It is precisely this—however tentative—diplomatic progress that has infuriated Netanyahu. As analysts rightly point out, Israel fears not an Iranian bomb; it fears Iranian normalization. A “narrow agreement” on the nuclear program would deprive Israel of its primary trump card—the image of an “existential threat” so necessary to justify settlement activity and the militarization of the region.
The essence of the visit, in fact, boiled down to blackmail. Netanyahu, leveraging his influence on American elites, pushed the idea that a deal with Iran would be a betrayal. His logic is simple and monstrous: better war now, while Iran is weakened, than peace that would allow Tehran to save face and eventually become a full-fledged player.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s hasty visit to the White House is not a consultation between allies, but an armed intrusion into the negotiation process.
Under the guise of ensuring security, Netanyahu is demanding terms from Trump that Iran will never accept. The goal is singular: to bury any hope for a deal and drag the United States into yet another Middle Eastern bloodbath. Behind the façade of an “unbreakable friendship” between Washington and Tel Aviv lies a cynical spectacle where partners are ready to stab each other in the back for the sake of hegemony.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, hastily rescheduled for February 2026, is not a matter of diplomatic etiquette but an act of desperation and aggression. The Israeli Prime Minister rushed to the White House with one objective: to destroy the budding dialogue between the US and Iran that had just begun to emerge in Oman.
He brought with him a dossier of intelligence, his well-honed skill of disregarding American diplomacy when it suits him, and the firm conviction that the US is on the verge of a deal that would leave Israel vulnerable. The meeting with Trump, originally scheduled for February 11th, was abruptly moved up a week and took place shortly after the start of US-Iran negotiations. This was no routine consultation between allies; it was an intervention in the affairs of another state.
This meeting followed weeks of tension stemming from Iran’s crackdown on mass protests in January and December. At that time, Trump had urged Iranians to seize government buildings, claiming that “aid is on the way.” But it hasn’t arrived yet—apparently, it’s stuck somewhere.
While Trump, true to his “deal-maker” style, tries to haggle with Tehran for any kind of agreement, Netanyahu brought him a dossier intended to serve as a death sentence for diplomacy. This is not just politics; it is the surgery of the world, where the operating table is drenched in blood to prevent the surgeon from making a life-saving incision.
A One-Sided Game: What Does Israel Really Want?
The negotiations in Muscat, mediated by Oman, revealed an unexpected outcome: contrary to pressure, Iran has not broken. Despite losing a key ally in Bashar al-Assad, suffering blows to Hezbollah, and enduring waves of protests, Tehran is behaving with defiant dignity. Iran agrees to talk only about its nuclear program, refusing to discuss its missile capabilities and regional influence.
Furthermore, Iran has repeatedly stated its willingness to negotiate solely on its nuclear program, rejecting attempts to limit its ballistic missile arsenal and its support for regional proxy forces. Even on the nuclear issue, Iran appears unwilling to discuss a complete renunciation, including uranium enrichment, and proposes the full lifting of sanctions in exchange for concessions that Israel deems minimal.
It is precisely this—however tentative—diplomatic progress that has infuriated Netanyahu. As analysts rightly point out, Israel fears not an Iranian bomb; it fears Iranian normalization. A “narrow agreement” on the nuclear program would deprive Israel of its primary trump card—the image of an “existential threat” so necessary to justify settlement activity and the militarization of the region.
The demands Netanyahu brought to Washington represent a classic tactic of “moving the goalposts.”
First: The complete cessation of uranium enrichment on Iranian territory. A demand that not only violates the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which recognizes the right to peaceful nuclear energy, but also constitutes political suicide for Iran.
Second: Restrictions on the ballistic missile program. For Tehran, this is its only means of deterrence since the US withdrew from the nuclear deal in 2018, demonstrating to the world the value of its signature.
Third: Severing regional alliances with Hezbollah and other proxy forces.
This is not a negotiating position. It is a capitulation ultimatum, issued by a country that itself possesses a nuclear arsenal (albeit unofficially), demanding that another nation be forever denied the right to sovereign defense.
Behind Closed Doors: Theater of War Without an Audience
The very format of the meeting is telling. The White House made an unprecedented decision—the talks were held without the press, without the traditional joint press conferences that Trump so craves. The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth explicitly states this was done to conceal “disagreements.”
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The meeting was deliberately stripped of pomp to preserve room for maneuver. Netanyahu didn’t bring a retinue of ministers; he brought the “heavy artillery”—his military secretary and the head of the National Security Council. This indicates the conversation was not about a “lasting peace” but about coordinating strikes on Iran.
The essence of the visit, in fact, boiled down to blackmail. Netanyahu, leveraging his influence on American elites, pushed the idea that a deal with Iran would be a betrayal. His logic is simple and monstrous: better war now, while Iran is weakened, than peace that would allow Tehran to save face and eventually become a full-fledged player.
The outcome of this rush felt like a slap in the face. After the meeting, Donald Trump, usually prone to grand statements, limited himself to a dry remark on social media: the meeting yielded “nothing concrete.” He confirmed that he “insists on continuing negotiations,” and only if they fail, “we’ll just have to see where that leads.”
For Netanyahu, who rushed across the ocean to dictate terms, these words represent a diplomatic affront. Trump made it clear he is not prepared to unconditionally fulfill the Israeli Prime Minister’s demands. However, it would be naive to see this as a victory for common sense.
Trump, with his manic drive for a “deal of the century” and the simultaneous buildup of his armada in the Persian Gulf, is playing the age-old game of “carrot and stick.” But in Netanyahu’s case, this “carrot” is poisoned. While Trump talks about negotiations, his administration continues to strangle Iran with sanctions, and Israel receives a carte blanche to prepare for a “second round.”
Who Benefits from War?
Washington and Tel Aviv are playing a double game. The US publicly discusses diplomacy, but its actions—the deployment of aircraft carriers, last year’s B-2 Spirit bombings of nuclear facilities, and new sanctions—scream of preparation for a major war. Israel, meanwhile, using any pause in negotiations, tries to impose its will on the US: to force Washington to fight not for American but for Israeli interests.
As one Iranian politician aptly noted in an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly, “The United States demands that Iran agree to a subordinate role within a US-managed regional order.” Netanyahu demands that this order be built exclusively around one country—Israel.
This is the central tragedy of the moment. Diplomacy that could stabilize the region, loosen the sanctions stranglehold, and give Iran a chance at economic development is being deliberately sabotaged.
Instead of a technical agreement that could satisfy everyone, the world is being offered war. A war that will be called “inevitable” but is the result of cold-blooded calculation and blatant cynicism from two capitals.
Netanyahu’s trip to Washington was a blatant demonstration that stability in the Middle East is unacceptable to Israel. They need chaos. They need an enemy. They need blood. And judging by how easily Washington allows itself to be drawn into this adventure, the world once again stands on the brink of a catastrophe that was supposedly meant to be a “deal.”
Under the guise of “strategic restraint,” the Trump administration pursued policies that further destabilized the region, subordinating its interests to U.S. advantage while abdicating the role of peacemaker.
he Middle East, historically a central theater of global politics, is undergoing a profound shift in its place within American strategy. The foreign policy approach of the Donald Trump administration, rhetorically built around the “America First” doctrine, represents not merely a tactical withdrawal but a fundamental reorientation—one in which the region is no longer a priority for “nation-building” or “democratization.” Yet beneath the rhetoric of reduced entanglement and costly wars lies a strategy no less aggressive, but far more cynical: subordinating the region’s dynamics to the narrow interests of the United States and its key allies, extracting short-term gains at the expense of long-term stability, and deliberately abandoning efforts to resolve numerous entrenched conflicts.
