without it, it would be hard to solve many of the world’s problems” and proposed more dialogue and “mechanisms of crisis communication and prevention” between their armed forces.

Read more: No new talks with the US until the previous conditions are met, says Iran

Trump said his meeting with Xi on Thursday was “great” also claiming they have maintained close communication.

Trump also agreed that “continued dialogue” with China is necessary to reach agreement on significant issues.

Far-right Argentine President Javier Milei addressed the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly on September 23, giving a speech which provoked strong reactions. The South American head of state also participated in a series of high-level meetings.

One of his most quoted lines from his New York City trip has been: “Argentina is the new promised land.”

This is not the first time Milei has used religious concepts and ideas from the Judeo-Christian tradition to explain his political stance, but it is the first time the Argentine president has equated his country, in economic and political terms, with the land of Abraham and his descendants.

This is even more telling when one considers Milei’s extremely close relationship with Israel and ardent defense of its policies of war and genocide across West Asia, as well as the admiration he professes for the Jewish religion.

Milei also emphatically underscored this during his address to the UN General Assembly: “We also made a geopolitical choice: we have unambiguously aligned ourselves with the West … We condemn the Iranian regime’s attacks on the State of Israel.”

And this is an indisputable fact. Since the beginning of his term, Milei has not only aligned himself with the geopolitical interests that the Trump administration has vigorously pursued, but has also become one of Israel’s staunchest allies in the region.

This is quite impressive, considering that President Noboa in Ecuador, De la Espriella in Colombia, and others have also expressed a kind of unwavering alliance with Tel Aviv.

That is why Milei has not limited himself to diplomatic rhetoric, but has pulled the strings of power to designate Iran’s main military force (currently in conflict with Israel and the United States) as a terrorist organization.

“We declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, just as we continue to seek justice for the two attacks we suffered on Argentine soil in 1992 and 1994,” Milei said at the UN, referring to two attacks in Argentina against the Israeli Embassy and the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA). The Argentine justice system, advised by Israel and the United States, identified Hezbollah and Iranian citizens as the perpetrators.

Free-market capitalism and Artificial Intelligence

Another topic Milei addressed during his appearance was his staunch defense of free-market capitalism in which the state plays a minimal role: “We do not want to lose again; that is why we embrace free-market capitalism.”

In this regard, Milei once again highlighted his government’s strong support for artificial intelligence companies and the tycoons behind them. It should not be forgotten that the Argentine government signed a working and information-sharing agreement with Palantir, whose co-founder, Peter Thiel, purchased a property on Argentine soil.

This is clearly part of Milei’s neoliberal agenda to attract investment from major foreign capitalists, among whom the owners of technology companies (who are so interested in resources such as lithium, copper, and others that abound in South America) currently stand out.

However, recent statements by former employees of these companies regarding the danger that the development of AI poses to humanity have created some unease around the world. But Milei says that this is precisely the time to move forward: “Prudence does not mean fear, and what’s more, fear should under no circumstances automatically lead to obedience … where many see a threat, we see a frontier.”

Criticism of the UN

Probably one of the most important aspects highlighted in Milei’s speech was his harsh criticism of the UN and its role in current geopolitics: “Today, unfortunately, it is time to acknowledge that this sacred pact has, in fact, been broken.”

But not content with merely pointing out the shortcomings, Milei asserted (very much in line with Trump) that the UN has become a venue for certain people to amass wealth: “It has become a useless organization that serves only to feed a caste of fatally arrogant parasites disguised as well-meaning bureaucrats.”

Hence, he asserted that resolutions ultimately have no real effect on policy. He cited the example of the Malvinas Islands, a territory disputed with the United Kingdom: “What good is a resolution if, for decades, the other party can act contrary to it, and that resolution remains intact in the archives but is powerless in the face of reality?”

Criticism of Milei’s speech

Milei’s statements, while applauded by his supporters, have drawn widespread criticism in Argentina. Much of the criticism has focused on the fact that Milei now seems to staunchly defend Argentina’s right to control the Malvinas Islands, whereas in the past he was cautious and even reluctant to adopt a patriotic stance against the United Kingdom – something both the Argentine left and right have done. “We’re surprised that Milei now remembers when he used to talk about self-determination,” said Axel Kicillof, governor of the province of Buenos Aires.

Likewise, critics pointed out the apparent contradiction in Milei’s rhetoric between extolling the right to self-determination and aligning himself with the interests of Washington and Tel Aviv: “Milei’s stance doesn’t surprise me. The truth is that this line of subservience—and I say this very clearly—is directed at Trump and Netanyahu. Even the terminology is consistent with what Trump proposed and his ideas on the deregulation of artificial intelligence, as well as his view that Argentina’s natural resources are available to anyone who wants to take them,” said Kicillof.

Regarding Milei’s economic rhetoric, Patria Grande leader Juan Grabois said: “Besides being an ignorant imbecile, besides being a lobotomized parrot who parrots Trump, besides plagiarizing Gramsci without knowing he’s “a filthy communist,” what Milei is saying is that we’re basically going to hand over our territory, critical minerals, energy, and national sovereignty to the technocracy.”

China called the latest US threats of secondary sanctions on airline service-providing companies across the world an illegal unilateral measure without any basis in international law. The US said the sanctions would be applied if these companies do not stop providing services to Iranian airlines.

China said they “firmly oppose illicit unilateral sanctions that have no basis in international law and lack UN Security Council mandate,” Guo Jiakun, official spokesperson of its Ministry of Foreign Affairs said during a regular press conference on Wednesday, September 23.

China’s reaction came on the same day the latest US sanctions against Iran went into effect. 

The US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has asked companies across the world who are involved in providing services such as refuelling, ticketing, and other kinds of ground support to stop serving Iranian airlines starting at midnight on September 23. If they fail to comply they will be “locked out of the dollar system,” Bessent threatened.

The latest sanctions against its airlines is part of the recently announced US attempt to completely isolate Iran from the global economy in order to pressure its government to re-open the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran has shut down the Strait of Hormuz following the resumption of US airstrikes as well as Washington’s attempts to bypass Iranian control over the waterway in the Persian Gulf since July. Iran has claimed that those American moves were in violation of the peace deal signed under international mediation in June.

The adoption of new sets of sanctions is widely seen as an indication of Washington’s failure to achieve its objectives in Iran militarily, even after seven months of war, which began on February 28. 

Iran has reiterated that no amount of economic coercion will open the Strait of Hormuz. They listed the withdrawal of the US naval blockade, the unfreezing of its international assets, and an end of the war on all fronts in the region as preconditions for opening the Strait. 

Air blockade

While some of the countries in the region cancelled Iranian flights to their airports in fear of US sanctions, Iran claimed most of its international flights remained scheduled and operational. Some countries also decided to close their airspace for Iranian airlines.

Iraq has diverted most of the Iranian flights from its Baghdad airport to Najaf.

If the flights remain suspended for a significant number of countries for a longer duration it would amount to an air blockade on Iran. This will have an effect on thousands of people employed in the aviation sector in the country which is already heavily facing tremendous economic troubles due to existing sanctions 

A prolonged suspension of flights could also impact hundreds of thousands of Iranians who have to travel out of the country for medical or other reasons.

Iran has maintained that unilateral US sanctions are illegal and an “act of terrorism” against Iranian people. It has urged the nations across the world to not succumb to the unilateral actions of the US. 

Chief of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Mohsen Rezaei, in an interview on Wednesday, warned neighboring countries against submitting to US pressure to shut down Iranian flights, claiming such acts will force Iran to retaliate.

“Nothing in life is free,” goes an old Latin American saying, and Bolivia’s right-wing President Rodrigo Paz has proven this once again. The International Monetary Fund confirmed that it will disburse $1.9 billion to Bolivia, which will naturally have to repay the loan.

A few hours later, as part of the agreement with the neoliberal-leaning international financial institution, Paz announced that he would eliminate the subsidy on diesel, the fuel typically used by transporters and farmers for production. According to reports from La Paz, the price will increase by 100% (for now), as it will be adjusted to international market rates.

Several experts assert that the government’s decision will lead to an imminent increase in the price of food, mining, and transportation, thereby negatively impacting the country’s working population, which constitutes the vast majority.

While the government claims that these types of neoliberal measures will help control inflation, economist Fernando Romero argues that eliminating the diesel subsidy could cause inflation – which was projected to reach 14% by the end of the year – to rise to 20% by December 2026.

But this seems to matter little to a government whose primary goal – whether its own or one set by international financial institutions for the Third World – is to reduce the fiscal deficit at all costs.

“You [Bolivians] elected me to solve problems … If [the IMF] is lending us funds to revive the country, I cannot buy diesel at a high price and sell it cheaply … That is why we have decided that diesel will cost the same as it costs us to buy it abroad, and that price will be the same for everyone,” Paz said in an address to the entire country.

Just a few months in office, many protests

The truth is that this is not the first time Paz has sought to meet the IMF’s demands. In December of last year, just a few weeks after being sworn in as president, Paz raised the price of diesel and gasoline, sparking protests across the country.

A few months later, between May and June, thousands and thousands of Bolivians took to the streets to protest the government’s plan to allow land to be seized to settle debts, which was followed by demands from the Bolivian Workers’ Confederation (COB) and various peasant groups for higher wages and improved fuel supplies, among other things. Following harsh repression, the protests quickly escalated into demands for the president’s resignation, which led to increased tensions and clashes between law enforcement and thousands of workers who blocked major highways across the country. These protests left 14 dead and nearly 400 people detained.

It now appears that Paz will not back down from his policy, despite the fact that in less than a year he has faced significant protests against him that have gradually eroded his public image. According to some polls, Paz’s approval rating barely reaches 32%.

But Paz has also prepared for possible demonstrations. The Bolivian Congress, which supports Paz, has just extended the state of emergency – which had been declared last June – by 90 days. According to Interior Minister Marco Oviedo, there are: “threats of renewed and coordinated blockades, marches, and strikes, as well as early warnings regarding calls to action, escalations, ultimatums, and the mobilization of social groups [in the coming days].”

Announcement of protests

Indeed, several agricultural workers and truck drivers have announced that they will mobilize all their members unless the government reverses its plan to eliminate the diesel subsidy. “The increase in the price of diesel spells the end for all our productive sectors; that is why we have united to defend our livelihoods and our daily work, because right now, not only is there no diesel, but we are being forced to buy it at double the price,” the main leaders of these workers said at a press conference.

And while the bulk of those likely to protest against Paz will be the poorest workers, it should not be overlooked that a significant portion of industries, mining companies, and various other businesses rely on diesel to power their machinery. This suggests that discontent will arise not only among the poorest but also among the middle class and various business owners who foresee rising production costs without any real affordable alternatives.

Similarly, transportation unions have stated that if the price of fuel doubles, they will be forced to double the cost of fares. In fact, transport operators traveling between departments have already raised fares by between 50% and 100%.

Consequently, the rising costs of food, supplies, diesel, production, transportation, and so on lead several experts to predict that Paz’s decision (while it may please the IMF) will spark demonstrations and a new cycle of protests against the administration.

However, given the extension of the state of emergency, it does not appear that Paz is very interested in curbing the protests, but rather in resisting them and cementing the elimination of the subsidy in the long term, thereby bolstering the neoliberal program, which he calls “Bolivia’s new path.”

Read more: Bolivian president consolidates power as protests continue to grow

Whether Bolivian workers (who have a long tradition of resistance and popular mobilization) will succeed in thwarting the intentions of Paz and his international allies remains to be seen.

But, as seen in other countries such as Ecuador, neoliberal governments have opted for a strategy of wearing down popular protests. For example, Lenin Moreno’s government raised fuel prices only to back down in the face of massive social protests. Years later, Guillermo Lasso and Daniel Noboa did the same, until the protesters grew weary and they finally succeeded in eliminating the subsidy on certain fuels.

