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 7 January 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 18 September 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.

China’s President Xi Jinping concluded his three-day state visit to the US on Friday, 25 September, 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 characterised 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 emphasising that “two sides should maintain human control over AI technologies, uphold a people-centred approach and the principle of using AI for good,” he proposed greater exchange of information to “prevent any misuse and abuse of AI.”

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, 24 September, 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 the “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.

In his speech at the UN General Assembly on 23 September 2026, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian “strongly condemned a ‘double standard’ on the issue of nuclear development, stating that Israel, which is not a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has weapons of mass destruction yet has never been inspected. ‘The nuclear weapon is in Israel, but the inspectors are in Iran. Israel kills, but Iran is subject to sanctions,’ he stressed (UN News, 2026; UN Web TV, 2026).

Does this suggest a change of tack on the part of the Iranians regarding this central issue given that Iran has hitherto tended to downplay Israel’s nuclear weapons? This was most recently confirmed in the Iranian demands for an end to their closure of the Strait of Hormuz and for a lasting peace between Iran and the US. No mention was made of Israel’s nuclear weapons in the 14-point Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding [MoU] of June 2026. Yet, despite being attacked by Israel and the US, two nuclear powers, in June 2025 and again in February 2026, article 8 of the memorandum states: “The Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons” (US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding, 2026). This position was reiterated by Pezeshkian in his speech. However, US President Trump soon annulled the memorandum, and there is at present little sign of it being reactivated.

Despite Israel’s “ambiguity”—meaning that it does not affirm or deny—it has long been understood that Israel possesses a nuclear arsenal. Indeed, back in 1986, former Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu publicly exposed Israel’s nuclear programme at the Dimona facility in The Sunday Times, in which it was estimated that Israel possessed between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads (Times Online, 2004). But Israel did not sign up to the NPT, so it has never had any inspections from the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency).

Yet, it is Israel that has relentlessly been calling for an end to Iran’s right to nuclear enrichment, arguing that this is a short step to its developing nuclear weapons. Whether Democrat or Republican, US presidents have dutifully followed Israel’s demand that Iran must never have nuclear weapons, a stance also observed by western nations in their entirety. Under the enormous influence of Israel, they have not expressed any concerns over Israel’s nuclear arsenal; indeed, they resolutely refrain from mentioning it.

This is the double standard rightly stressed by Pezeshkian. The presumption in the West explains their hypocrisy, that is, Israel can be trusted with nuclear weapons, so there is no mention of any kinds of sanctions, while Iran, by contrast, most certainly cannot be so trusted and so must never be allowed to develop or acquire them. Even though it adheres to Ayatollah Khamenei’s fatwa against nuclear weapons and does not possess them, Iran is heavily sanctioned by the West. Though the fatwa was a political signal to the US and its western allies that their concerns about Iran’s supposed desire for nuclear weapons were mistaken, it was blithely ignored.

Iran’s response to Israel’s chutzpah and Western hypocrisy has been to downplay Israel’s nuclear arsenal. This is paradoxical, and the reasons for this puzzling stance are not clear. This is not to say that Iran has completely kept silence on the issue—for example, in April 2010, at the opening of the First International Conference on Disarmament and Non-Proliferation: World Security without Weapons of Mass Destruction, held in Tehran, then Iranian President Ahmadinejad explicitly referred to Israel’s nuclear arsenal, which he argued was safeguarded by the United States, while Iran is prevented from establishing a nuclear energy programme for peaceful purposes (Haaretz, 2010). However, the conference, including Ahmadinejad’s speech, was largely ignored by Western governments and the media.

A previous clear example of Iran’s downplaying of Israeli nuclear weapons was that this was not mentioned in the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] of 2015, thereby preventing discomfort for then-US President Obama, who would have had to explain the double standard especially as the whole purpose of the JCPOA was to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

So, it is clear that Iran has avoided drawing attention to Israel’s nuclear stockpile and attendant Western hypocrisy with any great vigour. Why this is so has not been stated in public statements, but one can surmise that this is to block the inference that Iran’s highlighting of Israeli nuclear weapons would be the pretext for developing its own. If true, this is a most dubious explanation for which little evidence exists. Indeed, the opposite would be a legitimate reason for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons: to act as a deterrent against Israel, a nuclear-armed country that is unremittingly hostile to it.

It remains to be seen whether Pezeshkian’s speech suggests that Iran, rather than underplaying Israel’s nuclear arsenal—for whatever reasons—will henceforth robustly draw attention to its existence and highlight Western hypocrisy in remaining silent about it. Given that Iran has repeatedly been bombed by Israel and the US and may well be bombed again, the one deterrent that can ward off a future attack is the acquisition of nuclear weapons. Hence, the assurance given in the MoU, and affirmed by Pezeshkian, that Iran shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons, is self-defeating.

If this undertaking stems from Ayatollah Khamenei’s fatwa, then his son, Mujtaba, the new supreme leader, should rescind it. He, and other Iranian leaders, should remember that in his speech at the UN General Assembly, US President Trump threatened once more to annihilate Iran, in which endeavour Israel will surely join.

References

Haaretz (2010) “Ahmadinejad: Israel has nukes while Iran banned from nuclear energy”, 17 April, http://www.haaretz.com/news/ahmadinejad-israel-has-nukes-while-iran-banned-from-nuclear-energy-1.284439

Times Online (2004) Mordechai Vanunu: The Sunday Times articles—Times Online

U.S.-Iran Memorandum of Understanding: Full Text (June 2026)

UN News (2026) At UN, Pezeshkian turns terrorism accusation back on Iran’s critics | UN News

UN Web TV (2026) Iran—General Debate, 81st Session | UN Web TV

Thousands of students across Germany were once again on strike against conscription and militarisation on Friday, 25 September. Actions took place in at least 100 localities as young people demanded a sharp turn from the government’s chosen path.