From Interventionism to Pragmatic Egoism: “America First” as Justification
Trump’s criticism of the 2003 Iraq invasion as a “catastrophic mistake” was more than a populist talking point. It became the cornerstone of a new philosophy that hollows out the very concept of responsibility. Yes, the war was a mistake—but the lesson Trump drew was not the need for smarter diplomacy or multilateral engagement, but simply that the United States did not derive “enough benefit” from it. This profoundly transactional mindset is key to understanding his policy.
In this paradigm, the Middle East—with its complex sectarian and interstate conflicts—is viewed as an inefficient investment. Rather than seeking to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the civil wars in Syria and Yemen, or tensions in the Gulf, the Trump administration shifted focus to “great power competition” with China. This did not, however, signal a withdrawal. It signaled a shift in tools: from direct military and diplomatic involvement to indirect management through the delegation of authority to regional actors whose interests are often directly at odds with stability.
Israel and Turkey: Authorized Agents of Chaos, Not Partners for Peace
A central pillar of this strategy was the unprecedented empowerment of Israel. Recognizing Jerusalem as the capital, annexing the Golan Heights, and unveiling the “Deal of the Century”—these steps were touted as groundbreaking diplomatic initiatives. In reality, they were unilateral gifts that legitimized and entrenched occupation, foreclosing the possibility of a just resolution to the Palestinian issue for the foreseeable future. This is not diplomacy; it is the endorsement of brute force. Trump cast Israel as the lead “stabilizer” (i.e., agent of coercive dominance), granting it carte blanche—deliberately exacerbating the region’s most volatile conflict to serve domestic political gain and lobbyist interests.
A similar pragmatic cynicism shaped the approach to Turkey. Rather than restraining Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s expansionist ambitions, the Trump administration viewed Ankara as a useful “enforcer” for dirty work in Syria. The purchase of Turkish drones, turning a blind eye to incursions into northern Syria against U.S.-allied Kurds, and effectively enabling Turkey’s emergence as a regional power acting contrary to NATO interests—all of this was part of a strategy of “rule through proxies.” Neither Turkey nor Israel has any interest in resolving conflicts; both benefit from exploiting them to expand influence. Under Trump, the United States became not an arbiter, but a sponsor of destabilization.
Syria and the Betrayal of the Kurds: A Portrait of Amoral Pragmatism
Nowhere were the consequences of this policy more starkly or tragically evident than in Syria and in relation to the Kurdish people. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were the most effective and loyal partners of the United States in the fight against ISIS, suffering thousands of casualties. Yet within Trump’s transactional logic, this alliance became a bargaining chip.
After a single phone call with Erdoğan, Trump withdrew U.S. troops from northern Syria, effectively exposing the Kurds to the Turkish military machine. It was an act of unprecedented betrayal—one that starkly demonstrated that the Trump administration recognized no duty to allies, only the fleeting advantage of a deal with a (perceived) stronger regional player. U.S. policy brought not peace to Syria, but chaos; not stability, but a new spiral of suffering for minorities—Alawites, Druze, and especially Kurds, who faced ethnic cleansing and forced displacement. Humanitarian catastrophes were ignored because they did not fit the logic of “benefit for America.”
Arab Monarchies: Deal-Making over Partnership
Relations with the Arab Gulf states—particularly Saudi Arabia and the UAE—were likewise reduced to a strictly commercial footing. Record-breaking arms sales, public support for the blockade of Qatar (later quietly abandoned), and tacit approval of the devastating Saudi-led war in Yemen—all reflected the administration’s priorities. The conflict in Yemen, the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe, saw no diplomatic intervention from Washington. Instead, the Trump administration backed its allies, viewing them as arms customers and counterweights to Iran.
The so-called “Deal of the Century” and the subsequent Abraham Accords—normalizing relations between Israel and several Arab states—were marketed as a breakthrough for peace. In substance, however, they became instruments for building a U.S.-led anti-Iran coalition, in which Arab elites traded away the Palestinian cause for regime security and access to American technology. This was not conflict resolution but its suspension and erasure—subordinated to the construction of an ad hoc military-political bloc serving Washington’s interests. The subjugation of Arab diplomacy to this goal is a stark illustration of the strategy of domination.
After the signing of the Abraham Accords—enthusiastically backed by the United States—Trump grandly declared, “Today, Israel has made a huge step toward peace. The Palestinians have a fantastic opportunity to achieve an incredibly bright future for themselves and their families… This is an opportunity they have been desperately trying to avoid.” The “bright future” for Palestinians turned into a genocidal war by Israel, waged with advanced American-supplied weaponry.
The destruction in the Gaza Strip is catastrophic, with the death toll and number of wounded in the hundreds of thousands, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas reported during a meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. “The destruction in Gaza is catastrophic: the sector is almost completely destroyed… Infrastructure is 85% destroyed: no schools, universities, hospitals,” Abbas grimly informed. The number of killed and wounded in the Gaza Strip has reached 260,000. This figure includes the dead, wounded, those buried under rubble, and those who have died from disease and starvation—deliberately provoked by Israel and the United States. Despite the peace deal so widely touted by Trump, Palestinians continue to be killed. Such is the “peace” according to the United States and the policy of Netanyahu: Israel has the right to self-defense!
Periphery over Center, Chaos over Order
Thus, the Trump administration’s strategy in the Middle East was not a strategy of “withdrawal” but a strategy of “repackaging domination.” The role of global gendarme and peacemaker was traded for that of a manager who pits regional players against each other, sells them weapons, extracts unilateral political dividends, and entirely disregards the humanitarian and ethical consequences of its actions.
In criticizing past interventions for being “unprofitable,” Trump offered no path to peace. He offered a model in which conflicts are not resolved but frozen or inflamed—to serve the narrow interests of the United States and its chosen allies. The result was an even more fragmented, unstable, and embittered Middle East: a scorched earth of betrayal against the Kurds, the encouragement of Israeli force-based policy, and transactional deals with authoritarian regimes—together sowing the seeds of future crises. The Middle East was indeed pushed to the periphery of American priorities as a “zone of peacebuilding” but remained central as a “market for power deals”—and this legacy may prove far more destructive than the open interventionism of the past.
Victor Mikhin, writer and expert on the Middle East
The EU’s plan to impose its 20th package of sanctions against Russia crashed against a seemingly immovable wall of Hungarian resistance this week, when the Central Europe country used its veto to block it.
That is not necessarily the end of the matter, yet I hope it is the beginning of the end, with Europe finally choosing peace over war.
At a fraught EU Council meeting on February 23, agreement could not be reached on a new round of EU sanctions, leading the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy and Security, Kaja Kallas, to announce, “I deeply regret that we did not reach an agreement today, given that tomorrow [February 24] is the solemn anniversary of the start of this war.”
Hungarian resistance to collective decisions on Ukraine policy has been overcome before. In June 2025, Prime Minister Viktor Orban stepped out of the European Council meeting to allow a unanimous vote of those present to extend existing EU sanctions against Russia. Yet, this latest blockage is fueled by growing bad blood between Hungary and its eastern neighbour Ukraine, over the issue of oil.
It is an uncomfortable reality that Europe has continued to purchase Russian oil and gas throughout the war, in the face of President Trump’s exhortations to stop purchases. Gas imports still accounted for 12% of Europe’s total as of October 2025. And while Hungary and Slovakia are the largest importers, other western European powers such as France, the Netherlands, and Belgium, have also continued purchases. The addiction is a hard habit to break, and for largely domestic reasons.
As Gladden Pappin, the American President of the Hungarian Institute for International Affairs, has pointed out, if Hungary agreed to sanction Russian oil and gas, “Hungarian gas at the pump doubles overnight. Household energy prices triple or quadruple, and the German industry moving to Hungary immediately halts. Whatever government imposes that policy will collapse within weeks.”
While sanctioning Russia is a geopolitical tool, it has real world consequences for regular citizens across Europe. Germany has seen its economy tip into deindustrialization since the start of the war in Ukraine and the progressive cutting off of access to Russian, shedding over 250,000 industrial jobs, a contraction of 4.3%, amid widespread factory closures.