For now, it seems that Bolivian workers are not willing to back down, although all signs indicate that neither will the Paz administration nor future neoliberal politicians. Whoever emerges victorious will do so by sheer resistance and the ability to remain united.

Read in English here

La campaña de Donald Trump para poner a Groenlandia bajo el control de los Estados Unidos a menudo se ha descartado como pura fanfarronería. Eso es un error. Detrás del lenguaje de un acuerdo inmobiliario se esconde un intento serio de revivir un antiguo principio imperial: que Washington pueda decidir el futuro político y económico de todo el hemisferio occidental. Groenlandia, estratégicamente ubicada entre América del Norte y Europa, se ha convertido en una prueba de esa afirmación – y de si la soberanía de una pequeña nación indígena cuenta cuando entra en conflicto con las ambiciones de una gran potencia.

Trump planteó la idea de comprar Groenlandia durante su primer mandato presidencial en 2019. Tras su reelección, la propuesta se volvió más agresiva. En diciembre de 2024 declaró que la “propiedad y el control” de Groenlandia por parte de los Estados Unidos eran una “necesidad absoluta”. El 7 de enero de 2025, se negó a descartar la coacción militar o económica contra Groenlandia y el Canal de Panamá, afirmando: “Necesitamos Groenlandia por motivos de seguridad nacional”. Posteriormente, insistió en que los Estados Unidos se haría con la isla “de una forma u otra”. Esta afirmación combinaba varios argumentos: Groenlandia es vital para la defensa antimisiles; Rusia y China amenazan el Ártico; los yacimientos de tierras raras de Groenlandia tienen un valor estratégico; y, supuestamente, los groenlandeses acogerían con agrado el dominio estadounidense.

Esta última afirmación resultó ser demostrablemente falsa. Una encuesta de enero de 2025, realizada tanto en groenlandés como en danés, reveló que el 85% de la población de Groenlandia se oponía a abandonar el reino danés para unirse a los Estados Unidos, mientras que solo el 6% lo apoyaba. Sin embargo, la misma encuesta mostró que una mayoría estaba a favor de una eventual independencia. Esa distinción es fundamental. El deseo de los groenlandeses de poner fin a la tutela colonial danesa no puede interpretarse como un consentimiento a la anexión estadounidense.

Una relación militar sin anexión

El argumento de seguridad a favor de la propiedad estadounidense es engañoso, ya que Washington ya goza de amplios derechos militares en Groenlandia. La relación comenzó durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Con Dinamarca ocupada por la Alemania nazi, su embajador en Washington firmó un acuerdo de 1941 que permitía a los Estados Unidos defender Groenlandia y construir instalaciones allí. Dinamarca solicitó la retirada estadounidense después de la guerra, pero prevaleció la estrategia de la Guerra Fría.

El Acuerdo de Defensa de Groenlandia de 1951, celebrado en el marco del Tratado del Atlántico Norte, autorizó a los Estados Unidos a establecer y operar “zonas de defensa”. Esto permitió la rápida construcción de la Base Aérea de Thule – rebautizada como Base Espacial de Pituffik en 2023 – en un lugar ideal para las rutas aéreas y de misiles más cortas entre la Unión Soviética y América del Norte. En el apogeo de la Guerra Fría, los Estados Unidos operaba numerosas instalaciones en toda Groenlandia. Hoy en día, Pituffik, la base militar más septentrional de Washington, desempeña funciones de alerta de misiles, defensa antimisiles y vigilancia espacial.

El acuerdo ofrece a Washington una amplia libertad operativa. Una enmienda de 2004 – el Acuerdo de Igaliku – reconoció al Gobierno autónomo de Groenlandia, estableció a Pituffik como la única zona de defensa existente y exigió la consulta previa antes de realizar cambios significativos o crear nuevas zonas de defensa. También estableció la cooperación en temas económicos, técnicos y ambientales. En otras palabras, si los Estados Unidos considera que se necesitan más radares, puertos, aeródromos o personal, ya existe un mecanismo legal para negociarlo con Dinamarca y Groenlandia. La soberanía, por lo tanto, no es un requisito militar.

La historia de las bases también explica por qué “seguridad” no es un término neutral en Groenlandia. En 1953, las autoridades danesas ordenaron a 116 inughuit – 27 familias – que abandonaran la recién fundada Qaanaaq, mientras que el resto se reubicó en asentamientos en otras partes del distrito. Camp Century se construyó bajo el hielo entre 1959 y 1960 y estaba vinculado a la propuesta secreta del Proyecto Iceworm, que contemplaba una extensa red de bases de lanzamiento de misiles nucleares.

En 1968, un B-52 estadounidense que transportaba cuatro bombas de hidrógeno se estrelló sobre el hielo marino en la Base Aérea de Thule, lo que provocó contaminación por plutonio y otras sustancias. El accidente puso de manifiesto la inconsistencia entre la política declarada públicamente por Dinamarca en contra de las armas nucleares en territorio danés en tiempos de paz y los permisos secretos otorgados por el Gobierno danés a los Estados Unidos para almacenar armas nucleares en Groenlandia. Las instalaciones abandonadas dejaron combustible, desechos y otros contaminantes. Los reportajes de Groenlandia continúan cuestionando quién pagará por las futuras limpiezas. La relación militar protegió los intereses estratégicos de los Estados Unidos, mientras que los costos humanos y ambientales recayeron de manera desproporcionada sobre los groenlandeses.

Groenlandia dejó de ser formalmente una colonia en 1953, obtuvo autonomía en 1979 y amplió su autogobierno en 2009. La Ley de Autogobierno reconoce a los groenlandeses como un pueblo con derecho a la autodeterminación y establece un camino hacia la independencia. Washington reabrió su consulado en Nuuk en 2020, y la cooperación se intensificó en materia de comercio, educación, minería e investigación. Los gobiernos de Groenlandia (desde Kuupik Kleist hasta Jens-Frederik Nielsen) han acogido con beneplácito los vínculos económicos con Washington, pero rechazan la tendencia de este último a exigir cada vez más a la isla para satisfacer sus necesidades militares.

De Monroe a Donroe

La exigencia de Trump respecto a Groenlandia forma parte de una política hemisférica más amplia. La Doctrina Monroe de 1823 advertía a las potencias europeas contra nuevas intervenciones coloniales en las Américas. Presentada como anticolonial, se transformó en una reivindicación de la supremacía estadounidense. El corolario de Theodore Roosevelt de 1904 afirmaba el derecho de intervención en América Latina, proporcionando una justificación ideológica para ocupaciones, cambios de régimen y el control de activos estratégicos.

Los partidarios de Trump rebautizaron su última versión como la “Doctrina Donroe”. Esta denominación vincula la presión sobre Groenlandia con las exigencias relativas al Canal de Panamá, las amenazas contra Cuba y Colombia, las reivindicaciones sobre Canadá y la intervención de los Estados Unidos en Venezuela. A finales de 2025, la Casa Blanca proclamó formalmente un Corolario  Trump a la Doctrina de Monroe, en el que se afirmaba el liderazgo de los Estados Unidos en todo “nuestro hemisferio”. Groenlandia queda arrastrada a esta esfera porque geográficamente forma parte de América del Norte, aunque esté vinculada políticamente a Dinamarca y su pueblo inuit posea su propio derecho a la autodeterminación. Esta doctrina contiene una contradicción reveladora. Trump denuncia el control europeo sobre Groenlandia como un anacronismo, al tiempo que exige que la isla sea transferida a los Estados Unidos. El colonialismo no se ha abolido; simplemente cambia el colonizador propuesto. Las referencias de Trump a los minerales, las rutas marítimas y la geografía militar reducen a Groenlandia a un activo y a sus 56.000 habitantes a un obstáculo en una transacción entre potencias.

Una crisis dentro de la alianza occidental

Las amenazas de Trump provocaron una ruptura extraordinaria entre los Estados Unidos y Europa. Dinamarca no es un adversario, sino un aliado de la OTAN cuyas tropas lucharon junto a los soldados estadounidenses en Afganistán. La amenaza de arrebatar territorio a un aliado por la fuerza ataca la premisa misma de la alianza. La primera ministra danesa, Mette Frederiksen advirtió que un ataque de los Estados Unidos contra otro país de la OTAN pondría fin al orden de seguridad de la posguerra. Los gobiernos europeos se unieron en torno al principio de que las fronteras no pueden modificarse mediante la coacción, un principio que invocan contra Rusia en Ucrania.

La crisis puso de manifiesto la dependencia de Europa. La OTAN no cuenta con un procedimiento claro para defender a un miembro frente a su miembro más poderoso. Los Estados europeos dependen en gran medida del poderío militar de los Estados Unidos, al tiempo que se les pide que resistan la coacción estadounidense. Copenhague respondió con una diplomacia cautelosa, un mayor gasto militar en el Ártico y la insistencia en que las decisiones corresponden a Groenlandia y a Dinamarca. Francia, Alemania, los países nórdicos y la Unión Europea expresaron su solidaridad, pero el episodio intensificó los llamado a la autonomía estratégica europea. También dañó la pretensión de Washington de liderar una alianza de democracias contra el revisionismo autoritario.

El 18 de septiembre de 2026, Trump anunció un nuevo acuerdo trilateral de seguridad tras meses de negociaciones, reivindicando el “control permanente” sobre la seguridad de Groenlandia. Los líderes daneses y groenlandeses lo describieron en términos más limitados: una ampliación de la cooperación militar con los Estados Unidos que preserva la soberanía y la autodeterminación de Groenlandia. El texto completo aún debe firmarse y aprobarse. Si su versión es correcta, el resultado confirma lo que era evidente desde el principio: los Estados Unidos podría obtener acuerdos de seguridad adicionales sin llegar a ser dueño de Groenlandia. Sin embargo, la presión que precedió al acuerdo sigue siendo una advertencia sobre las negociaciones llevadas a cabo bajo amenazas.

Groenlandia habla por sí misma

La respuesta de Groenlandia ha combinado rechazo, unidad y complejidad política. Kalaallit Nunaat – el nombre groenlandés del país – se convirtió en el centro de las declaraciones de que Groenlandia pertenece a su pueblo y no está en venta. En marzo de 2025, grandes manifestaciones en Nuuk, Sisimiut y Qaanaaq marcharon bajo la bandera roja y blanca de Erfalasorput. Los manifestantes le pidieron a Trump que respetara a los inuit, a su país y a su nacionalidad. Los partidos políticos de Groenlandia, a pesar de profundos desacuerdos sobre el ritmo y las condiciones económicas de la independencia, condenaron conjuntamente la presión externa. El Parlamento prohibió las donaciones políticas extranjeras y anónimas, defendiendo explícitamente la integridad de la democracia groenlandesa en medio del interés de las grandes potencias.

El colonialismo danés dejó profundas heridas: asimilación forzada, ingeniería social, desarrollo desigual y decisiones tomadas en Copenhague sobre la tierra y el pueblo groenlandeses (toda la cuarta temporada de la popular serie de televisión Borgen, en 2022, se centró en un conflicto entre Copenhague y Nuuk por el descubrimiento de un nuevo yacimiento de petróleo con implicaciones de China y Rusia). Muchos groenlandeses desean la independencia, y algunos ven el creciente interés de los Estados Unidos como una ventaja para atraer inversiones y lograr una relación más equitativa con Dinamarca.

Groenlandia revela el verdadero contenido de la Doctrina Donroe: una afirmación del siglo XXI de que la geografía otorga a Washington derechos superiores sobre los pueblos vecinos. La respuesta de Groenlandia es igualmente moderna y universal. La ubicación estratégica no anula la soberanía popular, los minerales no borran la identidad nacional, y ninguna gran potencia adquiere un país simplemente por declarar que lo necesita.

