STRATEGIC ALERT Service

Europe has been the scene of two intense diplomatic offensives over the past ten days, albeit with very different aims in view, one undertaken by Ukraine President Zelenskyy and the other by Chinese diplomats. Concerning the first, each step of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s tour from May 13 to 15 served to ratchet up the threat of a direct war between Russia […]

In the highest-level meeting with U.S. officials in months, State Councilor Wang Yi met with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan May 10-11 in Vienna for ten hours of talks. Among the crucial issues raised were Taiwan and Ukraine. This is interpreted as a sign that the channels of communication are now being re-opened, following the shoot-down of a Chinese […]

Germany seems to have dismissed any diplomatic paths to solving the Ukraine conflict, including the Chinese proposal. Thus, as Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived for talks in Berlin on May 14, the government announced the biggest supply of weapons ever to Kyiv, in the range of €2.7 billion. The list includes another 20 Marder infantry fighting vehicles, 30 Leopard-1 A5 […]

What could better epitomize the metaphor of an “ivory tower” than the meeting of EU Foreign Ministers near Stockholm on May 12, i.e., of a ruling class totally decoupled from their constituencies and the real world. The ministers did, in fact, meet in the brick tower of a 17th-century castle, and they had to relinquish any devices or means, such […]

Ironically, as the European Commission was trying to push its “de-risking” strategy paper down the throat of the Foreign ministers meeting near Stockholm, two examples in the real world indicated how such a strategy goes against the interests of all European nations, even the most anti-China among them. China’s Vice President Han Zheng visited Portugal on May 7-9, as part […]

European Union authorities on May 2 approved the Dutch government’s plan to offer €1.5 billion in buy-out payments to some 3,000 farmers, mainly livestock producers, to shut down in the Netherlands, on condition they agree not to relocate their production anywhere else in the EU. If a farmer accepts a so-called voluntary buy-out, he or she may never farm in […]

Two well-known and respected American physicists, one of them the most recent Nobel Prize winner in that field, have made clear their opposition to the dominant “narrative” of climate change as an allegedly man-made occurrence. Given the accomplishments of both Prof. Theodore Postol and Dr. John F. Clauser, their interventions will undoubtedly impact the views of other scientists around the […]

In the nearly sixty years since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (JFK), there have been many who pointed an accusing finger at the CIA, alleging that the spy agency was involved in both the murder and the ensuing coverup. Yet documents which were thought would shed some light on this have remained classified. The discussion has now been […]

In the early morning hours of May 3, Moscow time, two Ukrainian drones approaching the residence of Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin were neutralized by personnel onsite before causing damage, but catapulting the proxy war of NATO against Russia to new heights. The Russians made clear, from the very first statement on, that they held the Ukrainian authorities responsible for […]

Last week, the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank raised interest rates by a quarter point, apparently unconcerned about what this means for an already contracting economy, and for the banking system itself, where the epidemic of bank failures in the U.S. is by no means under control. The Fed raised rates by 5% in one year — something […]