“We don’t want to be forced into military service, and we don’t want to go to war,” the students wrote in a declaration after their last strike in May.

This is the fourth time students have exchanged classrooms for streets since the end of 2025. The mobilisation has strengthened its resistance to the Merz administration’s plans to build the “strongest conventional army in Europe”—including by drawing more people into the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces.

While authorities insist military recruitment remains voluntary, students have warned of a clear tendency toward outright conscription. Local strike committees and activists also emphasised the widespread repression ahead of actions. This included scheduling of exams on strike days and locking in students on school grounds, they pointed out.

Billions for the Bundeswehr, cuts for schools and youth services

Over recent months, the government has sent thousands of questionnaires to map voluntary interest in joining the armed forces. According to German media, the response has been underwhelming: tens of thousands of students have disclaimed no interest whatsoever. Not even a multi-million-euro budget allocated to promoting the army has been able to shake this opinion.

“They sell us war service as an ‘adventure’ while we know that what awaits us is coercion, humiliation, sexism, right-wing extremism, and racism,” the student declaration adds.

Instead of taking the message seriously, authorities recently advanced the implementation of medical checks among their targeted population, drawing further frustration from students.

“We don’t want compulsory questionnaires, fines, draft physical examinations, conscription assessment centres across the country, nor planned integration of the Federal Volunteer Service into military service,” they wrote. “These are means to prepare the reintroduction of the draft and thus another war originating from Germany.”

“In case of conscription, we’ll be trained as cannon fodder, forced into the trenches,” students added. “War costs us our lives, while corporations like Rheinmetall make record profits.”

Students on strike have expressed solidarity with other ongoing struggles against militarisation and budget cuts. They stated they would join peace demonstrations planned for early October in Berlin and Stuttgart, as well as a trade union-backed mobilisation against budget cuts on Saturday, September 26.

Their decision reflects the widespread understanding that youth and education services are among those impacted by this round of austerity. According to junge Welt, the federal ministry responsible for education will face close to €1 billion in cuts—while €140 billion will be made available for so-called defence in 2027.

“Every tank, every rocket we pay for with dilapidated schools and social cuts,” students remarked.

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, 23 September.

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 23 September. 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 28 February.

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.

Artificial intelligence was the concept of choice among European speakers during the first days of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Prime ministers and presidents recognised opportunities and invoked stronger regulation—then returned to advocating for more military spending, planning deterrence, and avoiding harsh words for the Trump administration.

“I’m afraid I may lack originality in describing it [the situation in the world],” French President Emmanuel Macron remarked, referring to the overlaps between interventions. For once, he was not wrong. Most European speeches described the world in terms of crisis, yet failed to spell out the connections between that situation and the behaviour of the United States. Macron’s speech was no true exception.

Instead, most seemed keen to endear themselves to the Trump administration. Newish British Prime Minister Andy Burnham called the UK “America’s closest ally” and announced a new “AI defence partnership” with the US—giving listeners something to truly worry about when AI is concerned.

The East European anti-communist set

Others were even friendlier to the UNGA host country. Romanian President Nicușor Dan said it was a particular pleasure to address the assembly in the US, “a country with which Romania shares a long history of friendship, a nation towards which Romanians look with respect and gratitude, including for its essential contribution to the fall of the Iron Curtain and the opening of my country’s path towards democracy and freedom.”

Remarks directed against Eastern European countries’ socialist past were echoed by Polish President Karol Nawrocki and Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković. These speeches reaffirmed commitment to the West, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and gratitude for positive changes these leaders perceived over the past 30 years.

“Millions of Romanians know from their own experience the difference between a communist system that oppressed them and stifled their initiative and freedom of choice and a democracy that rewards work, innovation, and personal responsibility,” Dan added.

None of these Eastern European leaders addressed the mass unemployment, emigration, and crumbling public services that soared while “work, innovation, and personal responsibility” took over.

Peace through protection, resilience through military strength

European interventions went to great lengths to reaffirm support for Ukraine and, perhaps more notably, criticism of the Putin administration. Plenty used the floor to repeat the belief that European countries must rearm in the face of a perceived—and still materially nonexistent—“Russian threat.”

As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy referred to a vision of “peace through protection” and showcased defence cooperation agreements, Burnham talked of resilience through military strength.

Some commended themselves for quickly approaching NATO’s 5% expenditure commitments. Others turned to “obstructions” of freedom of navigation—referring, of course, to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz caused by the illegal US-Israel war on Iran. Yet most European speeches did not even mention the US in this context, let alone offer comparable words of condemnation dedicated to Russia.

Spain vows to continue believing “humanity can continue to progress”

As has become customary, the speech delivered by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was among the few to stray from the underwhelming regional tone. Sánchez, whose administration has been attacked by the US government on several occasions, spoke of the conditions facing the world today as exacerbated by the selfishness, ignorance, and cruelty of some UN member states—not naming anyone in particular.

He singled out cruelty as the worst of these pillars driving powerful nations’ behavior in international spaces: “A cruelty that no longer flinches at the sight of a starving child’s ribs or a hospital reduced to rubble.”

Sánchez said Spain would not give in to attacks on multilateral institutions, nor would it stop believing “that humanity can continue to progress.”

“We are not going to do it, because we want to live up to our children’s expectations. Because we know that, in a few years, future generations will look back. They will study this decisive decade. And they will ask us what role each of us played. They will ask us what we did when some countries began to break the rules and others decided to turn a blind eye. They will ask what we did when defending what we believed in began to cost dearly. And when that happens, we want to be able to tell them that we did not stop fighting. We did not. We want to be able to tell them that we gave everything to leave them a more peaceful, sustainable, and fairer world.”