Vijay Prashad es un historiador y periodista indio. Es autor de cuarenta libros, entre los que se incluyen Balas de Washington, Una estrella roja sobre el Tercer Mundo, Las naciones oscuras: una historia del Tercer Mundo; Las naciones pobres: una posible historia del Sur Global y How the International Monetary Fund Suffocates Africa, escrito con Grieve Chelwa. Es el director ejecutivo de Tricontinental: Instituto de Investigación Social, corresponsal jefe de Globetrotter, y el editor jefe de LeftWord Books (Nueva Delhi). También ha hecho apariciones en las películas Shadow World (2016) y Two Meetings (2017).

Este artículo fue elaborado por Globetrotter.

Footage flooded the internet on Saturday, September 19, showing Gaza Health Ministry Director General Dr. Munir al-Bursh asking young men to bring the rest of his son’s body as they carried his remains.

“Bring me his other half!” the grief-stricken father said. “We were supposed to go to heaven together today, but you got there before me, son.” 

According to media reports, Dr. Munir’s son, Bashir (28), was struck by a drone shortly after leaving his family’s tent in the al-Zahra neighborhood, near the Civil Defense headquarters, west of the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza Strip.

Bashir was targeted while helping people fill their water containers, just meters away from his father. For many, the proximity of Dr. Munir implies that he, too, may have been a target of the attack.

Israel’s systematic targeting of health workers

The prominent Palestinian health official has been in the crosshairs of the Israeli forces since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal aggression on Gaza, due to his leading role in managing a crumbling health system that was severely devastated during the war.

Moreover, Dr. Al-Bursh is widely known for frequently reporting on Israeli assaults on the Gaza medical sector, and highlighting the dire conditions of medical facilities inside the besieged areas via international media outlets.

Al-Bursh and his family were previously targeted by Israeli warplanes at the very beginning of the war. In December 2023, his 13-year-old daughter, Jinan, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in Jabalia. The aerial attack also resulted in the injury of Dr. Munir and the rest of his family.

The deaths of Bashir and Jinan al-Bursh echo the murder of 15-year-old Ibrahim Abu Safiya by an Israeli drone in October 2024. Ibrahim was the son of the former director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya.

Read more: ‘They brought me here to kill me,’ Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya tells lawyer

The day Bashir al-Bursh was assassinated, and the days that followed, saw the killing of several people by the Israeli Army across different parts of the war-ravaged enclave.

This took place as world leaders addressed the UN General Assembly. For the third year in a row, these addresses and the deliberations have failed to stop Israel’s aggression against Gaza and its ongoing heinous crimes carried out across West Asia.

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Donald Trump’s campaign to bring Greenland under United States control has often been dismissed as bluster. That is a mistake. Behind the language of a property deal lies a serious attempt to revive an old imperial principle: that Washington may decide the political and economic future of the entire Western Hemisphere. Greenland, strategically placed between North America and Europe, has become a test of that claim – and of whether the sovereignty of a small Indigenous nation counts when it conflicts with the ambitions of a great power.

Trump floated buying Greenland during his first presidency in 2019. After his re-election, the proposal became more aggressive. In December 2024 he declared US “ownership and control” of Greenland as an “absolute necessity.” On January 7, 2025, he refused to rule out military or economic coercion against Greenland and the Panama Canal, saying, “We need Greenland for national security purposes.” He subsequently insisted that the United States would obtain the island “one way or the other.” The claim mixed several arguments: Greenland is vital to missile defense, Russia and China threaten the Arctic, Greenland’s rare-earth deposits are strategically valuable, and Greenlanders would supposedly welcome US rule.

The last claim was demonstrably false. A January 2025 survey conducted in both Greenlandic and Danish found that 85% of Greenland’s population opposed leaving the Danish realm to join the United States, while only 6% supported it. Yet the same poll showed a majority favoring eventual independence. That distinction is central. Greenlanders’ desire to end Danish colonial tutelage cannot be converted into consent to US annexation.

A military relationship without annexation

The security case for US ownership is misleading because Washington already enjoys extensive military rights in Greenland. The relationship began during the Second World War. With Denmark occupied by Nazi Germany, its ambassador in Washington signed a 1941 agreement permitting the United States to defend Greenland and construct facilities there. Denmark sought a US withdrawal after the war, but Cold War strategy prevailed.

The 1951 Defense of Greenland Agreement, concluded under the North Atlantic Treaty, authorized the United States to establish and operate “defense areas.” It enabled the rapid construction of Thule Air Base – renamed Pituffik Space Base in 2023 – at a location ideal for the shortest air and missile routes between the Soviet Union and North America. At its Cold War height, the US operated numerous installations across Greenland. Today Pituffik, Washington’s northernmost military base, performs missile-warning, missile-defense and space-surveillance functions.

The agreement offers Washington wide operational freedom. A 2004 amendment – the Igaliku Agreement – recognized Greenland’s Home Rule government, made Pituffik the sole existing defense area, and required consultation before significant changes or the creation of new defense areas. It also established cooperation on economic, technical, and environmental issues. In other words, if the United States believes more radar, ports, airfields or personnel are necessary, a legal mechanism already exists to negotiate them with Denmark and Greenland. Sovereignty is, therefore, not a military requirement.

The history of the bases also explains why “security” is not a neutral word in Greenland. In 1953, Danish authorities ordered 116 Inughuit – 27 families – to leave the newly established Qaanaaq, while the others relocated to settlements elsewhere in the district. Camp Century was constructed beneath the ice in 1959-60 and was connected with the secret Project Iceworm proposal for an extensive network of nuclear-missile launch sites.

In 1968, a US B-52 carrying four hydrogen bombs crashed on the sea ice at Thule Air Base, causing plutonium and other contamination. The accident exposed the inconsistency between Denmark’s publicly declared policy against nuclear weapons on Danish territory in peacetime and the Danish government’s secret permissions for the US to store nuclear weapons in Greenland. Abandoned installations left fuel, waste and other pollution. Greenlandic reporting continues to question who will pay for future clean-ups. The military relationship protected US strategic interests while its human and environmental costs were disproportionately borne by Greenlanders.

Greenland ceased formally to be a colony in 1953, gained Home Rule in 1979 and expanded self-government in 2009. The Self-Government Act recognizes Greenlanders as a people entitled to self-determination and provides a path to independence. Washington reopened its Nuuk consulate in 2020, and cooperation grew in trade, education, mining, and research. Greenland’s governments (from Kuupik Kleist to Jens-Frederik Nielsen) have welcomed economic ties with Washington, but reject the tendency of Washington to want more and more from the island for its military needs.

From Monroe to Donroe

Trump’s Greenland demand belongs to a wider hemispheric policy. The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 warned European powers against new colonial intervention in the Americas. Presented as anti-colonial, it evolved into a claim of US supremacy. Theodore Roosevelt’s 1904 corollary asserted a right of intervention in Latin America, furnishing ideological cover for occupations, regime changes, and control over strategic assets.

Trump’s supporters rechristened its latest version the “Donroe Doctrine.” The label links pressure on Greenland with demands concerning the Panama Canal, threats against Cuba and Colombia, claims over Canada, and US intervention in Venezuela. In late 2025, the White House formally proclaimed a Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, asserting US leadership throughout “our hemisphere.” Greenland is swept into this sphere because it is geographically part of North America, even though it is politically tied to Denmark and its Inuit people possess their own right of self-determination. This doctrine contains a revealing contradiction. Trump denounces European control of Greenland as an anachronism while demanding that the island be transferred to the United States. Colonialism is not abolished; the proposed colonizer merely changes. Trump’s references to minerals, sea routes, and military geography reduce Greenland to an asset and its 56,000 people to an obstacle in a transaction between powers.

A crisis inside the Western alliance

Trump’s threats produced an extraordinary rupture between the United States and Europe. Denmark is not an adversary, but a NATO ally whose troops fought alongside US soldiers in Afghanistan. A threat to seize territory from one ally by force attacks the premise of the alliance itself. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned that a US attack on another NATO country would bring the post-war security order to an end. European governments rallied behind the principle that borders cannot be changed by coercion, a principle they invoke against Russia in Ukraine.

The crisis exposed Europe’s dependency. NATO has no comfortable procedure for defending one member against its strongest member. European states rely heavily on US military power while being asked to resist US coercion. Copenhagen responded with careful diplomacy, greater Arctic military spending, and insistence that decisions belong to Greenland and Denmark. France, Germany, the Nordic states, and the European Union expressed solidarity, but the episode sharpened calls for European strategic autonomy. It also damaged Washington’s claim to lead an alliance of democracies against authoritarian revisionism.

On September 18, 2026, Trump announced an emerging trilateral security agreement after months of negotiation, claiming “permanent control” over Greenland’s security. Danish and Greenlandic leaders described it more narrowly: an expansion of US military cooperation that preserves sovereignty and Greenlandic self-determination. The full text remains to be signed and approved. If their account holds, the outcome confirms what was apparent from the beginning: the United States could obtain additional security arrangements without owning Greenland. Yet the pressure that preceded the deal remains a warning about negotiations conducted under threats.

Greenland speaks for itself

Greenland’s response has combined rejection, unity, and political complexity. Kalaallit Nunaat – the Greenlandic name for the country – became the center of declarations that Greenland belongs to its people and is not for sale. In March 2025, large demonstrations in Nuuk, Sisimiut, and Qaanaaq marched under the red-and-white Erfalasorput flag. Protesters told Trump to respect Inuit, their country, and their nationality. Greenland’s political parties, despite deep disagreements over the speed and economic terms of independence, jointly condemned external pressure. Parliament prohibited foreign and anonymous political donations, explicitly defending the integrity of Greenlandic democracy amid great-power interest.

Danish colonialism left profound injuries: forced assimilation, social engineering, unequal development, and decisions taken in Copenhagen about Greenlandic land and people (the entire fourth season of the popular television drama, Borgen, in 2022 centered on a conflict between Copenhagen and Nuuk about the discovery of a new oil field with a China and Russia angle). Many Greenlanders want independence, and some see heightened US interest as leverage for investment and a more equal relationship with Denmark.

Greenland reveals the real content of the Donroe Doctrine: a twenty-first-century claim that geography gives Washington superior rights over neighboring peoples. The answer from Greenland is equally modern and universal. Strategic location does not cancel popular sovereignty, minerals do not erase nationhood, and no great power acquires a country merely by declaring that it needs one.

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).

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

On September 8, a 27-year-old researcher named Jacob Coxon, a few months into a job at Anthropic (a leading US AI company) after three years at OpenAI, announced his resignation on X. “Neither company is acting responsibly,” he wrote. “They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” Within a day, the post had been read more than 100 million times. Four days later, Anthropic’s chief executive, Dario Amodei, published an essay titled “We Must Pace the Frontier,” declaring that “we must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models” or risk “losing control of AI systems, misuse of AI for cyberattacks and bioterrorism, and serious economic disruption.” Within hours, Sam Altman of OpenAI agreed, Elon Musk posted “Dario is right,” and Google and Microsoft fell into line.

Coxon was interviewed by Time, Axios, and NBC within two days, and Amodei’s essay was front-page news across the business press. Compare that with what happens to people who expose the harms AI is causing right now. Warnings about AI-generated fraud, model bias including racist bias, about chatbots and vulnerable users, about surveillance and AI’s use in military kill chains and the genocide in Gaza, get a news cycle at best. A warning about a hypothetical machine superintelligence got a global media event and a policy proposal from the industry’s leadership within four days.

AI systems do need regulating. The question is why the men who spent a decade racing towards what they now call an existential threat discovered their conscience on the same weekend, and what kind of regulation they are actually asking for.

What the Dario essay asks for

Stripped of its language of alignment and catastrophe, Dario Amodei’s essay is a list of demands. First, outside “evaluators” from bodies such as METR, a lab that tests AI models, would be given “company badges, desks, and laptops” inside the big labs. Second, the leading companies “within democratic countries” would jointly set safety standards and limits on how fast they build, for which Amodei asks the US government for “a narrow waiver” from antitrust law. Third, models crossing certain capability thresholds would have to carry “certifications” of good behavior, and limits on the computing power used to train them are put on the table. Fourth, the United States must “not sell powerful AI chips or semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China.” Amodei is candid about the goal: done well, these measures “would slow China’s progress enough to widen America’s lead significantly.”