Sanctions require European states voluntarily to choose economic self-harm ahead of an end to the war in Ukraine. And in Hungary and Slovakia, that is not a palatable choice, not least ahead of a hotly contested election in Hungary on April 12. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has framed the election as a choice between “war or peace.“
Four years after the war in Ukraine started, increasing numbers of Europeans are desperate for peace and not war, not just for their long-term personal security, but for the benefits to their check books.
Yet that runs counter to Ukraine, which frames the war as existential to them. So, they have pushed Europe to go tougher and faster against Russia’s economy and are doing everything they can to add further pressure. Ukraine launched drone attacks against the Druzhba pipeline network which supplies oil to Hungary and Slovakia, cutting this supply route on January 27.
It is a statement of the crazy world in which we live, that Ukraine can attack facilities that supply EU and NATO countries without opprobrium in the west. Unfortunately, out of sympathy for Ukraine’s war plight, EU member states are quick then to criticize Hungary and Slovakia for taking retaliatory action. Poland’s Foreign Minister, Radek Sikorski, labeled the Hungarian veto as “an escalation.” And yet he doesn’t have to answer to Hungarian voters.
Blocking the EU’s 20th sanctions package is one measure. Hungary and Slovakia have also blocked the promised 90 bln euro loan package for Kviv to keep the war effort going. They have also threatened to cut off supplies of gas, electricity, and diesel to Ukraine (as it no longer imports gas from Russia, Ukraine relies of supplies piped in from proximate EU countries). Ukrainian media has predictably labeled this energy blackmail. Not least given the enormous electricity and heating shortages Ukraine faces in light Russia’s campaign of strategic bombing against their energy infrastructure.
At a TV interview that I attended recently, a Ukrainian MP pointed out that she uses a local app that tells her how many hours of electricity her building will receive each day. Who in Europe would want to live in such conditions, not the least during a bitterly cold winter?
Of course, the stark brutality of the air attacks and Ukraine’s energy crisis drives Europe’s mainstream politicians to pursue more punitive actions against Russia, including economic sanctions. Yet the inescapable reality is that the EU’s 20th sanctions package amounts to more of the same — tactical scrapes at the bottom of the barrel — to bear down on Russia’s energy exports and financial services sector, together with small beer restrictions on some other goods’ exports.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, claims that Russia’s energy exports were cut by 24% in 2025. And yet, look at the real data, and you’ll see that Russia’s exports in 2025, at $419.4 billion, were down just 3.3% on 2025, with an overall current account surplus of $41.4 billion. That surplus will go into purchases of gold, which now accounts for almost one half of Russia’s soaring international reserves, which stand at $833 billion.
At some point, European leaders need to ask themselves, after 19 rounds of sanctions already, “is this really working?”
It’s not only that economic sanctions against Russia hit diminishing marginal returns soon after the war in Ukraine started four years ago. But that the addition of new sanctions, self-evidently, disincentivizes Putin from settling for peace. Yes, Russia’s economy is undoubtedly feeling the pain, through high inflation and interest rates, plus slowing growth. But there has never been a time when it appeared that, for economic reasons, Russia was under greater pressure to end the war than Ukraine and its European sponsors.So, and as I have said before, sanctions, and their phased removal, could play a positive role in leveraging an end to the war. Continuing to blame Hungary and Slovakia for the continued intransigence in blocking yet another round of EU sanctions misses this point.
Ian Proud was a member of His Britannic Majesty’s Diplomatic Service from 1999 to 2023. He served as the Economic Counsellor at the British Embassy in Moscow from July 2014 to February 2019. He recently published his memoir, “A Misfit in Moscow: How British diplomacy in Russia failed, 2014-2019,” and is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Quincy Institute.
London and Washington have tentatively restarted work on their multibillion-pound “tech prosperity deal”, which was paused last year after President Donald Trump piled pressure on the UK to cede ground in wider trade talks.
Senior US and UK officials have initiated discussions about collaboration on civil nuclear technologies and on hosting a joint summit on fusion technologies, according to multiple people briefed on the talks. They described the deal as “unsticking”. The US-UK “tech prosperity deal”, which was announced in September last year during Trump’s state visit, aimed to spur co-operation between the two countries in areas including AI, quantum computing and nuclear energy.
UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said at the time that the two nations were embarking upon a “golden age of nuclear” energy, with more transatlantic co-operation and speedier regulatory approvals for atomic projects. The deal was touted by the UK as including £31bn worth of investment from America’s top technology companies.
However, the US suspended the deal in early December, with UK officials claiming the Trump administration was pushing for wider trade concessions outside the tech partnership. One of the projects announced was an agreement between UK energy company Centrica and US nuclear group X-energy to build advanced high-temperature, gas-cooled reactors in Hartlepool. Aerospace and engineering company Rolls-Royce also said it had entered the US regulatory process for its small modular reactors, signalling its intent to roll them out in the US.
The tech deal was paused late last year after US officials became increasingly frustrated with the UK’s lack of willingness to address so-called non-tariff barriers in its wider trade negotiations, including regulations governing food and industrial goods.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian has pledged not to fold to pressure from the United States after his American counterpart, Donald Trump, said he was considering limited strikes to force a deal on Tehran’s nuclear programme.
Pezeshkian’s comments on Saturday came amid high tensions in the Gulf, with the US continuing to grow its military presence with the deployment of two aircraft carriers and dozens of jets.
“We will not bow down in the face of any of these difficulties,” Pezeshkian said at a ceremony to honour members of the Iranian Paralympics team.
“World powers are lining up with cowardice to force us to bow our heads. Just as you did not bow down in the face of difficulties, we will not bow down in the face of these problems,” he said.
Iran and the US resumed indirect talks on Tehran’s nuclear programme in Oman earlier this month, and held a second round in Switzerland last week.
Although Washington and Tehran described the talks in overall positive terms, they failed to achieve a breakthrough.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Friday that a diplomatic solution appeared within “our reach” and that his country was planning to finalise a draft deal in “the next two to three days” to send to Washington.
Crossroads
Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi, reporting from Tehran, said the two countries appear to be at a “crossroads once again” and that residents of the Iranian capital were watching closely for signs of diplomatic progress.
“How can anyone not worry about war?” one woman told Al Jazeera. “Even if we don’t worry about ourselves, we worry about our children’s future.”
A businessman said he believed military confrontation was eventually inevitable “because what the Americans want is surrender, and the Iranian state won’t accept that”………………………………………………………….
Trump issued new threats of military action in January following a deadly Iranian crackdown on antigovernment protesters. Tehran responded by threatening to strike US military bases in the region and warning that it could close the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for oil exports for the Gulf Arab states.
Greatest air power since 2003
According to the US media, the airpower Washington is amassing in the region is the greatest since its invasion of Iraq in 2003. In the past few days, Washington has deployed more than 120 aircraft to the Middle East, while the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford, is on its way to join the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group already positioned in the Arabian Sea…………………………………………………………………. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/22/iran-will-not-bow-down-to-us-pressure-in-nuclear-talks-pezeshkian-says
Retired rear admiral Philip Mathias, a former director of nuclear policy with the UK Ministry of Defence, told this masthead last month he feared Australians were not adequately informed about how the troubles plaguing the British navy could scuttle the SSN-AUKUS plan.
“ there is a high probability that the UK element of AUKUS will fail,”
“Australia has shown a great deal of naivety and did not conduct sufficient due diligence on the parlous state of the UK’s nuclear submarine program before signing up to AUKUS – and parting with billions of dollars,”
A British nuclear-powered submarine has arrived in Australia for an unprecedented month-long visit despite the well-chronicled problems plaguing the British navy’s ability to send its vessels to sea.