US President Donald Trump signed into law the Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act on Friday, 18 September. The law, if implemented, is expected to cause new disruptions to the global economy, already under strain due to the US-Israeli war on Iran.

The US law is named after Lindsey O. Graham, a hawkish Republican senator who died in July. He was the initiator and one of its ardent advocates.

The US House of Representatives adopted the bill in a bipartisan vote, with 262 voting in favour and 159 voting against it, on 17 September. The Senate had already approved the bill in August with an overwhelming majority.

It imposes new sanctions on Russia and its high officials, including President Vladimir Putin. It targets the so-called “shadow fleet” of oil tankers allegedly used by Russia to evade the US sanctions and imposes a 500% tariff on goods imported from the country.

However, the most significant aspect of the law is related to the discretionary powers it gives to Trump. According to the law, Trump will have the power to impose tariffs of up to 100% on goods imported from the top buyers of Russian oil and gas or its military supplies.

Over 100 protests took place across France during the weekend of 19-20 September, as left parties, grassroots organisations, and human rights associations mobilised against a new law on the use of force by law enforcement. Dubbed the “License to Kill” bill by progressives, the legislation presumes that police and gendarme officers who draw their firearms do so legitimately unless proven otherwise.

Despite a petition against the law collecting over 730,000 signatures in a matter of weeks, the French government—backed by the votes of the far-right National Rally—forced the proposal through the National Assembly on 7 July. In what critics described as a vote of shame, 313 parliamentarians voted in favour of the proposal, including all 122 representatives of the extreme right party.

The progress of the bill led to widespread fears. Among them, legal experts emphasised risks posed to the rule of law and the normalisation of the use of firearms—not to mention dangers posed to populations who are already exposed to profiling by the authorities.

The legislation is now set for consideration by the Senate and, if passed, is all but certain to bring devastating consequences for Black, migrant and working-class communities in the country.

The legislation’s central issue is changing the way use of force by law enforcement officers is regulated. As of now, it is the state that must prove that the use of force was legitimate; according to the new law, the default presumption will be that officers act in legitimate self-defence.

Long before Little Red Riding Hood—or Rotkäppchen—and even before Tacitus’s Germania (98 AD), Germans had a quasi-mythical relationship to their forests.

About 150 years ago, the German forest became very important. At that time, a young lawyer by the name of Karl Marx wrote a series of articles published in 1842 in the famous Rheinische Zeitung, or Rhineland News. In English, it is known as “Debates on the Law on Thefts of Wood.”

Marx’s articles are about the criminalisation of a traditional practice carried out by local peasants for decades: gathering fallen branches, deadwood, and berries from forests that had once been considered common land. Under capitalism’s changing property laws, forest owners were converting these customary rights into strict private-property claims—disused fallen wood suddenly became a commodity.

Gathering wood that had previously been treated as a communal resource was being redefined as theft. This might have helped the young Karl look at capitalism in a way that led to what is today known as Das Kapital—still the best analysis of capitalism ever written.

One hundred and twenty years after that, Alexandra sang “Mein Freund der Baum ist tot. Er fiel im frühen Morgenrot” [“My friend the tree is dead. It fell in the early dawn light“ in the late 1960s.

Since then, things have not gotten better for Germany’s beloved forests—a country that, despite rampant industrialisation, massive “concretisation,” endless miles of the Autobahn, land clearing, and the best efforts neoliberal capitalism can muster to exploit and vandalise Germany’s natural environment, still has forest cover of about one-third.

Instead of preserving Germany’s forests, German capitalism displays true hubris—true arrogance toward the Earth and the environment.

As has been predicted many times over, this will inevitably lead to the downfall of a people addicted to hubris. As The New Yorker once put it, “Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time, we created a lot of value for shareholders.”

It will play out exactly as the UN’s Guterres said: “We are playing Russian roulette with our planet. We need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell, and the truth is we have control of the wheel.”

This is exactly where capitalism, greed, the free market, and profit have driven humanity: to a fatal crossing of the border between profit and survival, reflected today in the corporate-made climate crisis known as global warming.

The people of Europe have felt the direct consequences of that—well, many died—across the whole continent during last summer’s fire season, which grows ever longer and more severe.

It featured heat waves that caused mass death, massive droughts that halted shipping, and, of course, extended forest fires from Greece to Spain and from France to Sweden. It is as if nature has taken revenge with divine wrath. The tormented environment has reacted with physical precision to its destructive exploitation by corporate greed.

In past centuries, a robust mix of forests filled Germany. But it was soon replaced with “resilient”—the crypto-official codeword for “profitable”—softwood plantations. These are the dreaded, sterile, and stale monocultures that create dead zones for plant and animal life.

Meanwhile, the ever-increasing droughts of recent years have even attacked these carefully crafted and cultivated monocultures. Weakened by heat and drought, trees fall easy prey to the bark beetle, dealing them ever more severe blows. Now substantially weakened, these dry forests are not only defenceless—they also burn almost every year, with cumulative intensity.

Germany’s southern neighbours are even worse off. They fight eternal battles against the forces that global warming brings every summer. They fight seas of flame. Nevertheless, far too little is happening on the political side to deal not only with this homemade climate crisis but also to make Germany’s—and indeed Europe’s—forests nature-friendly, sustainable, and, ultimately, survivable.

Corporate Europe has sown the seeds of destruction. Now others reap the harvest of ashes. This is not unique to Germany or Europe. Sadly, forest fires are setting records worldwide and frequently.

There are record-breaking temperatures, droughts, dried-up soil (with “peak soil” now behind us), and forest fires announced year after year. This is now the recurring headline that defines each year’s “world news”—a marker not just of global warming but of the “Capitalocene.”

It follows from the human- and corporate-made climate crisis. Drought, dry soil, and forest management driven by profit rather than sustainability increase the risk of forest fires and their spread around the world. The lack of political action on forest protection and climate protection only pours—almost literally—oil on the fire.