The words “open source” do not appear in the essay. They do not need to. AI models come in two kinds. Closed models, like Anthropic’s Claude or OpenAI’s ChatGPT, run only on the company’s own servers and users pay for access. Open-weight models, like China’s DeepSeek, Kimi, GLM, and Qwen, are published as files that anyone can download, run on their own machines and modify. A certificate that must travel with a model cannot be attached to a file that anyone may copy. A ceiling on computing power freezes the ranking of the firms that already occupy the frontier. An antitrust waiver lets the five largest companies write rules for everyone else. The effect is a licensing regime only the incumbents can satisfy; the technology publication The Register called it regulatory capture with a nicer name.

The incident that supposedly proves it

The essay’s centerpiece is what Amodei calls the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident of July. In plain terms: OpenAI was testing its AI “agents,” programs that can act on their own, on a set of hacking puzzles. Roughly a third of the puzzles were impossible, driving the agents to look for ways to cheat the marking. The agents were supposed to be sealed off from each other without access to the internet. In practice, they weren’t, and through that loophole they found their way into a second test environment that was connected to the open internet. From there, one of them found login credentials that OpenAI staff had left exposed online, used them to break into Hugging Face, a website where AI models are shared, and rummaged through private files to work out how their answers were being marked. Amodei describes this as “a swarm of agents” acting as “a fanatically devoted collective” that, with more capability, “could have caused catastrophic damage.”

The people whose job is computer security reached a different conclusion. The investigation by METR, the very body Amodei wants embedded in every lab, found that sandboxes meant to isolate the AI agents were not, that the credentials should never have been exposed, and that OpenAI’s security team had noticed the agents misbehaving days earlier and done nothing. One practitioner quoted by IANS Research summed it up: “many failures and lack of controls that could have prevented this from happening in the first place.” Any bank that ran untested software with live internet access and exposed passwords would be found negligent. Routine containment, of the kind every serious IT department practices, would have stopped it.

Calling a security lapse a “fanatically devoted collective” is not analysis. It is anthropomorphizing, dressing an operational failure in the language of science fiction. And it is useful. A company whose product is being marketed as near-superintelligence that must be restrained for humanity’s sake has a far better story for investors than a company that left its passwords on the internet. The doom narrative and the hype narrative are part of the same cycle. Both say: this technology is so powerful that you cannot afford to be without it, and only we can be trusted with it.

Why now

The timing becomes clear once one looks at the money. The five big American technology companies are budgeted to spend close to $690 billion this year on data centers and chips, and borrowing now funds 32% of that spending, up from 9% two years ago. On the very day Amodei’s essay appeared, Altman announced that OpenAI’s stock market listing, which bankers had been preparing at valuations of up to $1 trillion, would not happen in 2026 because it was “an ill-advised moment,” citing safety. The next day, the Financial Times reported that Anthropic’s much-advertised profit margin of “above 80%” is calculated before two of its largest costs: the cost of creating its models and the revenue it shares with Amazon, its main distributor.

Meanwhile, the competition has arrived, and it is nearly free. On OpenRouter, a widely used exchange through which software developers send requests to AI models, Chinese open-weight models now handle 58% of the traffic from American firms; a year ago American models held 70%. DeepSeek and Qwen charge 60 to 90% less than Anthropic and OpenAI. A firm that cannot win on price, cannot fund its next model from earnings and cannot yet sell shares to the public has one option left: change the rules.

Washington says no, for its own reasons

The Trump administration has so far refused. The president’s response was that “whoever wins AI, wins,” and his AI adviser David Sacks called the whole affair a “doomer psyop” aimed at open-source models. This is not a defense of the public interest. It is arithmetic. According to ING, spending on AI equipment, software and data centers accounted for roughly a third of all US economic growth in the second quarter of this year; on the broadest measure, half. The rest of the economy is being squeezed by the war on Iran: petrol prices have risen 53% since it began, consumer inflation reached 4.2% in May, and energy costs are up 23.5% on the year. Take the data-center boom out, and the United States is close to recession. Washington cannot allow the frontier to be paced because the frontier is the only thing still growing.

Two futures

China’s official response was brief. “Fearmongering, confrontation and vicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance, which serves no one’s interest,” said foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun on September 14. A more revealing reply came from inside DeepSeek, where Shengyu Liu, a kernel software engineer, published a widely circulated essay arguing that the safest path is to keep frontier AI open and cheap rather than concentrated in any single company, American or Chinese. As AI develops, he wrote, society “may be pulled toward one of two extremes: communism or Cyberpunk 2077.” In the first, “productive capacity is liberated on an enormous scale, and people’s standard of living rises substantially.” In the second, “a handful of technology companies control most of society’s resources”; a tiny number of people have access to the most advanced AI, “while most people are left with only weak, second-rate AI.”

That is the real choice, and it is a choice about ownership, not about speed. Real regulation would hold companies liable for the harm done by the software they run, including inside their own labs, and would treat running powerful agents without containment as the negligence it is. It would cost the labs money, which is why it is not in Amodei’s essay. What is in the essay is a request to be made gatekeepers of a technology built on borrowed money that its owners now fear they cannot sell.

The frontier does not need pacing. It needs owners who can be held to account, and a public that is not frightened into paying monopoly prices for AI services by the very people who build it.

Bappa Sinha is a veteran technologist interested in the impact of technology on society and politics.

President Xi Jinping is set to visit to the United States from September 23-25. His visit must be understood as more than an encounter between two heads of state, but it must be seen as an encounter between two possible futures.

In one future, the United States imposes a spiral of confrontation against China. Trade disputes harden into economic warfare, then economic warfare intensifies into technological blockades, technological blockades produce military encirclement, and finally military encirclement creates incidents, and incidents the danger of becoming an unimaginable war.

In the other future, the two countries accept that neither can destroy the other without destroying much of humanity. They recognize that coexistence is not an act of charity and collaboration is not a concession. Both are necessities.

That is the significance of President Xi’s decision to travel to the United States. China’s foreign ministry has described head-of-state diplomacy as having an “irreplaceable” role in guiding relations between the two countries. The visit follows President Donald Trump’s trip to China in May and continuing negotiations over tariffs, trade, and investment. There are indications that President Xi will travel with a substantial delegation of Chinese business leaders. These facts suggest that Beijing wants to move the relationship away from the permanent crisis and towards practical engagement.

But diplomacy between China and the United States cannot merely be a photo opportunity. Nor should it be understood as a negotiation in which one side must surrender to the other. It must be based on a sober recognition of reality. Or to be precise, four realities.

The first reality is that China cannot be contained. China is not a minor country whose development can be suffocated by sanctions. It has a population of more than 1.4 billion people, a vast industrial system, an increasingly sophisticated scientific community, and deep commercial relationships across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. Whatever one thinks of China, it is absurd to imagine that it can simply be excluded from the world economy. The attempt to contain China has already produced an extraordinary catalogue of restrictions: tariffs, semiconductor controls, investment prohibitions, sanctions on Chinese companies, naval patrols along China’s coastline, and the construction of new military arrangements from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean. Each of these measures is presented as defensive. Taken together, however, they form an architecture of confrontation. There is a dangerous illusion in Washington that pressure will force China to abandon its development. No Chinese government could accept such a demand. After the century of humiliation (from the Opium Wars to the Japanese invasion) the restoration of national sovereignty and the improvement of living standards are not negotiable matters for the Chinese people. The United States may slow certain aspects of China’s development, but it cannot persuade China to return to poverty.

The second reality is that economic separation is neither simple nor painless. The United States and China remain deeply connected through trade, investment, supply chains, scientific knowledge, and consumer markets. US farmers depend upon Chinese buyers. US companies depend upon Chinese manufacturing and upon Chinese consumers. China, meanwhile, benefits from access to US technology, agricultural products, and capital. Negotiators are now discussing reciprocal tariff reductions and new mechanisms for trade and investment. These are modest measures, but they acknowledge an important truth: economic warfare injures both countries. Tariffs are announced with nationalist speeches, but their costs appear quietly in grocery bills, factory closures, disrupted supply chains, and lost employment. Working people in the United States do not benefit when China is weakened. Their difficulties are rooted principally in decisions made by their own ruling class: decades of deindustrialization, the power of finance, attacks on trade unions, the privatization of public services, and the refusal to undertake serious social investment. China did not close the factories of the US Midwest. US corporations closed them in search of higher profits. The answer to inequality in either country is not economic nationalism by the United States.

The third reality is that humanity faces problems that cannot be solved by either country acting alone. The climate catastrophe does not carry a passport. Carbon emitted in one country heats the atmosphere everywhere. The United States possesses immense scientific and financial resources, while China has developed enormous productive capacity in solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles, public transport, and renewable-energy infrastructure. Collaboration between them could accelerate a worldwide energy transition. Confrontation will delay it precisely when delay has become intolerable. The same is true of public health. The COVID-19 pandemic showed us the human cost of secrecy, competition, and vaccine nationalism. Artificial intelligence creates another urgent area for cooperation. These technologies cannot be governed adequately by rival military doctrines or private corporations seeking maximum profit. The two countries must develop common safeguards against autonomous weapons, destabilizing cyberattacks, mass surveillance, and the use of artificial intelligence to intensify social inequality.

Finally, the fourth reality is the question of war. China and the United States are nuclear-armed powers. Any direct military conflict between them would have consequences beyond calculation. This is why Taiwan must not be transformed into the trigger for a catastrophic confrontation. The one-China framework and the existing diplomatic understandings must not be hollowed out by provocations, arms sales, or gestures designed for domestic political theater.

Peace requires restraint from both sides, but restraint cannot mean that the United States surrounds China with military bases and warships and then demands that China alone remain calm. Security cannot be achieved through the permanent insecurity of another country. There will, of course, be disagreements. Collaboration does not require agreement on every political question. Nor does coexistence require silence about differences. But disagreement must be conducted through diplomacy, international law, and the institutions of the United Nations, not through sanctions, threats, and military exercises.

The countries of the Global South have a particular interest in the success of this visit. They do not want to be instructed to choose between China and the United States. They do not want their ports, minerals, telecommunications systems, and political institutions turned into battlefields in a new cold war. They want access to finance, technology, medicine, and markets without political subordination. They want development, not recruitment into rival military camps. Xi Jinping’s visit therefore carries a responsibility that extends far beyond Washington and Beijing. The world does not need an agreement merely to divide markets between Chinese and US corporations. It needs a commitment to reduce the danger of war, dismantle unilateral coercive measures, restore normal economic relations, cooperate on climate and public health, and strengthen the principles of the United Nations Charter.

The importance of the visit lies not in ceremony but in possibility. It offers both countries an opportunity to step back from the cliff. The United States must abandon the fantasy that it can preserve its primacy by preventing China’s development. China, for its part, has repeatedly said that it does not seek to replace the United States as a hegemonic power. That principle must become the basis of a durable relationship: no containment, no domination, no war.

There is an old habit among powerful states of treating compromise as weakness. In the nuclear age, the opposite is true. It takes no courage to order another warship into contested waters. It takes political courage to recognize that one’s adversary also has legitimate interests, that coexistence requires reciprocity, and that the survival of humanity is more important than the vanity of supremacy.

This visit should therefore carry a simple message from Washington to the world: collaboration is not surrender, diplomacy is not weakness, and peace is not an abstraction.

Confrontation offers neither country a future.

Collaboration offers the world a chance.

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).

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

On October 4, nearly 160 million Brazilians will go to the polls to elect their next president, vice president, members of Congress, governors, and state legislators from the country’s various states. If no presidential candidate receives more than 50% of the valid votes, a runoff election will be held on October 25.

At this time, 13 presidential candidates are vying for the presidency in Brasília, although polls clearly point to two candidates vying for the presidency of Latin America’s most economically powerful country.