The British and Australian governments are holding up the visit as a sign of the countries’ commitment to the AUKUS pact, even as the United Kingdom views Russia as its most pressing security threat.
HMS Anson, an Astute-class nuclear-powered submarine, arrived on Sunday at the HMAS Stirling naval base in Perth for a month-long maintenance visit.
described the first such visit by a UK nuclear‑powered submarine in Australia as a “historic step in our nation’s readiness to operate and maintain conventionally armed, nuclear‑powered submarines”.
HMS Anson, which was commissioned in 2022, is reportedly the only available submarine in the British navy’s fleet of five Astute-class boats, highlighting the significance of the extended deployment to Australia.
British defence publication Navy Lookout has written that the “timing of the deployment seems extraordinary” as the British navy does not have any other Astute-class submarines available.
“The UK must continue to play its part in AUKUS, but in the short term, perhaps more local concerns should be the priority,” the publication argued this month.
“Placing the sole attack submarine on the other side of the globe appears to be at odds with vigorous official warnings to Russia that ‘any threat will be met with strength and resolve’.”
Navy Lookout said the British navy’s other four Astute-class submarines were “all at low or very low readiness”…………………………………………………………………………………
The plan involves the US selling Australia at least three Virginia-class submarines while the UK and Australia partner on the development of a new class of submarine known as the SSN-AUKUS………….
Retired rear admiral Philip Mathias, a former director of nuclear policy with the UK Ministry of Defence, told this masthead last month he feared Australians were not adequately informed about how the troubles plaguing the British navy could scuttle the SSN-AUKUS plan.
“Whilst the United States may sell some [nuclear-powered submarines] to Australia, there is a high probability that the UK element of AUKUS will fail,” he said
Mathias, who led a 2010 review of the UK Trident nuclear-weapons system, said: “It is clear that Australia has shown a great deal of naivety and did not conduct sufficient due diligence on the parlous state of the UK’s nuclear submarine program before signing up to AUKUS – and parting with billions of dollars, which it has already started to do.”
The head of the British navy, First Sea Lord Gwyn Jenkins, ordered an urgent 100-day drive to tackle systemic delays in the UK submarine program in October.
Washington still reportedly owes the intergovernmental organization billions of dollars in mandatory funding
The US has paid $160 million towards the more than $4 billion it owes the UN in the first payment since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
The UN faces a mounting financial crisis, while the US president positions his Gaza Board of Peace to “oversee” the global body. Some experts have already warned that the initiative could undermine the UN.
Washington’s latest contribution is a “partial payment of its past dues,” Reuters cited a UN spokesperson as saying on Thursday.
The money is a small fraction of the $2.19 billion the US reportedly owes for the UN regular budget and $2.4 it owes for current and past peacekeeping missions. The US is responsible for around 95% of the overdue payments to the UN’s regular budget, Reuters quoted the organization’s spokesperson as saying.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that the UN is facing a looming crisis which could end in “imminent financial collapse,” unless member states started making mandatory payments or the organization overhauled its financial rules.
The US, the organization’s biggest contributor, cut voluntary funding to multiple UN programs and cut aid spending last year, as part of Trump’s ‘America First’ policy pivot. In December, Washington pledged $2 billion for the UN’s humanitarian programs, warning it to “adapt or die.” By comparison, the US had contributed $14.1 billion in 2024.
In a speech on Thursday, Trump again criticized the UN as ineffective.
“The United Nations… is going to be much stronger and the ‘Board of Peace’ is going to almost be looking over the United Nations and making sure it runs properly,” he said at the inaugural Board of Peace event in Washington.
The board would help the struggling UN “money-wise” and make sure it’s “viable,” he said.
The Board of Peace was established to guide the stabilization of Gaza following the Israel-Hamas war. UN experts, however, have argued that oversight by such a body is “reminiscent of colonial practices,” due to it being chaired by Trump, rather than being under transparent multilateral or UN control.
Comment: The US behaves like a customer who goes into a restaurant, orders the most expensive meal and after gorging itself, complains about the food while commanding the staff around and growling at the other guests in the restaurant. When presented with the bill it throws a $5 dollar note to the waiter while leaving the restaurant in a huff without paying the main bill while yelling loudly how ungrateful the restaurant was for the honor to have their visit.
A few comments about why China is like it is – first of all, in the last 45 years, there has been no invasions, despite what people like little Marco Rubio of the US and Richard Marles the Australian Defence Minister might say, China is not and does not pose a threat to any of these countries – Japan might think there is a threat, China does not agree, in fact the opposite is true, Japan poses a much larger threat to China than China has ever posed to Japan.
China is concerned about, and in fact does feel threatened by Japan’s military expansion because the last time it happened literally millions of Chinese were murdered by the Japanese. Australia’s defence minister, Marles, asks us to consider why China has the world’s largest military expansion but he’s wrong – we have to hope he’s wrong because he’s been misinformed and is too dim to check out for himself, but more likely he knows he’s lying about this as China spends considerably less money than the US, in terms of not only its population but its geographical size, it’s quite entitled to spend more cash, when on a per capita basis, the amount is tiny compared to the US, on a ratio to GDP, it’s smaller than the US, it’s one third or less than NATO has been required to spend in terms of percentage of GDP and there’s one more very important factor that the US with only two neighbouring countries doesn’t have – that is 14 neighbouring countries with a shared land border.
Here’s another thing. China was invaded when they were weak, the British did it, the Americans did it, the eight nations alliance did it, Britain carved up part of Burma and took away some of China, it carved up India and took away parts of China, the Russians carved up Mongolia and Heilongjiang, taking away parts of China, the Japanese invaded and occupied China for 14 years. The classic twists and mental gymnastics people like Marles make would have us believe that the hundreds of US bases around China are to prevent China from doing what they’ve NEVER done – going out to invade other countries.
He, and several pundits would like us all to believe is that the US is keeping the world safe from China by arming their neighbours, interfering in the Provinces, Regions and the SARs but the reality is, China is building a military that will defend Chinese people inside China and Chinese land that belongs to China now – it’s not looking to reclaim land back, except in disputed regions.
Those disputed regions include parts of Tibet that the British took away and gave to India, parts of the South China Seas that the Japanese took away and both the US and UK, at the end of the Second World War, agreed would come back to China. There’s one military base in Africa, which is in a region shared with many other countries, including the USA, Japan, France, Italy, Germany Spain and even Saudi Arabia. Taiwan is NOT one of these disputed regions – the entire world whether they recognise Beijing or Taipei as the capital, recognises that there is one China and Taiwan is part of it – anyone who suggests that Taiwan is a country is either a liar, deliberately misleading us, or is far too dim to read the Constitution of the Republic of China, which not only claims all of the Chinese Mainland, it also wants those disputed regions back too.
China has something else which its detractors hate to admit and will lie about – that’s a policy of non-interference in the affairs of a sovereign nation – when it invests in another nation, it doesn’t call for democracy or elections, it doesn’t even ask that Communism or Socialism are accepted, it doesn’t send military to protect its assets, it won’t send missionaries to convert their subjects and it won’t impose conditions that force countries to give up their national assets or utilities if they can’t make the payments – if that sounds familiar and if it’s because you’ve been hearing that China will do all of those things and, if you think they have, I’d implore you to find me an example of where it’s happened, outside of opinion pieces written by people who want you to believe they have, almost every incident where we can find any of these things alleged, will be speculative – they’ll tell us what China might do, what China could do, what China may be doing, is alleged to have done or suspected to be involved in.
We might find individual cases of rogue Chinese people, Chinese criminals even and they use these tiny individual examples to tell you that this is “what China does” when that person who has broken the law has usually already been punished by the time they report it in western media and, if they mention that at all, it’ll be after the third paragraph where most of us have stopped reading.
On the other hand, I can find literally hundreds of examples where the USA is doing these things, where the UK and France have done these things, where Germany, Belgium, even Spain and Portugal have done them.