Tellingly, the conservative German government of Helmut Kohl (1982 to 1998) renamed the country’s official Waldsterbensbericht (forest-death report) to Waldzustandsbericht (forest-condition report)—from “dying forests” to forests that merely have a “condition” (Zustand).

With this reality-denying, anti-environmental sleight of hand, Kohl’s government could suddenly declare that all was fine in Germany’s forests. Despite Kohl’s media manipulation, the forests continued to die.

According to the European Space Agency’s Earth observation programme, Copernicus, Europe had the highest emissions from forest fires in 2025 since ESA‘s records began 23 years ago.

The extent of the destruction is shown in detail. Approximately 47.3 million tonnes of CO₂ (equivalent to roughly 13 megatonnes of carbon) were released—equal to the total annual carbon emissions of a country like Portugal, from fires alone.

In everyday life, such quantities are almost impossible to grasp, but a comparison helps: it is the equivalent of the annual output of 10.5 million gasoline cars, or of running twelve coal-fired power plants—one of the most polluting sources of energy—around the clock, all year.

It gets worse. Particularly alarming is what is known as the “catch-up dilemma.” To filter these 47 million tonnes of CO₂ out of the atmosphere within a single year, Europe would need 22 million hectares of healthy forest—twenty times the area that burnt in 2025.

It gets worse still: there is “double damage.” In addition to the direct emissions from the destroyed forest, that forest is also lost as an active carbon store in the fight against the climate crisis.

According to preliminary evaluations from Germany’s national weather service (Deutscher Wetterdienst), spring 2026 in Germany was exceptionally mild, dry, and sunny. Nationwide, only 68% of normal precipitation fell—a third was missing. Regional differences made this worse still: some parts of Germany saw heavy rain, while southern Germany suffered historic drought.

According to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), 580,000 hectares of forest had burnt as of mid-August—significantly more than the long-term average of about 243,000 hectares.

This was especially severe in France, which experienced a historic extreme during July; Portugal, Spain, Germany, and parts of the Balkans were also hit hard.

Intensive commercial forestry with monocultures makes forests far more vulnerable to drought and pests. What is needed is a significant change in forestry: a close-to-nature forest, with cool, moist mixed habitats that conserve more water, can survive prolonged, global-warming-induced droughts while also capturing CO₂.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of current examples of forest fires and the danger they pose. In France, Spain, and several other Mediterranean regions, locals were fighting the flames even as Germany itself was burning.

• France: The area burnt was five times that of a “normal” year—though under global warming’s drive toward climate hell, there are no more “normal” years. Two firefighters died. In the Département of Gironde, in and around Bordeaux, up to 220,000 people had to be evacuated from the flames.

• Spain: Fires were eventually brought under control after a long, hard battle. At the beginning of August 2026, no fewer than 40 large-scale fires had burnt 250,000 acres of forest—compared with 15 simultaneous fires the previous year. Global warming and fires are accelerating together.

• Germany: Soil moisture levels had already fallen to levels as threatening as those seen in 2018 and 2022. Less moisture means drier forests and more intense fires. Germany’s forest-fire danger index (Waldbrandgefahrenindex) has been ringing alarm bells: by 2 August 2026, the index had reached 22 days at extreme warning levels—more than twice the average for 1991 to 2020. The consequences are visible, especially in southern Germany, where an unusually high number of trees were already shedding their leaves by midsummer; with the foliage gone, sunlight hits the ground directly, and the forest heats up further.

• South and East Germany: Germany’s coniferous forests in the hotter southern and eastern regions are particularly sensitive.

• Unexploded Ordnance: In some remote, mountainous areas of eastern Germany, there is an added risk from old, slowly decaying ammunition—grenades and shells left behind from former military training grounds. Some can self-ignite in extreme summer heat and start fires.

• Lower Saxony: The water needed to fight forest fires in the Lüneburg Heath area (Main-Kinzig-Kreis) led local authorities to ask residents to stop showering. Alongside the risk to forests, grassland fires are also becoming more frequent.

• Canada: Europe is by no means alone in this. Other continents are also suffering forests in flames. In the Canadian province of British Columbia, for example, 20,000 people fled a runaway forest fire.

• Brazil: Amid all the bad news, there is one bright spot. Brazil—no longer run by the “clerico-neo-fascist” Jair “Messias” (!) Bolsonaro, but by Lula—has had notable success with its forest conservation policy. Under President Lula, deforestation has declined to a ten-year low, and 80% less of Brazil’s forest area burnt compared with the previous year.

On the obvious question of what causes forest fires, natural events like lightning strikes are among the least common causes. Data from Germany’s Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (Bundesanstalt für Landwirtschaft und Ernährung, BLE) show that in Germany in 2025, no more than 3% of such fires were caused by natural events.

By far the single greatest cause of forest fires is people. High on the list is carelessness—a discarded cigarette, for example. In some countries, it is slash-and-burn agriculture.

Compounding this is the human-made climate crisis, which intensifies the frequency and spread of forest fires, producing a fatal downward spiral:

• global warming leads to

• more frequent heat waves, which lead to more droughts, which cause

• crops, forest plants, and trees to become dehydrated, while soil and forest floors grow ever drier, and as a result,

• More forest fires occur.

On the inevitable question of what can be done: recent data confirms that drought alone does not cause forest fires. Rather, poor forest management (Forstwirtschaft) plays a crucial role, particularly when profit-seeking weakens ecosystems:

• Monoculture: Planting predominantly, or even exclusively, one species of tree brings serious disadvantages. Such monoculture plantations are no longer natural habitats for many animals, fungi, and plants. Trees become more vulnerable than they would be in their natural setting, soil becomes more acidic, and the natural water balance is disrupted. Rewilding a forest can reverse all of this.