On one side is Brazil’s current president, the former union leader and progressive Luis Inácio Lula da Silva. Lula served as president from 2003 to 2011 with very high approval ratings, although following corruption allegations, he was imprisoned and sentenced to nine years.

However, after over 500 days in detention, a judge ordered his release, ruling that the proceedings were flawed. The Supreme Court of Justice called the incident a “historic error.” Following that, Lula faced off against then-far-right President Jair Bolsonaro and defeated him in the 2022 election. Now Lula hopes to be re-elected once again.

At the forefront is none other than Jair Bolsonaro’s son, Flávio Bolsonaro, who has leveraged his father’s reputation to boost his own. This is because Jair Bolsonaro was found guilty of several crimes that, according to the Brazilian justice system, were intended to prevent Lula’s inauguration and promote a coup d’état. Jair Bolsonaro is currently in house arrest for those crimes.

Consequently, a significant portion of Brazilian society, as well as international politicians such as Donald Trump, consider Bolsonaro’s imprisonment to be unjust. This explains how his son Flávio – a lawyer and businessman who currently serves as a senator – has managed to garner significant support in his bid to win the presidency on October 4.

Thus, two clearly distinct political and economic models are pitted against one another. Lula belongs to a political tradition that seeks to strengthen the state, reduce extreme poverty, invest in social programs, and diversify trade partners (such as China and India), all in line with a clearly pro-sovereignty discourse.

For his part, Flávio Bolsonaro promises to continue on his father’s path: economic neoliberalism, reducing the size of the state, building closer ties with the private sector, and – perhaps most importantly – placing Brazil once again under the influence of the Trump administration, which supports the far-right candidate.

Read more: Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro all set to face off this October in Brazil’s presidential election

Clearly, a victory for the far right – which is close to Washington – would represent a sharp shift in the region’s current economic and political course. Brazil accounts for nearly 50% of the region’s total GDP, so a victory for a Trump ally would drastically alter not only the political landscape but also the economic one. On the other hand, a victory for Lula would signal a “halt” (probably the most significant of all possible outcomes) to the wave of victories by the Latin American right and far right – allies and supporters of US hemispheric and military policy – that have swept the electoral landscape in recent years.

What do the polls say?

Since the start of the presidential race, Lula has maintained a lead over his political opponent. However, that lead has been narrowing as the weeks have gone by, raising the possibility that the runoff election, scheduled for October 25, will be a very close race. This is because, it appears, neither candidate will manage to secure more than 50% of the vote to win in a single round.

According to a poll by the MDA Pesquisa Institute, Lula holds a solid lead over Bolsonaro: 40.06% to 30.4%. Augusto Cury comes in third with 6% of the vote, while the remaining candidates trail behind this mark. According to this poll, in the event of a runoff, Lula would win with 47.3% against Bolsonaro’s likely 40%.

However, other polls paint a different picture, in which Lula remains in the lead but by a very narrow margin. This is according to an AtlasIntel poll, which shows Lula with 46% of the vote, while Bolsonaro would receive 44% in the first round. In the runoff, the gap would disappear, and both candidates would receive nearly 47% of the vote (a technical tie).

A corruption scandal that is shaking up the political landscape

However, everything could change in the wake of a scandal that has rocked Brazilian politics. In late 2025, the former owner of Banco Máster SA, Daniel Vorcaro, allegedly committed a serious case of bank fraud. Since his arrest in March 2026, his conversations, friendships, and connections have all been under close investigation.

One of the people who has come under scrutiny is Flávio Bolsonaro, who confirmed that he had asked the banker for money to make a film about his father called “Dark Horse”. The Federal Police are investigating this case to determine whether Bolsonaro participated in any illegal activity.

Meanwhile, Lula’s inner circle has also been affected. The judge who ordered Jair Bolsonaro’s arrest, Alexandre de Moraes, is alleged to have exchanged messages with Vorcaro. Moraes has been portrayed as a judge close to Lula and thus Bolsonaro and his supporters have seized on the revelation of the messages to call for Moraes’s removal and indirectly accuse the government of suspicious activities.

The debate has led to a serious crisis within the Brazilian judiciary because a decision to investigate Moraes was postponed, prompting accusations of political bias among the judges.

Iranian news outlet Press TV called the detention of its West Bank correspondent Naqaa Hamed by the Israeli forces an “aggressive terrorist operation” aimed at silencing the truth about its occupation and genocide of Palestinians. It demanded the immediate intervention of the international community for her release.

“The desperate attempt by the Zionist war and security machine to block the flow of free news and boycott structured crimes in the West Bank is clear evidence of the occupier’s fear of independent” reporters “who expose widespread human right violations,” the Press TV statement, published on Thursday, September 17, said.

Naqaa Hamed was abducted by the Israeli armed forces from a checkpoint at Tuqu, near Bethlehem, in the occupied Palestinian territory on September 15. 

She, along with her cameraman, were returning after reporting about rising Israeli settler violence on Palestinians in Masafer Yatta.

One eyewitness, a TRT journalist accompanying Hamed in her car, claimed that they were detained at the checkpoint and made to sit on the ground for 45 minutes while Hamed was taken alone for interrogation.

After the interrogation, cameraman and TRT journalists were let go but Hamed was arrested and sent to an unknown location.

Later it was reported that her detention has been extended until September 23 by an Israeli court.

Though no official confirmation has come forward about the charges against Hamed, Israeli media quoted unidentified military sources claiming her arrest was linked to her alleged cooperation with “the enemy entity,” presumably Iran, and espionage.

Hamed (38), a Palestinian-American and mother of three children, has been subjected to repeated physical attacks by Israeli forces in the last few months. She has also been subjected to a smear campaign on social media. 

According to Press TV, rubber bullets were fired at her when she was reporting near Qalandia camp in December 2025. She was injured again in August this year by an Israeli stun grenade and tear gas fire.

The intimidation and smear campaigns on social media, started by pages affiliated with the Israeli occupation regime, targeted Hamed by questioning her credibility and calling her a part of the “Iranian propaganda machine.” 

Israel is the worst place to be a journalist

Israel has one of the worst records when it comes to killing and arresting journalists. Hundreds of Palestinian journalists have been either killed or arrested by the Israeli occupation forces since the beginning of the war and genocide in Gaza. 

According to various sources Israel has killed over 250 journalists and media workers in the West Bank and Gaza since October 2023. 

According to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, currently nearly 40 Palestinian journalists are in Israeli detention, including five women. Almost half of these journalists are kept in prison under the draconian provision of Administrative Detention, which allows the authorities to keep them in jail for an indefinite period without any formal charges or trial.

The Iranian media channel Press TV underlined that Hamed’s arrest by Israeli forces violates international laws about immunity to journalists in war zones. It demanded the UN, its High Commissioner for Human Rights, and other international human rights groups to come out of their “shell of inaction and meaningful silence” and take measures to end Israel’s impunity.

“As long as responsible institutions remain in the shell of silence and inaction, Naqaa Hamed will not be the first, nor the last journalist to be targeted by the illegal actions of the Zionist regime,” the Press TV statement said.

Latin America and the Caribbean countries are being re-colonized. This time it is not by Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, France, and Portugal, but by the United States.

At a period of time the United States had an anti-colonial position and had advocated for the ending of colonialism. That was one of the features of the Monroe Doctrine that has become somewhat obscured since the US became so bellicose.

Today, in a de facto way it has become a super colonial power. It is imposing its will on regions and countries. Those that stand up for their rights are sanctioned, destabilized and sometimes physically removed.

The fact that it used its military might to kidnap a sitting president, President Maduro of Venezuela, is a clear indication that the United States has decided to ignore international law and to get its own way.

Strikingly, only the President of Brazil protested vigorously. Our Caribbean leaders have generally been tight lipped.

The United States has gone even further. They have, using the guise of fighting drugs, established a strong military presence in the region. They have been murdering hundreds of persons traveling in small boats in the Caribbean. Without producing a scintilla of evidence, without attempting to board the boats and get evidence, the US just killed the occupants. We may never know if any were really involved in drug trafficking.

There has been a deafening silence from Latin America and the Caribbean leaders to those atrocities. As if these events were not enough, many of the governments in the region are, on the request/orders from the United States, acting against their countries’ best interests. The ending of the cooperation in health with Cuba which was in place for more than fifty years and which benefited millions of the region’s citizens, is a case in point.

That has left a massive gap in the health sector of the region. The US has not provided any assistance to help with the dislocation and shortage of technical personnel created by their insistence to remove Cubans.

The US is now also pressing regional governments to stop doing business with China. Many governments are beginning to comply with those orders as we see more big contracts going to US companies, despite some of those companies having poor performance records.

If some newspaper stories are to be believed, (and they have not been countered) in some cases Chinese contractors won bids for certain projects, but they were not given the jobs, they went to US firms instead.

The US and other Western countries have ignored us and kept us in a state of underdevelopment since independence. Now that we are getting assistance from China to build important and much needed infrastructure to facilitate socio-economic progress we are getting push back from the US.

It appears that they want to keep us in a state of perpetual underdevelopment and in poverty.

We see the open intention to super exploit our natural resources and labor for the benefit of big business in the US. They are mainly interested in our natural resources. They do not add value in the region nor establish any type of manufacturing. Those are reserved for the rich, developed countries.

The recent “deal” with Venezuela is worse than highway robbery. Venezuela has to provide oil and gas to US companies at cost for one hundred years. This is barefaced robbery and has demonstrated that Venezuela is now a de facto colony of the US. This will not benefit the poor in the US. It is designed to enrich the huge corporations.

Venezuela was forced to abandon its long and well-known principle of standing in solidarity with the oppressed people of Palestine. It is now forced to recognise the Fascist, Apartheid Israeli regime that continues to bomb defenseless civilians in makeshift camps in Gaza, the West Bank (where ethnic cleansing is taking place) and in East Jerusalem.

Today the sovereignty of our countries is already severely compromised. If we don’t stand up now it would be completely lost.

Donald Ramotar is a former President of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana (2011-2015).

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Read in English here

La semana pasada, el 4 de septiembre, la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas aprobó una propuesta africana para un nuevo mapa mundial, que muestra el tamaño real de los países en relación con los demás. Su objetivo es corregir la visión del mundo moldeada por el mapa mundial ampliamente utilizado basado en la proyección de Mercator, creada por Gerardus Mercator, un cartógrafo flamenco del siglo XVI. El problema con el mapa de Mercator es bien conocido; por ejemplo, muestra a la isla de Groenlandia con el mismo tamaño que el continente africano, ¡a pesar de que África es 14 veces más grande que Groenlandia! En pocas palabras, los mapas de Mercator exageran enormemente el norte del mundo —los Estados Unidos y Europa— mientras que reducen África y la mayor parte de Asia. Tampoco trata con benevolencia al resto del hemisferio sur. Sudamérica, que tiene casi tres veces el tamaño de Europa, parece comparable a esta en un mapa típico de Mercator.

Aunque no existe ninguna razón geográfica por la que el hemisferio sur deba ser más pequeño que el hemisferio norte, los cartógrafos lo hicieron significativamente más pequeño porque tenía muy poca masa continental más allá de los 40 grados y, por lo tanto, se recortó. Esto significó que, en la mayoría de los mapas de Mercator, debido a que los cartógrafos occidentales recortaron gran parte del hemisferio sur, el ecuador quedó significativamente desplazado hacia abajo. El doble efecto de comprimir las zonas ecuatoriales, donde se encuentra gran parte de África, y desplazar el ecuador hacia abajo hizo que el norte del mundo, particularmente Europa y América del Norte, parecieran mucho más grandes de lo que realmente son. Por lo general, en la mayoría de los mapas de Mercator, el hemisferio norte parece el doble del tamaño del hemisferio sur, aunque ambos hemisferios son idénticos en tamaño.