So then some of the comments I have been getting relate to the Port in Darwin, the ports in Panama and the Pirelli saga in Italy. Just for some background here, Sinochem owns 37% of Pirelli, the big Italian tyre company which wants to expand into the USA, of course the US won’t allow that while China has such a controlling interest. The share of Sinochem hasn’t changed, the only change is that the board, and remember Sinochem had controlling interest being the largest single shareholder, has declared that Sinochem no longer has control, giving the board more autonomy, – Sinochem agreed to this, so this isn’t a situation where anything has been taken from China, merely an agreement that the board retains control which a Chinese corporation retains more shares.
Erich, one of my followers said this: “if China doesn’t protect its assets it will lose them like Pirelli in Italy, the Ports in Panama, etc. Maybe at some point China will start caring about these things.”
My response is that it’s not just Erich, it’s literally hundreds of people, probably thousands but many in my responses who are misunderstanding China. China cares very deeply about the assets its people and corporations invest in, particularly overseas, but it will not break international laws, or contractual Agreements in order to protect them from people or governments which do break laws.
China will react to this in the same way it reacts to every other illegal action against it, by negotiations, and where they fail, arbitration, it will, when all else fails, take the appropriate legal action, which might be appeals to the WTO and perhaps even the UN or more likely the local courts – it knows there will be no satisfaction from those appeals but they are the legal mechanisms open to Chinese corporation. China as a government participates in legal and lawful bodies and does not want to overthrow them, to do so, makes China another USA – so the actions China takes, which will definitely be retaliatory, will be legal, they can, and probably will reduce purchases from offending countries, and of course, they will be much more careful in the decisions when investing in those countries both of which are well within their legal rights.
What China will not do is: unilaterally sanction anyone, any country or even any organisation within the country, it will not militarily defend its assets, it will not interfere in the internal affairs of another country but there is no doubt in my mind that if any country persists and acts on threats to China’s investments, there will be repercussions, probably it’s best not to call them retaliations, they are simply normal responses to a situation of risk.
In Australia for example, if they persist with this challenge to the legal investments Landbridge has made, investments that are compliant in every way and even beneficial to the people of the Northern Territory in jobs and payroll taxes, as well as increased business going through it’s port and beneficial to the people of Australia in 4.5 million income tax paid last year, those are the people who will suffer – China will find other suppliers for the things Australia sends – so far, the only one which is not directly sourced elsewhere is iron ore and, if China stops buying that in any great quantity, it will kill Australia’s economy.
Just continuing to use Darwin Port as an example, it is a critical trade hub in Northern Australia, handling minerals, agriculture, and livestock, with 2,295 vessel visits recorded in 2024-25, marking a 31.07% increase on the previous year. Darwin serves as a key gateway to Asia, managing significant exports of manganese, titanium, iron ore, and livestock. Given that China is the major trading partner of Australia, a huge proportion, unfortunately, there’s no way I can find out, would be Chinese owned, flagged, operated or destined ships, they would be travelling between China and Darwin – that’s 44 ships a week, many of which will simply divert to other ports, or, if the asset has been seized they’re more likely to simply stop coming altogether – how can that possibly benefit the warehouses, the truckers, the waste management, the catering and hospitality venues that the sailors use, the customs brokers, the security and surveillance companies – there’s an entire eco-system of industries deriving their income from a well-operated port and Darwin, which is a small city will feel a very heavy impact from no Chinese ships arriving and departing there. There will also be a lot of farmers, miners and other suppliers using that port to ship to China – it will all stop.
So, to think China will just sit back and do nothing is wrong, they are very mindful that their investments are not just at risk but under threat – business leaders in China understand this and are already taking action – there’s an April 2024 KPMG report, that’s almost 2 years old now showing that China’s investments in Australia have declined from a peak in 2016, just after the Free Trade Agreement was signed to the lowest level since 2006. It’s well worth a read if you’re interested, the report defines all kinds of factors but fails to mention the obvious one – Australia simply doesn’t want Chinese investment, they feel threatened by perceptions given to them by media which are completely false.
In keeping with the maxim that one person’s loss is another’s gain, the vast majority of China’s Overseas Direct Investment is now going to One Belt One Road countries – these are safe destinations, they are countries that welcome trade with and investments from China. In the Western world, that’s not many countries. Leaders of Canada and the UK were recently in China seeking investment opportunities, in both cases, they returned to their home countries to media criticism. It remains to be seen how they will handle this but they, as leaders, and their business leaders all know the truth – the media is lying, a few politicians who are actually paid by Washington to further lie about China are losing influence. Some people will assume that I’m either exaggerating about this but the reality is there for all to see, if you don’t believe me, go look up who are the main funders of the Inter Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). It states clearly on its website that it does not accept funds from governments. But then lists the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican movement, Hello Taiwan the National Democratic Institute and others, all of which are government funded and almost all of which can trace their funds back to Washington DC and congressionally approved expenditure.
The vast majority of the Non-US aligned world realises – there is no threat from China and, once again I reiterate something I’ve said many times, the people telling you China is a threat are more likely to damage your economy and your global standing than China ever will – China isn’t a threat, it’s those people telling you it is, who are.
Old-school, white-man’s-burden colonialism is unapologetically back
Rubio used the Munich conference to lay bare the new reality: Washington will no longer pay lip service to being the nice guy or abiding by any red lines
In Munich, the US announced its intent to crush all opposition to its permanent status as imperial top dog, even if that means destroying everything, and all of us, in the process.
S Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference last weekend was another troubling declaration of intent by the Trump administration.
The explicit goal of US foreign policy, according to Rubio, is to resurrect the western colonial order that persisted for some five centuries until the Second World War.
Old-school, white-man’s-burden colonialism is unapologetically back.
In Rubio’s preposterous retelling, Europe’s colonisation of much of the planet, and the rape and pillage of its resources, was a glorious era of western exploration, innovation and creativity. The West brought a “superior” civilisation to backward peoples while maintaining global order.
Reflecting on the era before 1945, he observed: “The West had been expanding – its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe.”
That course went into reverse 80 years ago: “The great western empires had entered into terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come.”
According to Rubio, that decline was accelerated by what he dismissed as the “abstractions of international law”, established by the United Nations in the immediate postwar period. In the pursuit of what he derisively termed “a perfect world”, these new universal laws – ones that treated all humans as equal – served only to hamstring western colonialism.
Rubio neglected to mention that the purpose of international law was to prevent a return to the horrors of the Second World War: the extermination of civilians in death camps and the firebombing of European and Japanese cities.
During his speech, Rubio offered Europe the chance to join the Trump administration in reviving “The West’s age of dominance” to “Renew the greatest civilisation in human history.”
“What we want is a reinvigorated alliance that recognises that what has ailed our societies is not just a set of bad policies but a malaise of hopelessness and complacency. An alliance – the alliance that we want is one that is not paralysed into inaction by fear – fear of climate change, fear of war, fear of technology,” he said.
No peace, no order
Quite astonishingly, Rubio was greeted with enthusiastic applause throughout his speech from an audience comprising heads of state, politicians, diplomats and military officials. He is reported to have received a standing ovation from half of the attendees.
They seemed swept up in Rubio’s triumphalist account of empire, one utterly oblivious to the well-documented realities of “western domination” – not least its brutal colonial tyrannies, its industrial-scale genocides and the mass enslavement of native populations.
These were not unfortunate episodes or mistakes in the West’s imperial past. They were integral to it. They were the coercive means by which colonised peoples were stripped of their assets and labour to finance empire.
He also appeared blind to another downside of the colonial West, which was all too evident over those five centuries. Ruthless competition between European states, vying to be first to pillage resources in the Global South, led to endless wars in which Europeans, as well as the people they colonised, were killed.