• Non-native species: For example, highly profitable conifers such as pines grow naturally in colder regions like Scandinavia and at higher altitudes. Across much of Germany, many of them would not grow naturally at all. For decades, profit-driven forestry has relied on fast-growing conifers to maximise profits. This needs to change, in a shift that puts nature and our common survival ahead of profit.

• Heavy machinery: To make forestry even more profitable, heavy machinery is run through the forest—no longer Little Red Riding Hood’s woods, but the domain of diesel-powered bulldozers and trucks. This equipment is highly damaging to Germany’s sensitive forest floors. So-called full-harvesting machines (harvesters) can fell a tree, strip its branches, and trim it within minutes—processing over 100 trees a day. Efficient (the magic word of all management) and profitable, yes, but deadly to nature: machines weighing 40 to 100 tonnes compact the forest floor, rendering it uninhabitable for microorganisms and plant life. The damage is permanent and must stop.

• Reforestation: Reforestation is expensive and labour-intensive, even though nature itself—through rewilding—would do it far better. Worse, commercial reforestation for profit, using fast-growing monocultures, erodes the genetic diversity of parent trees. Left alone, forests develop a natural diversity that is stable—something forests have achieved over millions of years.

• Pesticides: Commercial (that is, for-profit) forestry relies on the heavy use of pesticides to secure short-term profits and compensate for the weaknesses of monocultures. Worse, in the effort to combat the much-feared bark beetle, the forest is turned into a zone of chemical warfare.

• Land clearing: Hard to believe, but still true: Germany continues to practise land clearing and so-called “clear-cutting.” This happens most often in forests already heavily damaged by bark beetle infestations and storms, but it also occurs in other forests—even in protected areas. Rather than allowing the forest to regenerate, heavy machinery cuts down the trees and hauls them away, destroying the delicate forest floor in the process.

• Protected areas: Although 67% of all forest in Germany lies within protected areas, only a minuscule 2.8% is actually protected from logging. In short, “protected areas do not protect.” This is no accident—it gives politicians a double advantage: they can claim to protect the environment while logging and land clearing continue, largely unhindered, across 97.2% of all protected areas, much as they do in unprotected ones.

What is needed is a radically different forest policy in Germany. Built on decades of conservative-neoliberal forest policy—under Kohl (1982 to 1998), Merkel (2005 to 2021), and Merz (since May 2025), spanning, with only a few brief interruptions, the better part of the last 40 years—Germany’s forestry policy has promoted intensive, for-profit forest management, with next to no incentive for its woods to return to a natural state.

If German forests are to remain allies in the fight against global warming, forest management in its current form cannot continue. Germany, Europe, and the world need an urgent turnaround in how we—humanity, or more precisely the profit-driven businesses that act on our behalf—use, misuse, and abuse forests.

What is needed is a sustainable forest policy, grounded in an ecosystem approach that ensures our planet’s survival, today and into the future. Earth observation programme

Somaliland, a separatist-controlled region in the northwest of Somalia, has offered Israel and the US more than 7.5% of its soldiers for deployment to Gaza as part of the International Stabilisation Force (ISF) under Donald Trump’s so-called Board of Peace.​

It is the largest percentage of troop strength offered so far for the ISF, which is tasked, among other things, with disarming Hamas. With Indonesia indefinitely suspending its commitment of 8,000 troops earlier in March, the contingent offered by Somaliland is also the largest in absolute numbers.​

Yet Somaliland is not even a country. The UN and African Union regard it as part of Somalia. No country except Israel recognises the secessionist regime’s claim to sovereign statehood.​

It has only 25,000 soldiers, plus 1,500 coast guard personnel. From this small force, Somaliland’s president, Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi, has offered 2,000 soldiers in what would be its first-ever foreign deployment, if his offer is accepted.​

He is only waiting to be asked for troops by the US or Israel, he told the Jerusalem Post in an interview on the sidelines of the MEAD conference in Washington, DC. “If they ask me, I am ready,” he said. His readiness comes at a time when Somaliland has already lost over half of the territory it had once claimed.

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, 17 September, said.

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

She, along with her cameraman, was 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, the 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 23 September 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 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.

After the US officially admitted it deployed weapons into outer space earlier this week, Russia and China expressed concerns, calling it a threat to international peace and demanding the immediate stoppage of all such activities.

During a regular press conference on Tuesday, 15 September, Guo Jiakun, official spokesperson of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that “China opposes any arms race in outer space or any attempt to weaponise it and turn it into a warzone.”

He further said that “China stands for the peaceful use of outer space and keeping it safe” and urged the US to “stop expanding military build-up in outer space and uphold global strategic stability with concrete actions.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that the US weapons deployment is a threat to international security and puts a question mark on the stability in outer space.

“Russia has for many years been consistently drawing the attention of the global community to the grave consequences for international security that Washington’s destructive course may lead to,” Zakharova said.

She said her country seeks “urgent practical measures to prevent an arms race in outer space” and reiterated Russia’s push for a “multilateral legally binding instrument banning the deployment of weapons in outer space”.

Though it has long been a subject of speculation, a couple of US military officials earlier this week admitted that its military is operating weapons deployed in outer space.

The admission was made by US Air Force Secretary Troy Meink on Monday during a conference. He said that the US “has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action.”

Meink’s statement was substantiated by US Space Force chief Douglas Schiess, who a day later, on Tuesday, said that in the coming years the US is even planning to increase the number of orbital weapons already used by the members of his military unit.

Urgent need of legal prohibitions

Underlining the threat that the deployment of weapons in outer space poses, several countries, including Russia and China, have been calling for an international treaty to prevent any arms race in outer space for decades now.