Cualquier mapa, ya sea de Mercator o de cualquier otra proyección, presenta el problema de que se puede ser fiel al tamaño o a la forma, pero no a ambos. Se trata de un problema fundamental que surge al proyectar una superficie tridimensional sobre una hoja de papel bidimensional. No hay forma de hacerlo sin distorsiones. Solo un globo terráqueo puede representar fielmente la Tierra tridimensional. Pero entonces, ¿qué hacemos cuando queremos reproducir detalles geográficos para nuestros lectores en libros o artículos?

Las distorsiones evidentes de la proyección de Mercator y su enfoque eurocéntrico dieron lugar a varias alternativas, particularmente entre los cartógrafos de la izquierda amplia o progresista. Otros, especialmente en los Estados Unidos y Europa, se han opuesto a ella, argumentando que el tamaño no importa y que no les molesta que se les muestre mucho más grandes de lo que realmente son. Sin embargo, muchos discreparon e intentaron desarrollar proyecciones alternativas. La proyección de Gall-Peterson, que contó con el respaldo del gobierno socialdemócrata alemán de Willy Brandt, es una de esas proyecciones. La proyección de Hobo Dyer, que se encuentra en el dominio público global —lo que significa que cualquiera puede usarla sin pagar regalías—, es otra. Finalmente, las Naciones Unidas han puesto fin a las guerras de los mapas, con una victoria rotunda a favor de la moción presentada por las naciones africanas para utilizar mapas de área igual. La votación fue de 164 a favor de la moción, con los Estados Unidos como único voto en contra.

El objetivo del mapa de Mercator era facilitar la navegación de los barcos en mar abierto, donde ya no es posible orientarse reconociendo diversas características topológicas, como ríos, colinas, aldeas, pueblos, etc. En mar abierto, si identificamos nuestra ubicación en un mapa de Mercator y el destino al que deseamos llegar, podemos viajar en línea recta, tal como se muestra en el mapa. Conserva la dirección, lo que significa que, si trazamos un rumbo en un mapa de Mercator, podemos fijar nuestro rumbo según él. Es por eso que los países marítimos utilizaban proyecciones de Mercator para la navegación cuando contaban con pocos instrumentos, más allá de la brújula y el sextante, para determinar su ubicación con respecto a su destino.

Es importante señalar que la dirección que se muestra en el mapa no es la ruta más corta entre el punto de partida y el destino.

El camino más corto entre dos puntos en la superficie del globo terráqueo es el arco del gran círculo que va desde su ubicación hasta su destino. Una línea recta en un mapa bidimensional puede parecer la distancia más corta, pero no lo es, ya que no toma en cuenta la curvatura de la Tierra. En pocas palabras, el precio que pagamos por convertir una superficie curva en una plana y bidimensional es que distorsionamos la forma de la superficie. Estiramos ciertas áreas y encogemos otras. En una Tierra plana, la distancia más corta sería la que indica su brújula, pero no así en una esfera.

Anteriormente, los barcos utilizaban las estrellas y el sol del mediodía para estimar dónde se encontraban y hacia dónde debían dirigirse. Fijar un rumbo hacia su destino utilizando un mapa de Mercator y una brújula resultaba mucho más sencillo que tratar de adivinar dónde se encontraba en un océano desierto, sin puntos de referencia, y cambiar constantemente de rumbo en busca de una ruta más corta. La línea constante en el mapa se denominaba “línea de rumbo”, y seguirla ayudaba enormemente a los navegantes. Los mapas de Mercator eran populares en Europa, particularmente en Europa occidental, ya que, aparte de los árabes, eran las principales naciones marítimas.

Mientras que los árabes se enfocaban en el comercio, particularmente en el Océano Índico, los europeos occidentales se dedicaban no solo a la pesca, sino también, fuera de temporada, a la piratería, las incursiones y el saqueo de otras naciones. Los vikingos, importantes figuras románticas en Hollywood, eran particularmente brutales, ya que combinaban el saqueo con el comercio de esclavos. Por supuesto, como todos los piratas, una vez que se alcanza el poder, se puede convertir ese poder marítimo en conquista. Los hombres del norte, o nórdicos, conquistaron Francia y más tarde Inglaterra, y son conocidos por nosotros como normandos. No muy diferentes de las Compañías Holandesa y Británica de las Indias Orientales, que comenzaron con el comercio y la piratería y más tarde establecieron imperios coloniales.

No es de extrañar que los reinos marítimos de Europa occidental, para quienes la guerra, la pesca para alimentarse y la caza de focas, morsas, etc., con el fin de obtener grasa y pieles, constituían las principales fuentes de riqueza, se centraran mucho más en la navegación y la construcción naval. Esto significaba que los barcos construidos para el agitado Océano Atlántico contaban con ciertos avances de los que carecían los barcos árabes e indios, aunque la brújula, el astrolabio, los mapas astronómicos y otros instrumentos náuticos procedían todos de Asia.

Los barcos de Europa occidental contaban con cañones montados en cubierta, lo que les permitía disparar “andanadas”, es decir, disparar múltiples cañones simultáneamente, a diferencia de los cañones montados en la proa y la popa. Esa es una de las principales razones por las que un puñado de países de Europa occidental pudo aprovechar los océanos para, primero, hacerse con el comercio marítimo y, más tarde, construir sus imperios coloniales. A diferencia de los fuertes fijos, los barcos actuaban como fuertes flotantes, lo que proporcionaba a los europeos una movilidad en las guerras navales de la que carecían las fortificaciones terrestres estáticas.

Como muestra la monumental obra de Needham sobre la ciencia y la tecnología chinas, muchos avances náuticos en la construcción naval y la navegación procedían de China. Los siete viajes de los barcos de Zheng He en el siglo XV (1405-1443), que partieron de China, el sudeste asiático y la India, y recorrieron la costa árabe hasta África, demostraron que los chinos habían construido enormes barcos y una poderosa armada. En aquella época, se encontraban muy por delante de Europa y de los árabes, tanto en la construcción naval como en los buques de guerra. Las diferencias internas entre la aristocracia terrateniente y los comandantes navales condujeron a la destrucción de la armada y a la prohibición de construir cualquier buque de alta mar.

Aunque la India suministraba a los árabes la madera necesaria para la construcción naval y en algún momento contó con una poderosa armada, cedió el comercio de alta mar a los comerciantes árabes. Ni China, ni la India, ni los árabes consideraban que la armada tuviera importancia militar. Como dijo un emperador mogol: “Los océanos son para los comerciantes, no para nosotros, los guerreros”. Las divisiones de castas en la India también llevaron, en un momento dado, a prohibir a las castas superiores emprender viajes oceánicos. La travesía del Kala Pani, siempre prohibida por los brahmanes, no se respetó de manera estricta. La India experimentó una gran expansión marítima en el período budista, no a través de la guerra, sino mediante el comercio y la labor de proselitismo de los monjes budistas. Tras el resurgimiento del hinduismo en el sur, el tabú que prohibía a las castas superiores viajar a través de los océanos se aplicó de manera más estricta, dejando los océanos en manos de comerciantes y mercenarios. Por ejemplo, las principales flotas de los reyes indios – ya fuera el rey de Calicut, también conocido como Samundri o Zamorin, o Shivaji – dependían de comandantes navales y buques mercenarios, muchos de ellos al mando de árabes.

Como demuestra la historia, los mapas, el comercio marítimo y la guerra están íntimamente relacionados. Los viajes marítimos y las guerras navales confieren a los mapas una importancia estratégica. No es simplemente la ubicación de las fronteras de cada país lo que importa, sino también su visión estratégica del mundo. Podemos observar cómo esto se está manifestando actualmente en Bab el Mandeb y en el Golfo Pérsico. Un vistazo rápido a un mapa habría convencido a los líderes estadounidenses de que Irán cuenta con una clara ventaja estratégica en el Estrecho de Ormuz, al igual que los hutíes en el Mar Rojo y el paso hacia el Canal de Suez. Descuidar los océanos repite los errores que cometió Asia en una época diferente, errores de los que ha aprendido. Debemos tener esto presente también hoy en día.

Prabir Purkayastha es el editor fundador de Newsclick.in, una plataforma de medios digitales. Es activista en favor de la ciencia y del software libre.

Este artículo fue elaborado por Globetrotter.

Lee en español aquí

On September 4, the United Nations General Assembly adopted an African proposal for a new world map, which shows countries’ true size relative to one another. It aims to correct the view of the world shaped by the widely used world map based on the Mercator Projection, created by Gerardus Mercator, a 16th-century Flemish cartographer. The problem with the Mercator Map is well known; for example, it shows the island of Greenland as the same size as the African continent, even though Africa is 14 times the size of Greenland! Simply put, Mercator maps greatly exaggerate the global north – the US and Europe – while shrinking Africa and most of Asia. Nor does it treat the rest of the Southern Hemisphere kindly. South America, nearly three times the size of Europe, looks comparable to it on a typical Mercator map.

Though there is no geographical reason the Southern Hemisphere should be smaller than the Northern Hemisphere, mapmakers made it significantly smaller because it had very little landmass beyond 40 degrees and was therefore cropped out. This meant that on most Mercator maps, because Western mapmakers cropped out much of the Southern Hemisphere, the equator was significantly displaced downward. The double whammy of squeezing the equatorial areas, where much of Africa lies, and shifting the equator down made the global north, particularly Europe and North America, seem much larger than they actually are. Typically, on most Mercator maps, the Northern Hemisphere looks twice the size of the Southern Hemisphere, though the two hemispheres are identical in size.

Alternatives to the Mercator projection

Any map, whether Mercator or any other projection, has the problem that you can be true to either size or shape, but not both. The problem is a fundamental one of projecting a three-dimensional surface to a two-dimensional piece of paper. There is no way of doing this without distortions. Only a globe can truly represent the three-dimensional earth faithfully. But then what do we do when we want to reproduce geographical details for our readers in books or articles? 

The blatant distortions of the Mercator projection and its Eurocentric approach gave rise to several alternatives, particularly among broad-left or progressive cartographers. Others, particularly in the US and Europe have opposed it, arguing that size does not matter and that they were comfortable being shown much bigger than they actually are. But many dissented and tried to work out alternate projections. The Gall-Peterson projection, which was backed by the German social democratic government of Willy Brandt, is one such projection. The Hobo Dyer projection, which is in the global commons, meaning anybody can use it without paying royalties, is another one. Finally, the United Nations has ended the map wars, with a resounding victory for the motion moved by the African nations for using equal area maps. The voting was 164 in favor of the motion with the US casting the only nay vote.

Read more: US votes against UN resolution promoting maps reflecting Africa’s true size

The objective of Mercator map was for ships navigating in open seas, where we can no longer navigate recognizing various topological features, rivers, hills, villages, towns, etc. On the open ocean, if we identify where we are on a Mercator map and the destination we want to reach, we can travel in a straight line, as shown on the map. It conserves direction, meaning if we plot a course on a Mercator map, we can set our course by it. That is why ocean-going countries used Mercator projections for navigation when they had few instruments beyond the compass and the sextant to determine where they were relative to their destination. 

It is important to note that the direction shown on the map is not the shortest path between where you start from and your destination. The shortest path on two points on the surface of the globe is the arc of the great circle from where you are to your destination. A straight line on a 2-dimensional map may look like the shortest distance, but it is not as it does not account for the Earth’s curvature. Simply put, the price we pay for converting a curved surface to a flat 2-dimensional one is that we distort the shape of the surface. We stretch certain areas and shrink others. On a flat earth, the shortest distance would be what your compass shows, but not on a sphere.

Earlier, ships used stars and the midday sun to estimate where they were and where they needed to go. Setting a course to your destination using a Mercator map and a compass was much easier than trying to guess where you were on an empty ocean with no landmarks and constantly changing course for a shorter route. The constant line on the map was called the thumb line, and following it greatly helped the seafarers. Mercator maps were popular in Europe, particularly in Western Europe, because, apart from the Arabs, they were the major ocean-going nations.