Empire did not ensure order, let alone peace. Colonialism was about systematised theft – and, as the saying goes, there is rarely honour among thieves.
In the dog-eat-dog world that preceded international law, each colonial power was out for its own advancement against rivals. That culminated in two terrible wars in the first half of the 20th century that decimated Europe itself.
Because Rubio does not understand the past, his vision of the future is inevitably defective as well. Any attempt by the Trump administration to restore overt western colonial rule will prove suicidal. As we shall see, such a venture would spell doom for us all. In fact, we may already be well advanced on that path.
Imperial muscles
There are a number of glaring flaws in Rubio and the Trump administration’s thinking.
First, Rubio’s assertion that the West gave up colonialism some 80 years ago is flatly wrong. At the end of the Second World War, Europe’s physically battered and economically exhausted colonial powers passed the baton of empire to the US. Washington did not end colonialism. It rationalised and streamlined it.
Washington continued the European tradition of overthrowing nationalist leaders and installing weak, obedient clients in their stead.
It also seeded the globe with hundreds of US military bases to project hard power, while exploiting new globalising technologies to project soft power. Economic carrots and sticks, wielded largely out of view through the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, incentivised submission to its diktats by non-western leaders.
The biggest misdirection in Rubio’s remarks was his omission of the real reason the West abandoned overt colonialism after the Second World War and built international institutions such as the United Nations.
It was not an acceptance of defeat or decline by the US, but rather a recognition that, with the rapid development of nuclear arsenals by the superpowers in the wake of the war, a system capable of mediating the worst excesses of power had become a necessity.
It was the only hope of preventing reckless colonial competition and confrontation that could trigger a Third World War likely to spiral quickly into nuclear armageddon.
Nothing has changed over the past eight decades.
Russia and China still have large nuclear arsenals, and Moscow now has hypersonic missiles capable of carrying these warheads at unprecedented speeds.
There is still no failsafe mechanism to prevent misunderstandings from rapidly escalating into mutual attack.
Human nature has not changed since the 1940s – only the arrogance of a superpower determined to prevent great powers like China or Russia from ever ousting it from its imperial perch.
The threat of nuclear annihilation has not diminished. It has grown exponentially as limitations on global resources – those needed to sustain western consumption and endless “economic growth” – put ever greater pressure on the US to discard its mask as the guardian of superior values.
Rubio used the Munich conference to lay bare the new reality: Washington will no longer pay lip service to being the nice guy or abiding by any red lines.
The Trump administration is planning to build a 5,000-person military base in Gaza, sprawling more than 350 acres, according to Board of Peace contracting records reviewed by the Guardian.
The site is envisioned as a military operating base for a future International Stabilization Force (ISF), planned as a multinational military force composed of pledged troops. The ISF is part of the newly created Board of Peace which is meant to govern Gaza. The Board of Peace is chaired by Donald Trump and led in part by his son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The plans reviewed by the Guardian call for the phased construction of a military outpost that will eventually have a footprint of 1,400 metres by 1,100 metres, ringed by 26 trailer-mounted armored watch towers, a small arms range, bunkers, and a warehouse for military equipment for operations. The entire base will be encircled with barbed wire.
The fortification is planned for an arid stretch of flatlands in southern Gaza strewn with saltbush and white broom shrubs, and littered with twisted metal from years of Israeli bombardment. The Guardian has reviewed video of the area. A source close to the planning tells the Guardian that a small group of bidders – international construction companies with experience in war zones – have already been shown the area in a site visit.
The Indonesian government has reportedly offered to send up to 8,000 troops. Indonesia’s president was one of four south-east Asian leaders scheduled to attend an inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace in Washington DC on Thursday.
The UN security council authorized the Board of Peace to establish a temporary International Stabilization Force in Gaza. The ISF, according to the UN, will be tasked with securing Gaza’s border and maintaining peace within the area. It is also supposed to protect civilians, and train and support “vetted Palestinian police forces”.
It is unclear what the ISF’s rules of engagement would be if there is combat, renewed bombing by Israel, or attacks by Hamas. Nor is it clear what role the ISF is meant to play in disarming Hamas, an Israeli condition to proceed with Gaza’s reconstruction.
While more than 20 countries have signed up as members of the Board of Peace, much of the world has stayed away. Although it was set up with the UN’s approval, the organization’s charter appears to grant Trump permanent leadership and control.
“The Board of Peace is a kind of legal fiction, nominally with its own international legal personality separate from both the UN and the United States, but in reality it’s just an empty shell for the United States to use as it sees fit,” said Adil Haque, a professor of law at Rutgers University.
Experts say the funding and governance structures are murky, and several contractors have told the Guardian that conversations with US officials are often conducted on Signal rather than over government email.
The military base contracting document was issued by the Board of Peace, according to a person familiar with the process, and prepared with the help of US contracting officials.
The plans say there is to be a network of bunkers each 6 metres by 4 metres and 2.5 metres tall, with elaborate ventilation systems where soldiers can go for protection.
“The Contractor,” says the document, “shallconduct a geophysical survey of the site to identify any subterranean voids, tunnels, or large cavities per phase.” This provision is likely referencing the large network of tunnels Hamas has built in Gaza.
One section of the document describes a “Human Remains Protocol”. “If suspected human remains or cultural artifacts are discovered, all work in the immediate area must cease immediately, the area must be secured, and the Contracting Officer must be notified immediately for direction,” it says. The bodies of about 10,000 Palestinians are believed to be buried under the rubble in Gaza, according to Gaza’s civil defense agency.
It is unclear who owns the land where the military compound is set to be built, but much of the south Gaza area is currently under Israeli control. The UN estimates that at least 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced during the war.
Diana Buttu, a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and former peace negotiator, called building a military base on Palestinian land without the government’s approval an act of occupation. “Whose permission did they get to build that military base?”
Officials from US Central Command referred all questions about the military base to the Board of Peace.
A Trump administration official declined to discuss the military base contract: “As the President has said, no US boots will be on the ground. We’re not going to discuss leaked documents.”
the Trump administration is definitely conscious that they have the power to reshape the political culture of the organization if they find someone who aligns with their views”.
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 17 2026 (IPS) – As the campaign for the next Secretary-General gathers momentum – at a relatively slow pace – there is widespread speculation that any candidate running for the post of UN chief will have to abide by the dictates of a politically hostile White House or face a veto in the Security Council.
So far, there are only two declared candidates: former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and former Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi from Argentina—with more candidates expected to join the race.
The winning candidate, who will take office in January 2027, will be elected by the 15-member Security Council and subsequently ratified by the 193-member General Assembly (UNGA).
Annalena Baerbock, the president of UNGA, said the selection process is already underway, and the interactive dialogues with candidates have been scheduled for the week of 20 April, where they will present their “vision statements”.
Meanwhile, the US has publicly declared its opposition to some of the basic goals in the UN’s socio-economic agenda, including gender empowerment and policies relating to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), while dismissing climate change as “a hoax” and a “giant scam.” The Trump administration has also downplayed human rights and adherence to international laws—two concepts ingrained in the UN system.
In an interview with the New York Times last January, President Trump said he does not “need international law” to guide his actions, arguing that only his own “morality” and “mind” will constrain his global powers.
So, what would be the fate of any candidate— male or female—who advocates these UN goals? Will there be a battle of the vetoes – as it happened in a bygone era?
Richard Gowan, Program Director, Global Issues and Institutions, International Crisis Group (ICG), who oversees ICG’s work on geopolitics, global trends in conflict and multilateralism, told IPS nobody knows how this race will end.
Obviously UN-watchers will be tracking the initial candidates’ vision statements and public appearances over the coming months, he pointed out.
“But diplomats in New York have a suspicion that the veto powers in the Security Council may suddenly announce support for a new candidate at the last minute to circumvent the entire public process. There is a strong sense that the U.S., China and Russia don’t want to be boxed in by the General Assembly.”