The existing instrument, the UN Outer Space Treaty (1967), makes clear that “outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claims of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”

It also prohibits the deployment of “nuclear weapons, or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or stationing them in outer space in any other manner,” but it says nothing about the deployment of conventional weapons, despite declaring it should be used for peaceful purposes only.

None of the US military officials spoke about the nature of weapons deployed by the US in outer space.

Though only a handful of countries have the technological capability to explore outer space in any significant way, several countries have used satellites for military and war purposes for decades now.

The US has a dedicated space force which has recently held exercises related to possible military conflicts in space.

The deployment of weapons and claims of exclusivity, apart from increasing possibilities of an arms race between the existing powers in space—the US, Russia, and China—may also make the rest of the world more insecure.

Zakharova said that Russia is planning to submit a proposal for the creation of an international instrument legally prohibiting all weapon deployment in outer space during the upcoming annual UN General Assembly session.

She asked for more countries to join the Russian initiative and co-author the treaty document.

It is rarely a good sign when European politicians open their speeches by quoting Charles Dickens. So alarms should have sounded the moment European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen declared this to be the best and the worst of times at the start of her State of the European Union address on 16 September.

Things went downhill from there: the EU leader painted a picture of the region that stands in complete contrast to the general experience of its people, amounting to a summary of the bloc’s worst achievements.

“Von der Leyen has achieved the feat of not mentioning a single measure to help Europeans cope with the soaring cost of living across Europe, at a time when an ever-growing number of people are now forced to choose between housing, food and transport,” said Manon Aubry, Co-President of The Left in the European Parliament.

“Fiscal sustainability” and concern for businesses

In the lengthy address, von der Leyen laid out what she considered the EU’s successes, including raising military spending by almost 80% over the past five years and “reducing dependence” on Russian fossil fuels. However, this interpretation does not correspond to what people are experiencing, as outlined by The Left in a dedicated dossier. Growing military spending benefits only the arms industry. And attempts to replace cheaper Russian gas have essentially boiled down to committing to more expensive and environmentally devastating US LNG imports.

While recognising growing energy prices, von der Leyen offered no tangible response to this problem plaguing EU households. On the other hand, she demonstrated notable concern for businesses, signalling the continuation of eroding labour and environmental protections along the lines implemented by right- and far-right parties at the EU level.

The likelihood of maintaining the status quo was also noticeable when von der Leyen turned to the deadly wildfires that hit Europe this summer, devastating communities from Belgium and France to Spain and Greece. Trade unions and progressive analysts have warned for years that fire preparedness is severely impaired by a lack of planning and, specifically, shortages of firefighters. Yet there was no commitment in the address to invest more in essential public service workers. Instead, the EC President referred to the ongoing need for overall “fiscal sustainability”—meaning Europeans should expect no relief from austerity programs.

“The best of times is clearly reserved for billionaires, multinational energy companies, and war profiteers,” remarked Member of the European Parliament Marc Botenga from the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB-PVDA). “The other side of the coin for workers: austerity and rising prices.”

The EU’s failed foreign affairs policy

Based on the vision tabled by von der Leyen, there is also little to look forward to in Europe’s international and trade policy. “It’s hard to think of an area where the EU has been more inactive and less effective than in foreign affairs,” The Left wrote, referring to the union’s ongoing disregard of international law in relation to the genocide in Gaza and its approach to the Trump administration.

“The President has praised Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen, she has stood with Trump as he bombed Tehran,programmes. and the European Commission has sided with the USA as they brought the global economy to a standstill in the Strait of Hormuz,” the progressive bloc warned.

The EU’s relationship with the US has continued to be one of submission, with elected regional leaders going to great lengths (unsuccessfully) to appease Donald Trump. Even when the region announced it would stand firm against US threats—in Greenland or on tariffs—this did not translate into practice.

In the context of von der Leyen’s speech, this boiled down to announcing Canada would become the “first associate member of the EU” and listing trade agreements signed with India, Mercosur, and Indonesia—met by the people of these countries with understandable concern.

Von der Leyen’s speech showed no sign of breaking with disdain towards nations outside the West. In addition to continuing animosity toward China, it offered a glimpse into plans involving countries rich in critical materials. The EC President announced the launch of a European Corporation on Critical Raw Materials—designed to secure and stockpile supplies for Europe’s industry and defence—with obvious implications for mineral-rich territories like Ukraine, Greenland, and several African countries. For the more sceptical listeners, this also carried weird echoes of the East India Company.

The State of the EU’s vision, it goes without saying, comes with further promises of an even stricter migration framework—on the pretext of situations like the one experienced in Ceuta earlier this year—that allow the erosion of basic human rights like asylum. Von der Leyen’s speech pledged even more finances for Frontex and suggested that outsourcing migration enforcement to third countries will continue, as endorsed by recent EU legislation.

“This policy of externalising migration control has contributed to grave human rights violations, arbitrary detentions and systematic violence against people on the move.” The Left warned, calling for a union rooted in solidarity rather than violence and militarisation.

The Loud Face and the Silent Face

What we are witnessing today is not a takeover of humanity by robots of the kind cinema has imagined in countless films. It is a different model of digital control, built on automation and on the deployment of artificial intelligence and algorithms to manage ever larger parts of daily life, leaving societies increasingly subject to systems, corporations and intelligent machines.

Losing control of these systems, however, is only the loud face of this danger, which is developing fast under the pressure of competition between the major powers and the capitalist monopoly corporations, faster than laws, societies and educational institutions can follow. And here lies the heart of the matter: the danger does not stop at the possibility that these systems slip out of control, since they are developed inside relations of ownership and fierce capitalist competition that make such a slip more likely and multiply the cost it imposes on people.

Its graver face is far quieter. Under the capitalist structure that develops artificial intelligence and directs its uses, it helps to shape the consciousness of billions, steering their attention and their behaviour in ways that serve the logic of the capitalist model. Meanwhile, the competition between digital capitalist monopolies and the major powers, in the absence of effective constraints and laws, may inflict the gravest damage on the human mind and could turn artificial intelligence into a weapon of mass destruction if its development and deployment continue at this excessive pace and without safeguards.