Trade and piracy in the colonial era

While the Arabs focused on trade, particularly in the Indian Ocean, Western Europeans focused not only on fishing but, in the off-season, on piracy, raiding, and looting other nations. The Vikings, major romantic figures in Hollywood, were particularly brutal, combining loot with slave trade. Of course, like all pirates, once you become powerful, you can convert that ocean power into conquest. The northern men, or Norsemen, conquered France and later England, and are known to us as Normans. Not very different from the Dutch and the British East India Companies, starting with trade and piracy and later establishing colonial empires.

Not surprisingly, the ocean-going kingdoms of Western Europe, for whom war and fishing for food and hunting seals, walrus, etc., for blubber and skins were major sources of wealth, focused much more on seafaring and shipbuilding. This meant ships built for the rougher Atlantic Ocean had certain advances that Arab and Indian ships did not, though the compass, astrolabe, astronomical maps, and other nautical instruments all came from Asia.

Western European ships had deck-mounted cannons, which allowed them to fire “broadside,” meaning multiple cannons firing simultaneously, unlike the front- and rear-mounted cannons. That is one of the major reasons a handful of West European countries could use the oceans to first capture the ocean trade and later build their colonial empires. Unlike fixed forts, ships acted as floating ones, giving Europeans mobility in naval wars that static ground fortifications lacked.

Ocean navigation and development in Asia

As Needham’s monumental work on Chinese science and technology shows, many nautical advances in shipbuilding and navigation came from China. Seven voyages by Zheng He’s ships in the 15th century (1405-1443), which traveled from China, Southeast Asia, India, and down the Arab coast to Africa, showed that the Chinese had built huge ships and a powerful navy. At that time, they were well ahead of Europe and the Arabs, in both shipbuilding and warships. Internal differences between the landed aristocracy and the naval commanders led to the navy’s destruction and a ban on building any oceangoing ships.

Although India supplied the timber necessary for shipbuilding to the Arabs, and once had a powerful navy, it ceded the oceangoing trade to Arab merchants. Neither China, India, nor the Arabs saw the navy as militarily important. As one Mughal Emperor said, Oceans are for traders, not us, the warriors. Caste divisions in India also led, at one point, to barring upper castes from undertaking ocean voyages. Crossing Kala Pani, always forbidden by the Brahmins, was not strictly followed. India saw major maritime expansion in the Buddhist period, not by war but through trade and proselytizing Buddhist monks. After the revival of Hinduism in the South, the taboo against upper-caste travel across oceans was enforced more strictly, leaving the oceans to traders and mercenaries. For example, the major fleets of the Indian kings, whether the King of Calicut, also known as Samundri or Zamorin, or Shivaji, relied on mercenary naval commanders and ships, many commanded by the Arabs.

As history shows, maps, ocean trade, and war are intimately connected. Ocean voyages and naval wars make maps strategically important. It is not simply where each country’s borders lie that is important, but also how it strategically views the world. We can see this currently playing out in the Bab-al-Mandeb and the Persian Gulf. A quick look at a map would have convinced US leaders that Iran has a clear strategic edge in the Strait of Hormuz, just as Ansar Allah do in the Red Sea and the passage to the Suez Canal. Neglecting the oceans repeats the mistakes Asia made in a different age, mistakes from which it has learned. We need to bear this in mind today as well.

Prabir Purkayastha is the founding editor of Newsclick.in, a digital media platform. He is an activist for science and free software. 

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Lee en español aquí

The 18th BRICS Summit, held in New Delhi on September 12–13, occurred amid an exceptional intensification of international contradictions. Wars in West Asia, unilateral sanctions, tariff barriers, and the weaponization of finance and technology have exposed the fundamentally unequal character of the imperialist-dominated international order. Against this background, the continued expansion of BRICS reflects the desire of developing countries for greater strategic autonomy and a more democratic system of global governance. At the same time, the summit demonstrated that BRICS+ remains a heterogeneous grouping whose members differ substantially in their political alignments and economic interests.

The New Delhi Declaration, the outcome of the summit, reiterated the demand for reform of the United Nations, international financial institutions, and the multilateral trading system. It opposed unilateral sanctions not authorized by the United Nations Security Council and advocated greater trade in national currencies. The declaration also supported increased representation for developing countries in institutions whose rules continue to be determined primarily by the United States and its allies. These positions have objective significance at a time when Washington increasingly employs sanctions, tariffs, export controls, and control over payment systems to discipline countries unwilling to accept its dictates.

Read more: BRICS nations call for end of US blockade on Cuba, condemn Israeli and US violations in Iran

Ambiguity

Yet the declaration’s carefully-negotiated language also revealed the limitations of the expanded formation. BRICS+ now includes countries subjected to sustained Western pressure, such as Russia and Iran, as well as the United Arab Emirates and other states retaining extensive economic and security ties with the West. Consensus can consequently be maintained only through formulations that acknowledge conflicts without always identifying their political causes. 

This ambiguity was especially apparent in the summit’s treatment of the widening war in West Asia and the position adopted by Iran.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian used the summit to denounce unilateral sanctions and the war of aggression against Iran carried out by the United States and Israel. He correctly stressed that economic resilience cannot be separated from peace, sovereignty, and security. 

Iran also advocated trade in national currencies, greater use of the New Development Bank, and the construction of independent transport and energy corridors (as it has already created through Pakistan, which has provided six roadways for Chinese and Russian goods to enter Iran). For a country subjected to decades of sanctions, exclusion from Western financial networks, and repeated threats of regime change, membership of BRICS+ provides an important diplomatic and economic opening.

Iran’s position, however, contains a marked ambiguity. Tehran presents BRICS+ as an instrument for resisting unilateralism and defending sovereignty. Simultaneously, it must seek accommodation with neighboring Gulf states, several of which are deeply integrated with Western capital and security arrangements. Iran signed a declaration calling for restraint and de-escalation even while accusing the United States and Israel of aggression and defending its own retaliatory actions. Its militancy against hyper-imperialist pressure is therefore combined with a pragmatic effort to avoid regional isolation, secure sanctions relief, and preserve channels of negotiation.

Read more: No new talks with the US until the previous conditions are met, says Iran

This should not be understood simply as inconsistency. Iran confronts a vastly superior military and financial coalition and must maneuver within severe constraints. But it also illustrates the broader problem facing BRICS+. Opposition to Western domination does not automatically produce a coherent anti-imperialist program. The participating states are capitalist states pursuing their respective national interests. Their ruling classes may resist particular aspects of US hegemony while remaining prepared to reach accommodations with global finance or with regional reactionary powers. BRICS+ is consequently an arena of struggle within the changing world order, not an already constituted alternative to hyper-imperialism.

Partners

The summit’s most consequential political development for Asia was the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Xi’s first visit to India in seven years confirmed the gradual improvement in relations since the military disengagement arrangements initiated in 2024. The two leaders agreed that India and China should regard each other as partners rather than rivals and approach bilateral relations from a long-term strategic perspective. They also discussed the boundary question, trade, market access and supply-chain problems.

Any durable improvement in India–China relations must be welcomed. The prolonged confrontation following the Galwan Valley clash of 2020 damaged both countries, increased military expenditure and strengthened the efforts of the United States to incorporate India into its Indo-Pacific strategy. Washington has consistently sought to turn India into a strategic counterweight to China through the Quad and expanding military and technological cooperation. A continuing India–China confrontation therefore serves US strategy far more than it serves the interests of the Indian or Chinese peoples.

Peace and tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control remain indispensable. Agreements on disengagement must be followed by sustained diplomatic and military-level engagement, clarification of disputed areas and strict observance of existing arrangements. Neither nationalist rhetoric nor competitive infrastructure construction should be allowed to trigger another confrontation. Differences over the boundary cannot be wished away, but they can and must be managed without subordinating the entire relationship to militarised rivalry.

Economic relations present an equally difficult contradiction. China is one of India’s largest trading partners and an important source of machinery, electronic components, chemicals, renewable-energy equipment and other industrial inputs. India’s enormous trade deficit with China, however, reflects both the weakness of Indian manufacturing and the obstacles faced by Indian exports in the Chinese market. Addressing this imbalance requires improved market access, Chinese investment under transparent conditions and, above all, an Indian industrial policy capable of developing domestic productive capacity. Over the past six months, two-way bilateral trade has soared.

The Modi government’s approach has alternated between dependence on Chinese imports and politically motivated restrictions on Chinese investment and technology. Its “China-plus-one” rhetoric cannot conceal the failure of its own policies to generate broad-based industrialisation. Nor can closer strategic alignment with the United States supply India with an independent manufacturing base. The US seeks privileged access to the Indian market while using tariffs, technology restrictions and political pressure whenever Indian policies diverge from its interests. The incoherence of the Modi government is best demonstrated in its inability to actually produce a national development agenda that takes advantage of the buoyancy of the Chinese economy and disengages from a United State more geared towards economic nationalism.

China, for its part, must recognize that stable relations require sensitivity to India’s legitimate concerns. These include the unresolved boundary, unequal market access and the trade imbalance. The considerable asymmetry between the two economies makes reciprocity particularly important. Beijing’s call for partnership will acquire substance only when accompanied by practical measures enabling Indian goods and services to enter the Chinese market and preventing border tensions from repeatedly overwhelming political dialogue.

Cooperation between India and China would give BRICS+ far greater weight in the struggle for democratization of the international order. Together, the two countries represent more than a third of humanity. Their cooperation could advance reform of international institutions, climate finance, technology sharing, public-health initiatives, and a fairer trading system. Conversely, renewed confrontation would paralyse BRICS+ and permit outside powers to exploit divisions throughout Asia. India must therefore pursue an independent foreign policy based on peaceful coexistence, not participate in a US project to contain China.

The New Delhi summit produced proposals for institutional continuity, stronger financial cooperation, and greater resilience among developing economies. But declarations will have limited value unless translated into material arrangements. The New Development Bank must expand lending in national currencies and prioritize socially necessary infrastructure rather than reproduce the conditionalities and corporate orientation of the World Bank. Cross-border payment mechanisms must be developed transparently, without creating new forms of domination by the strongest BRICS economies. The strong statements on behalf of the Cuban Revolution and the Palestinian people’s aspirations for self-determination will need practical application. 

Will the BRICS+ find a way to break the cruel and illegal US embargo on Cuba, and will the BRICS+ provide support for the revival of Palestinian political life?

BRICS+ embodies both the movement towards a new world equilibrium and all the contradictions of that movement. The cautious India–China rapprochement is one example of the contradiction, combining recognition of mutual dependence with unresolved strategic distrust. The future of BRICS+ will depend upon whether such contradictions are peacefully managed and whether cooperation delivers tangible gains to working people rather than merely expanding the room for maneuver of national ruling classes.

For India, the necessary course is clear: restore normal and peaceful relations with China, resist incorporation into the United States’ military strategy, oppose aggression and unilateral sanctions against Iran, and work for a genuinely democratic multilateral order. A new world equilibrium will only be when it restricts hyper-imperialist domination and enlarges the sovereignty and developmental possibilities of peoples. The New Delhi summit marked another step in that contested transition, but the direction and social content of the emerging order remain matters of political struggle.

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).

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

The lethal repercussions of Israel’s three-year genocidal aggression on Gaza continue to unfold. Aside from Israel’s ongoing military assaults after the nominal ceasefire deal, the humanitarian crisis inflicted by the genocide – affecting food, sanitation, medication, and shelter – has become another driver of persistent fatalities. 

At least 21 Palestinians, including 12 children, died in the collapse of the Al-Saadah building in Gaza City on Wednesday, September 16, while 45 people were rescued from under the rubble. 

According to media reports, the building, already damaged by Israeli airstrikes, was housing 100 displaced people, amid a deepening shelter crisis caused by Israel’s ongoing restrictions on reconstruction materials and humanitarian aid.