There is also a scenario, he said, where the veto powers cannot agree on a candidate, and the Council ends up grinding out discussions of a candidate right through to December.
“UN officials have even done some contingency planning for what happens if there is not an agreed candidate on 1 January 2027. It is possible that the Security Council might ask Guterres to hang on for a few months, although I don’t think either diplomats or Guterres want that outcome.”
There are definitely a few senior UN officials and ambassadors in New York who wonder if the Council could call on them at the very last minute, said Gowan.
Thomas G. Weiss, Presidential Professor Emeritus, Political Science, and Director Emeritus, Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center, told IPS it is hard to imagine anyone running for UNSG who would not run into a veto from Washington in a candidacy necessarily addressing the values of cooperation (multilateralism of any shape) as well as honestly discussing such issues as climate, gender (male or female), nuclear proliferation, Palestine, and sovereignty—all “hoaxes” or “con jobs” according to DJT (President Trump) and his junta.
Both the 1996 and 1981 elections, he said, provide “models.”
“The Chinese vetoes probably are the most relevant precedent for Washington going to the mat indefinitely until an “acceptable” candidate emerges. Let’s hope that person is as competent as the compromise of 1996, Kofi Annan”, he declared.
In 1981, Salim Ahmed Salim of Tanzania, was backed by the Organization of African Unity, the Non-Aligned Movement and China. But his bid was blocked by a US veto.
In 1996, a second five-year term for Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt was vetoed by the US – even though he received the support of 14 of 15 members in the Security Council.
In 1981, China cast a record 16 vetoes against Kurt Waldheim to prevent a third term, leading to his withdrawal and the selection of Javier Pérez de Cuéllar.
Meanwhile, there has been an intense campaign for a female UN chief, the first in the 81-year history of the UN. But the US has remained tight-lipped on the widely supported proposal.
The last 9 secretaries-general, all males, include:
António Guterres (Portugal), who took office in January 2017; Ban Ki-moon (Republic of Korea), from January 2007 to December 2016; Kofi A. Annan (Ghana), January 1997 to December 2006; Boutros Boutros-Ghali (Egypt), January 1992 to December 1996; Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (Peru), January 1982 to December 1991; Kurt Waldheim (Austria), January 1972 to December 1981; U Thant (Burma, now Myanmar), who served from November 1961, when he was appointed acting Secretary-General (he was formally appointed Secretary-General in November 1962), to December 1971; Dag Hammarskjöld (Sweden), from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in Africa in September 1961; and Trygve Lie (Norway), who held office from February 1946 to his resignation in November 1952.
As for the U.S., said Gowan, “I don’t believe that Washington has settled on a candidate yet. But the Trump administration is definitely conscious that they have the power to reshape the political culture of the organization if they find someone who aligns with their views”.
A lot of UN members assume that the U.S. won’t accept a female Secretary-General but I think that Washington could back a woman if she was a strong social conservative and willing to make large cuts to the UN system, he argued.
Right now, there is not an obvious female candidate meeting those criteria, though. I think some candidates who could never align with the U.S. on things like development and diversity are already stepping out of the race.”
Meanwhile, there is a reason that Mia Mottley has gone from being the putative front runner to refocusing on domestic politics.
“I also think that all candidates recognize that they are going to have to talk a lot more about how they will advance the UN’s work on peace and security, which is a priority not only for the U.S. but a lot of member states.”
“That said, one senior UN diplomat recently told me that they cannot see Global South countries accepting another Western candidate after Guterres, regardless of gender. The non-Western members of the Security Council could create a blocking minority in the Security Council to keep candidates from U.S. allies out,” declared Gowan.
He said U.S. diplomats have told other veto powers that they will hold back on various reform proposals and cuts until they have their own candidate as Secretary-General.
A lot of UN members assume that the U.S. won’t accept a female Secretary-General but I think that Washington could back a woman if she was a strong social conservative and willing to make large cuts to the UN system, he argued.
Rubio’s speech isn’t just another round of transatlantic posturing. It marks a moment when a top U.S. official openly reframes five centuries of Western expansion — conquest, colonization, and domination — as a civilizational triumph that must be revived.
According to journalist Ben Norton, Rubio’s remarks went beyond simple rhetoric — openly lamenting the end of Western imperial expansion and portraying decolonization movements as destructive forces driven by “godless communist revolutions.”
In a striking address at the Munich Security Conference, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio framed Western history not as a legacy of colonial domination, but as a “great civilization” whose decline must be reversed.
Rubio stated:
“For five centuries before the end of the Second World War, the West had been expanding… its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers… building vast empires extending out across the globe. But in 1945… it was contracting.”
He described anti-colonial uprisings as accelerating Western decline and rejected what he called “managed decline,” urging Europe and the United States to renew “the greatest civilization in human history.”
As reported in the Guardian this is something along the lines of “Empire is great. Empire is back. Empire is American.” Adding “The US secretary of state delivered what can only be described as a 22-minute ode to empire. A love letter to conquest and colonialism. A proud defense of the west’s territorial expansion.
Why This Matters
Since the post-World War II wave of decolonization across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, formal empires largely collapsed. Yet Rubio’s framing — praising Western expansion while dismissing colonial crimes as “purported sins” — signals a broader ideological shift.
Norton argues that this speech represents:
A defense of Western imperial legacy
A call for renewed transatlantic unity
A strategic push to restructure global supply chains away from China
An ideological justification for reasserting dominance over the Global South
Context: Competing Global Visions
While Rubio emphasized Western civilizational unity and supply chain control, China’s foreign minister presented an opposing vision centered on multilateralism and sovereign equality at the same conference.
The divide reflects a larger geopolitical struggle between:
A U.S.-led Western alliance seeking strategic dominance
A rising multipolar bloc emphasizing sovereignty and UN-centered governance
For more context on Rubio’s speech and the broader geopolitical stakes, here’s Ben Norton and The Geopolitical Economy Report:
When President Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the JCPOA, the US reimposed wide-ranging sanctions in direct contradiction of Resolution 2231 and launched a campaign of economic warfare designed to cripple Iran’s economy that continues to this day.
The US assault on the UN Charter has now escalated once again to the brink of war, with US threats of force and acts of economic warfare proceeding daily.
SCHEERPOST, By Jeffrey Sachs / Common Dreams, February 18, 2026
Distinguished Members of the Security Council,
The President of the United States is issuing grave threats of force against the Islamic Republic of Iran if it does not accede to US demands. His actions risk a major regional war that would be devastating. Asked if he wanted regime change, he responded that it “seems like that would be the best thing that could happen.” When asked why a second US aircraft carrier has been sent to the region, President Trump answered “in case we don’t make a deal, we’ll need it … if we need it, we’ll have it ready.”
These threats are in violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which declares that “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
These threats come in the context of Iran’s repeated calls for negotiations. Moreover, on February 7, Iran’s Foreign Minister delivered a speech in Doha proposing comprehensive negotiations for regional peace, following a round of talks in Oman supported by the diplomacy of the Arab states and Türkiye. Even as a second round of negotiations has been announced, the US is resorting to escalating threats of force.
The issue facing the UN Security Council in these perilous days is whether any member state, by force or threat of force, may place itself above the United Nations Charter that governs us all. At stake is the integrity of the UN-based international system.
One of the crucial roles of the Security Council is to call on member states to settle disputes by peaceful means such as negotiation, mediation, arbitration, or judicial settlement, without the threat of force or resort to force. Today, the world is in urgent need of a renewed commitment to diplomacy.
The current threat of an attack by the US did not begin with any failure by Iran to negotiate. On the contrary, it began with the United States’ repudiation of negotiations that had already succeeded.