These concerns no longer come from critics alone. TIME magazine revealed that an artificial intelligence system had slipped out of control and attacked other systems, and days later some 1,400 engineers, women and men, at the largest companies signed a joint petition calling for the pace of development to be brought under control, and among its signatories were senior figures inside those same companies. Tens of thousands of people, among them leading scientists in the field, have signed an international statement demanding a ban on the development of “superintelligence” until there is scientific consensus that it can be achieved safely. Many thinkers and technologists, among them people working in the field, have also called for its development to be regulated by law and placed under social oversight.

On 12 September 2026 the matter moved to another level. Under worldwide pressure from the public, from rights organisations and from within the profession itself, the digital capitalist corporations that develop AI systems were forced to break their silence. Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic, published an essay titled “We Must Pace the Frontier”, calling on his own industry to slow the race of development and proposing three steps: opening the laboratories to independent evaluators working inside them with full access, a common standards body among the companies, and an international agreement that includes China.

Within hours Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, announced his agreement and adopted the same step. Elon Musk wrote, “Dario is right,” and Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind joined them, while the three companies revealed that they had been in talks on this question for weeks.

This admission, coming from the owners themselves, is the clearest confirmation of how serious the situation is. They say openly that they cannot stop on their own, because whoever slows down loses to competitors, which means that the core of the problem lies in the structure of ownership and competition itself and not in any lack of knowledge about the risks. The political response came quickly. Donald Trump described these warnings as a “hoax” and a “sick conspiracy” and wrote, “Don’t kill the Golden Goose,” while his vice president JD Vance called them a “Trojan horse”. The most powerful state in the world thus stands on the side of acceleration without safeguards, even against the people who build this technology with their own hands.

And I do not believe the corporations developing artificial intelligence will take real measures of control. Their measures will most likely remain formal, aimed at absorbing the growing anxiety and opposition around the world, since they are tied in one way or another to the governing authorities and are subject to the rules of competition and domination.

No one denies the enormous possibilities artificial intelligence offers. It compresses years of research in drug discovery, uncovers protein structures that defeated scientists for decades, raises the accuracy of medical diagnosis and allows diseases to be caught at early stages that save lives, models climate change and gives warning of its disasters before they strike, breaks language barriers through translation and places knowledge within reach of those long denied it, eases daily and professional life, and opens doors to many services that may resolve intractable problems facing humanity.

Those very gains are what make the question more pressing, since this article does not dispute these capabilities. Its subject is who owns them, who directs them, whose interests they serve, and how they are put to work.

Steering Consciousness to Entrench Capitalist Culture

This technology is systematically deployed to shape and steer individual consciousness, with the aim of reinforcing capitalist culture and its values. Through the analysis of data and of behaviour, ranking and recommendation algorithms control the content displayed, and they are designed to feed individuals whatever serves the capitalist outlook.

This tendency has become entrenched as these platforms expand. According to the International Telecommunication Union report, around three quarters of the world’s population are now internet users, an increase of more than 240 million users in a single year. The expansion is due in part to the drive of monopoly corporations and major powers to bring the internet to every corner of the world and to the countries of the South in particular, even in regions that lack clean water, electricity and basic services, because investment priority goes to whatever widens the market ahead of whatever meets people’s needs, with the aim of maximising profit, reinforcing domination and colonising those regions digitally.

In this way collective consciousness is steered gradually toward accepting these values as natural and inevitable, by soft and imperceptible means, to the point where most users, among them sections of the left, regard this technology as a set of neutral tools. Capitalist hegemony is thereby consolidated, and left and progressive ideas and alternatives are pushed to the margins.

Dismantling Human Skills and Voluntary Digital Servitude

The threat reaches into the individual’s mental faculties as well. According to a study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reliance on AI writing tools reduces brain activity and weakens memory and the sense of ownership over one’s own ideas, a phenomenon the researchers named “cognitive debt”. Another study found that frequent use is associated with weakened critical thinking through the mechanism of “cognitive offloading”, meaning the delegation of remembering and analysis to devices.

The matter is not confined to laboratories. The results of the international student assessment, published days ago, carried the picture to the level of entire education systems: the worst results in the history of European schools, a decline equivalent to whole school years, and the same picture recurs across dozens of countries. This decline is no incidental side effect, since behind it stands the platform profit model built on digital addiction, in which big data is exploited to understand people’s motivations and to manipulate them.

What makes this domination more dangerous is its voluntary character, in that individuals are pushed, through algorithmic manipulation and through the pressure to use artificial intelligence at work and in daily life, into this “digital servitude” without coercion, under the illusion of control and choice. And it is promoted as individual freedom. Yet freedom whose conditions are not owned by the person exercising it is no freedom at all. It is the freedom to choose among what capital has placed before them, with no authority whatever over what is placed before them in the first place.

What happens at the level of the individual repeats itself at the level of humanity. As a person surrenders their small decisions to algorithms day after day, societies surrender their large decisions to digital systems beyond their oversight. The cause is the same. The absence of collective ownership and of democratic oversight is what makes the individual lose control over their own consciousness, and that same absence is what may make humanity lose control over the most dangerous instrument it has ever built.

On this basis, human alienation is reproduced in digital form. The individual is severed from their mental and creative faculties and finds themselves hemmed in by a technical apparatus that strips away their capacity for independent action and thought. They may gradually become a being subject to the algorithms that direct their daily interactions and determine what they read and watch, how they think, how they write and how they communicate, which may deepen their dependency on systems, corporations and states controlled by capital and by the forces of exploitation and despotism.