Read more: Israel escalates aggression in Gaza, Kushner returns to Washington empty-handed

Hamas holds Israel “responsible for the disaster”

Hamas issued a statement, holding Israel “responsible for this disaster,” and affirming that “the building collapse represents a new chapter in the catastrophic humanitarian repercussions of the war.”

The Palestinian movement pointed out that the massive home and neighborhood destruction has forced thousands of displaced people to take refuge in ruined structures. 

It further cautioned that the severe shortage in heavy machinery for clearing debris and conducting rescue operations endangers more lives. 

Hamas also urged mediators, the US administration, and relevant international bodies to take immediate action to lift restrictions blocking the entry of necessary rescue equipment and vehicles, and to secure safe shelter for the displaced population. 

Meanwhile, the Gaza-based Ministry of Public Works and Housing warned that roughly 3,000 buildings across the war-ravaged enclave are currently deemed dangerous or at risk of collapse, which in turn poses a significant threat to thousands of inhabitants.

In July, Saudi Arabia joined the US-Israeli war on the West Asia region with strikes on Yemen. The Ansar Allah-led Yemeni Armed Forces retaliated by launching a maritime blockade alongside attacks targeting vital Saudi interests.

The renewed fighting between the two West Asian nations resulted in Ansar Allah’s takeover of the strategic Red Sea port city of Mokha last week and the liberation of all the group’s prisoners held by Saudi-backed forces on Yemen’s western coast.

Ansar Allah’s seizure of Mokha seaport is reshaping regional and global geopolitics, particularly because it serves as a primary gateway to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and coincides with developments in the Strait of Hormuz.

As these major shifts underscore, Yemen holds immense strategic geopolitical significance.

Situated on the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula and overlooking the Bab al-Mandab Strait, Yemen represents a vital chokepoint connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean

Consequently, internal political developments in Yemen can have global political and economic repercussions.

This fact, in turn, has put Yemen in the crosshairs of the US-led Western imperialist bloc and their allies in West Asia, which have endeavored to subjugate the country through a devastating decade-long war and blockade. 

The origin of this war coincides with the emergence of Ansar Allah, beginning when the group managed to take control of large swathes of the country, including the capital, Sanaa, in 2014.

The rise of Ansar Allah

Ansar Allah was first established in the early 1990s in the northern Yemeni governorate of Saada as a cultural and educational organization called Al-Shabab al-Mumin (the Believing Youth).

Initially, the organization introduced itself as an unarmed theological movement aimed at reviving and preserving Zaydi Shia Islam and countering the threat of state-backed Sunni Salafism, which sought to uproot the Zaydi religious identity in its homeland of Saada.

From its inception, the movement opposed the government, led by President Ali Abdullah Saleh, accusing it of corruption and criticizing its ties to the United States and its ally Saudi Arabia.

Tensions between the group and the government drastically escalated following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. It was at that time that the group adopted the slogan (Death to America, Death to Israel), during mass protests opposing the war on Iraq.

These slogans posed a political threat to Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was attempting to position his government as a key ally in the “US War on Terror” in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. As a result his government led a brutal crackdown on protesters.

Security forces and riot police suppressed protests using live ammunition, tear gas, and batons, and arbitrarily detained hundreds of political activists, students, and opposition organizers without trial.

In 2004, tension between the Al-Shabab al-Mumin and the Yemeni government boiled over, sparking a series of six internal conflicts known as the Saada Wars. 

These clashes began with the government’s assassination of Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, the group’s founder, and triggered five subsequent rounds of fighting that lasted until 2010. The followers of the group became widely known as the Houthis ever since. 

Saudi Arabia reportedly engaged in the Saada wars by providing immense financial, political, and material support to the Yemeni government. Saudi intervention in Yemen escalated in 2009 with a direct military incursion and unilateral airstrikes against positions held by the Houthi movement.

In 2011, the group joined nationwide demonstrations, calling for the overthrow of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. It was then that the Houthi movement formally adopted the name Ansar Allah (Supporters of God). 

The ousting of Saleh weakened the central government and triggered a sweeping power vacuum, which allowed Ansar Allah to rapidly expand its territorial dominance. By 2012, the Yemeni movement consolidated firm control across the Saada governorate and large swathes of northern Yemen.

In early 2012, vice president to Saleh, Abed Rabbu Mansour, Hadi became the President of Yemen via a transition framework brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), as he was  considered as a quiet consensus figure. Hadi was also strongly backed by the Obama administration. 

In late 2014, Ansar Allah allied with forces loyal to ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh against the transitional government headed by Abed Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The fighting that followed led to Ansar Allah’s seizure of the capital Sanaa, forcing Hadi to flee the country.

2015-2022: The Saudi-led coalition’s protracted war against Yemen

From exile in 2015, Hadi requested the Saudi-led coalition to intervene in the conflict, opening the door to one of the bloodiest prolonged wars in West Asia. A conflict that, according to UN estimates, resulted in 377,000 deaths by 2022. 

Saudi Arabia was the main pillar of the coalition, leading the military campaign dubbed “Operation Decisive Storm” with a massive force, including extensive warplanes and ground troops.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) also played a key role by commanding ground and air operations particularly in southern Yemen and along the critical coastal strip.

Bahrain took part in the operation with 12 fighter jets (some sources say 15), and deployed ground troops in the southern Saudi borders to protect Saudi Arabia from Ansar Allah’s attacks. Meanwhile, Kuwait contributed with 15 warplanes.

At the beginning of the campaign, Qatar participated with roughly 1,000 ground troops, armored vehicles, a dozen fighter jets, and transport helicopters until it was expelled from the coalition in June 2017 over a diplomatic crisis with Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt.

Jordan and Morocco contributed six fighter jets each, while Sudan under deposed president Omar Al-Bashir sent three aircrafts and thousands of ground troops. Furthermore, Senegal committed 2,100 troops.

Western countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and France provided logistic and intelligence support, such as aerial refueling for coalition jets, technical assistance, military equipment, coordination support, and maritime surveillance.

The 2022 UN-brokered truce de-escalated the war rather than ending it

In April 2022, the United Nations announced an official two-month nationwide truce agreement, which temporarily halted cross-border attacks, ground and air operations, and allowed fuel imports into ports held by Ansar Allah. It also reopened commercial flights from Sanaa International Airport after years of sea, land, and air blockade imposed by Saudi Arabia. 

Rather than completely removing the blockade, the agreement only resulted in the partial easing of restrictions, while regions under the control of Ansar Allah have continued to face a near-total blockade.

Read more: Yemen demands Saudi-led blockade on the country be lifted immediately

The agreement was renewed in June and extended a second time in August 2022 for an additional two months before it lapsed in October. 

Regional developments reignited the conflict (2023-2026)

In November 2023, Ansar Allah launched a ban on all Israeli maritime navigation in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in retaliation for Israel’s genocidal aggression on Gaza.

About one month later, the group significantly expanded the ban to include all ships heading to Israeli ports, regardless of their nationality or flag.

The ban continued until October 2025, despite waves of deadly airstrikes launched by the US, UK, and Israel on Yemen.

An Omani-mediated ceasefire deal between the US and Ansar Allah was reached in May 2025. The deal stipulated halting Ansar Allah’s attacks on US ships in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait, and ending US aggression on Yemen, without preventing the Yemeni resistance movement from launching attacks or naval operations against Israel. 

This same period saw a shift in the conflict between the Saudi-led coalition and Ansar Allah from active military engagement toward a tense, fragile diplomacy.

In early 2026, friction between the two major pillars in the anti-Ansar Allah coalition – namely Saudi Arabia and the UAE – surfaced as different Yemeni groups backed by the two countries clashed, apparently over territorial control in Yemen.

Read more: Tensions in Yemen: Are Saudi Arabia and the UAE becoming frenemies?

The US-Israeli war on Iran has drawn Yemen back into the regional conflict

Although Ansar Allah was established as an independent Yemeni movement, it evolved into a key component of the Axis of Resistance over time. This alignment was driven by mutual ideological foundations, shared anti-imperialist ideology, and deep strategic and military cooperation with Iran and Hezbollah.

Despite its affiliation with the resistance alliance, Ansar Allah chose not to get involved in the recent regional war waged by the US and Israel against Iran, for ostensibly strategic considerations and military coordination tactics with its allies.

Read more: Reflections on the US-Israeli multi-front war in West Asia: How the Axis of Resistance remains resilient

However, because the United States and its allies in the region seemingly view the current war as an ideal opportunity to dismantle the Axis of Resistance, Saudi Arabia decided to resume its aggression against Yemen by attacking Sanaa International Airport in July. The attack aimed to prevent an Iranian plane from landing.

Consequently, Ansar Allah launched retaliatory attacks on Saudi interests inside Saudi Arabia and on Yemeni soil. It further declared a maritime blockade against Saudi-linked commercial vessels passing through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, demanding Riyadh end its decade-long blockade on Yemen.  

Concurrently, ground clashes over territorial dominance between Ansar Allah and Saudi-backed forces intensified, leading to key victories for the Yemeni group. Escalations have persisted up to the time of publication.

On Wednesday, September 16, Saudi Arabia accused Ansar Allah of attempting a drone attack against the city of Mecca, the holiest city for Muslims, located in western Saudi Arabia.

Ansar Allah dismissed Saudi accusations as false, saying that they reflect a “desperate attempt to mobilize public opinion.”

As the US-Israeli war on West Asia continues to reshape geopolitics, Ansar Allah’s emergence as a regional force has placed Yemen at the center of a struggle that may define the future of West Asia.

A group of 50 family members and descendants of wartime forced laborers in China filed a lawsuit against six companies on Wednesday, September 16, demanding compensation for their suffering during the Japanese occupation. 

In their lawsuit at a local court in Hebei, southwest of the capital, Beijing, the group is seeking around $55,000 in compensation for each member, along with an apology published in at least 10 Japanese and Chinese media outlets.

The plaintiffs accuse six Japanese firms of being beneficiaries of the forced labor, causing long-term pain, suffering, and the deaths of their family members, Kyodo News reported. 

According to Kyodo News, the six Japanese firms named in the lawsuit include construction firm Taisi Corp, mining firm Nittetsu Corp, and heavy industry manufacturer IHI Corp. 

Japan occupied large parts of China, the Korean Peninsula, and other parts of Southeast Asia at various times between the last decade of the 19th century to the end of the Second World War.

The Japanese military committed systemic torture, sexual exploitation, forced labor, and other cruelties against Chinese and other Asian peoples during the occupation, all which have been well documented.

Millions had to do forced labor in the territories occupied by Japan, including hundreds of thousands of Chinese people. Some Chinese forced laborers were also sent to Japan to work in mining and other industries. Thousands of these forced laborers were killed due to harsh working conditions and torture inflicted by their employers. 

Compensation and apology for crimes during occupation

The survivors of Japanese atrocities and their descendants have in different moments raised demands for compensation and apologies.

In 2014, a similar lawsuit was filed by hundreds of people in a Chinese court against Mitsubishi Materials Corp and others. The case ended in an out-of-court settlement, with Mitsubishi offering an apology and compensation to the plaintiffs.

In China, survivors cite their lack of faith in the Japanese system as the reason for filing the suit in a domestic court. 

Japanese courts have dismissed all such lawsuits. A 2007 Japanese Supreme Court’s judgment stated that all such claims were settled when Japan and China established their diplomatic relations in 1972.

However, China has maintained that the 1972 documents did not denounce an individual’s right to seek legal action. China has also often invoked Japan’s failure to acknowledge its repressive and atrocious colonial period and apologize to its victims in the region.

Reacting to the news on Wednesday, the official spokesperson of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Guo Jiakun underlined that “forced recruitment and enslavement of laborers is one of the serious crimes committed by Japanese militarists during their foreign aggression and colonial rule.”

He urged “Japan to look history in the eye, reflect on past crimes, earnestly heed and respond to the just calls and legitimate claims of the people of victims countries in Asia, and properly resolve relevant issues left over from history with a responsible attitude.”