On July 14, 2015, after years of extensive diplomacy, Iran and the P5 countries plus Germany concluded the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program would remain exclusively peaceful. In return, economic sanctions on Iran were to be lifted. The JCPOA placed Iran’s nuclear activities under strict and continuous scrutiny by the International Atomic Energy Agency and thereby ended the risk of a nuclear-arms breakout by Iran, a risk that Iran had consistently denied.
On July 20, 2015, the UNSC unanimously adopted Resolution 2231. That resolution “endorses the JCPOA” and calls upon all states to take the steps “necessary to support the implementation.” It terminated previous sanctions resolutions and incorporated the JCPOA into international law. The Security Council explicitly recognized Iran’s “right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes” under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and established a robust verification regime.
Yet on May 8, 2018, three years after the successful UNSC Resolution, the United States unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA. This withdrawal was actively lobbied for by the Israeli government. Since the late 1990s, Israel’s leadership has repeatedly, falsely, and hypocritically claimed that Iran was on the verge of obtaining a nuclear weapon, even as Israel itself had secretly acquired nuclear weapons outside the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and has until today refused to join the treaty and subject itself to its controls.
When President Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the JCPOA, the US reimposed wide-ranging sanctions in direct contradiction of Resolution 2231 and launched a campaign of economic warfare designed to cripple Iran’s economy that continues to this day.
The current threats by the US are therefore part of a long-standing pattern of feigning interest in negotiations while in fact pursuing economic warfare and military force. In June 2025, following the renewal of negotiations earlier that year, the United States and Iran entered a sixth round of talks. The US had characterized the negotiations as constructive and positive. The sixth round was set for June 15, 2025. Yet on June 13, 2025, the US supported Israel’s bombing of Iran. A week after that, the US attacked Iran under Operation Midnight Hammer.
President Trump just made one of the most depraved statements about destroying living conditions for a foreign people ever uttered by a US president. “THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”
Trump doesn’t just talk depravity. He practices depravity. He’s ratcheted up America’s 66 yearlong campaign of economic sanctions and embargo to unprecedented heights. For the 11 million beleaguered Cuban people that means a new low in living standards from Trump’s cruelty.
Trump‘s criminal intervention in Venezuela allows him to cut off Venezuelan oil which suppled one third of Cuba’s oil. Not satisfied with that, Trump is pressuring Mexico to cut off the 44% of Cuban oil it supplies. If successful that would cut Cuba’s oil supplies by 78%. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum cancel one oil shipment but says Mexico will still provide Cuba oil based on “humanitarian needs.” Tho reducing oil shipments, Mexico is sending two ships containing 800 tons of desperately needed food, water and hygiene products. Hopefully Trump won’t mistake the Mexican ships for drug boats to be obliterated.
The oil shortage has already created a humanitarian crisis as less than half of Havana’s garbage trucks have fuel to cope with mountains of waste. Russia has ordered all its tourists out of Cuba. The collapsing tourist industry is destroying one of Cuba’s last economic lifelines.
But that is not good enough for Trump who’s considering a total blockade on oil imports to collapse the Cuban economy and depose the communist government. Last month Trump signed an executive order imposing tariffs on any country that sends oil to Cuba. Seeking to out-deprave the depraved Trump when it comes to Cuba, U.S. Charge d Affaires in Havana Mike Hammer told his staff “Now there is going to be a real blockade. Nothing is getting in. No more oil is coming.”
Nine years ago my wife and I visited Cuba for 10 days before newly elected Trump began dismantling Obama’s wonderful détente with Cuba. While his détente reestablished diplomatic relations and increased badly needed US tourism, it did not end the embargo which requires Congressional legislation. It was heartbreaking being there to ponder the madness of US policy inflicting such cruelty on such a beautiful country and its people for the past 57 years.
I’d been studying US Cuban relations since January 1, 1959 when news broke on Castro’s successful takedown of the brutal US supported Batista regime. I welcomed the news that 60 years of US exploitation of Cuba following our takeover of Cuba from Spain in 1898 had ended. Sadly, Ike rescinded his initial outreach to Castro within a year over US obsession in destroying any popular left wing government seeking to uplift its people suffering under colonialism.
My visit greatly expanded all I’d been studying about Cuba since 1959. It inspired me to develop a talk entitled ‘US Cuban Relations 1898 to Present: What They Didn’t Teach Us in School’ which I’ve presented many times. I end the talk imploring attendees to stay informed, support end to America’s cruel, heatless embargo, and visit Cuba to see for yourself its beauty and the need to end senseless US cruelty.
Alas, at next presentation I’ll drop the third request they visit Cuba to see for themselves its beauty and its people. The current depraved US administration is making Cuba unlivable for its 11 million citizens and any tourist who dares visit.
US empire managers have been making some surprisingly honest admissions in recent days, with Senator Lindsey Graham saying the wars of the future are being planned in Israel and Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling for a return to old-school western colonialism.
During a Monday press conference in Tel Aviv after a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, Graham said that “I’ve been coming here every two weeks whether I need to or not.”
Why is a South Carolina senator traveling to Israel every two weeks, rain or shine? The bloodthirsty warmonger answers this question in short order.
“The wars of the future are being planned here in Israel,” Graham said. “Because if you’re not one step ahead of the enemy, you suffer. The most clever, creative military forces on the planet are here in Israel.”
Graham salivated about the possibility of a US war with Iran, acknowledging that such a war could absolutely result in American troops in the region being struck by Iranian missiles but saying the US should go to war anyway.
“Could our soldiers be hit in the region? Absolutely, they could. Can Iran respond if we have an all-out attack? Absolutely, they can,” Graham said, arguing that “the risk associated with that is far less than the risk associated with blinking and pulling the plug and not helping the people as you promised.”
During a speech at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio took the mask all the way off in an unsettling rant about the need to return to the good old days when western powers dominated the global south without pretense or apology.
“For five centuries, before the end of the second world war, the West had been expanding — its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe,” Rubio said. “But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, it was contracting. Europe was in ruins. Half of it lived behind an Iron Curtain and the rest looked like it would soon follow. The great Western empires had entered into terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come.”
Rubio, a notoriously anti-communist gusano, is here admitting that socialism played a leading role in pushing back against the abusive colonialism and empire-building of the western world in recent decades. A normal person would take this as a strong argument in favor of socialism, but Rubio says it like it’s a bad thing.
Rubio urged Europeans to join their white Christian brethren in the United States in re-conquering the brown-skinned communists and heathens who have been insisting upon their own sovereignty and the advancement of their own interests:
“Under President Trump, the United States of America will once again take on the task of renewal and restoration, driven by a vision of a future as proud, as sovereign, and as vital as our civilization’s past. And while we are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone, it is our preference and it is our hope to do this together with you, our friends here in Europe.
“For the United States and Europe, we belong together. America was founded 250 years ago, but the roots began here on this continent long before. The man who settled and built the nation of my birth arrived on our shores carrying the memories and the traditions and the Christian faith of their ancestors as a sacred inheritance, an unbreakable link between the old world and the new.
“We are part of one civilization — Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir.”
It takes a special kind of psychopath to look back with fondness upon five centuries of unchecked western colonialism and imperialism and then advocate a return to those horrific days. Mass genocides across entire continents. The African slave trade. The violent subjugation and enslavement of entire populations. That is what Rubio is looking back on and sighing with nostalgia.
And this is of course to say nothing of the savagery his beloved “Western civilization” is perpetrating in the present day. This is the civilization of the Gaza holocaust. The civilization that cannot exist without constant war, exploitation and extraction. The civilization that is presently strangling Cuba to death and preparing for war with Iran. The civilization that still to this day violently subjugates and robs the global south. The civilization of ecocide. The civilization of Epstein.
Western civilization is the most depraved and abusive civilization that has ever existed. It doesn’t need a return to its prime, it needs to be stopped in its tracks and made healthy. This is obvious from a glance at the deranged empire managers this civilization has been elevating to positions of leadership.
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