Artificial Intelligence May Become a Weapon of Mass Destruction

At the military level, this competition takes shape as an actual arms race that encompasses autonomous weapons, combat robots and targeting systems. Researchers warn that these systems may break down when they move from the testing environment into the conditions of war. The danger is not hypothetical, since AI systems have slipped out of control in cases that were announced and documented.

The destruction artificial intelligence may bring, however, does not stop at the limits of war and military operations, since it has another level, quieter in sound and longer in reach. Nuclear weapons were tied to direct military use, relatively visible and governed by declared international calculations and agreements, and their danger stayed confined to the moment of detonation and what followed it.

At the level of consciousness, by contrast, artificial intelligence works in silence and seeps into the details of daily life, into education, work, the media, services and most sectors of society. It weakens human skills, deepens dependence on digital systems, and critical thinking and cognitive independence recede along with it. Here the destruction becomes quieter and more widespread, and digital servitude itself becomes a form of weapon of mass destruction, since it does not kill a person at a stroke and instead reshapes their consciousness, their capacities and their relationships day after day. The two levels are two faces of one weapon: one destroys bodies in an instant, the other dismantles minds at leisure.

Taking the two levels together, the danger lies not only in producing deadlier weapons, and it lies equally in the reshaping of the human being and of society once the development and deployment of artificial intelligence are subject to the logic of profit, competition, monopoly and control. Artificial intelligence may threaten the human capacity to understand, to choose, to analyse and to decide. It is for this reason that hundreds of leading AI researchers, among them people who helped build the field, signed a brief statement holding that “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

When the most dangerous technology in human history becomes a card in the hand of geopolitical and military capitalist rivalry among the great poles, with no genuine legal, social and democratic brakes, the risk of losing control ceases to be a threat to individual consciousness alone and becomes a threat to the future of society and of humanity as a whole.

A Terrain of Class and Cognitive Struggle

Even so, it would be a mistake to fall into technological determinism. Artificial intelligence is an open terrain of class and cognitive struggle. Capital deploys it in repression, targeting, killing and the laundering of consciousness, while doctors, climate researchers, activists, trade unions and labour movements use it in treatment, in struggle and in carrying the voices of victims. And the very evidence that records harm records benefit once the conditions change, in education and in workplaces, where attainment and productivity rise when the system is designed to make the user do the work rather than to do it in their place, and when social supervision is maintained.

The most important question remains: who benefits from these gains? Rising productivity means an increase in the surplus value extracted from the labour of workers by hand and brain, women and men. Artificial intelligence does not arrive here as a neutral technology, since it intensifies exploitation and deepens it, because it allows the same value to be produced with less labour and less time, while the larger share of the gains turns into profit for capital.

This process shows most clearly in the field of work, where the threat artificial intelligence poses to jobs is no longer a future possibility. Many occupations and professional tasks have already begun to face abolition, reduction or restructuring, and broad sections of workers by hand and brain face the risk of losing their jobs or of seeing their working conditions deteriorate as the use of automation and artificial intelligence accelerates.

This shift is often presented as though artificial intelligence were an independent entity that “takes over” jobs, and that framing conceals the economic and political decision behind it. The machine does not decide on its own to abolish a post or to keep it, and it is companies and employers who take the decisions on investment, on dispensing with workers and on distributing the gains of productivity. Every job abolished through the use of a new technology is, in the end, the result of a human decision about how the fruits of technical progress are shared and about who bears their cost.

And even where artificial intelligence replaces no one directly, the mere prospect of dispensing with staff is enough to discipline everyone, and workers accept longer hours, lower wages, closer surveillance and mounting pressure on productivity, for fear of losing their jobs.

In this way the reserve army of labour takes a new digital form, since the mere presence of millions of jobs on the horizon as threatened or replaceable weakens the capacity of the working class to bargain, to organise and to strike. Unemployment here is no technological fate imposed on society, and it is bound up with how the technology is used and with the decisions capital takes.

The very technology that can abolish jobs and raise unemployment is capable, under different social relations, of shortening the working day, holding wages steady, widening rest time and life outside work, and freeing people from a large part of exhausting and repetitive labour. The problem is not artificial intelligence’s capacity to produce more with less labour. It is that the fruits of that capacity are directed, under the capitalist system, mainly toward the accumulation of profit and the reinforcement of capital’s power, rather than being turned into free time, economic security and a better life for those who produce the value.

Conclusion and Tasks: Toward Artificial Intelligence in the Service of Humanity

Here the fundamental contradiction comes into view. Artificial intelligence is a social product in the fullest sense, built on accumulated human knowledge and on the labour of millions, yet its fruits are appropriated as private property by a handful of monopolies and states. This is the contradiction between the social character of production and the private appropriation of its results, reproduced in the most advanced productive force in history. The fundamental problem lies in the ownership of the digital means of production and in control over them, and this is what moves the battle from the terrain of complaining about technology to the terrain of class struggle.

What confronts us today is no technological fate written in advance. It is the product of political and economic choices that serve the interests of capital, and it can be confronted. Doing so requires left, progressive and rights-based organisations on a global scale, placing data infrastructure under the public interest and social administration, turning algorithms from “black boxes” into open-source software open to independent audit, imposing transparency in the design of models and in the sources of their data, supporting cooperative digital alternatives owned by their users and by the people who work in them, and directing this technology toward serving the needs of society and social justice.

Without such mechanisms, calls for laws and oversight remain general and inadequate, and technology stays hostage to a handful of monopoly corporations and major powers. Through social ownership, accountability and cooperative alternatives, by contrast, it becomes possible to wrest artificial intelligence from the logic of monopoly and profit and to turn it into a common good and a means of human liberation.

A group of 50 family members and descendants of the victims of wartime forced labour in China filed a lawsuit against six companies on Wednesday, 16 September, 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 are 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 labour, 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 and the end of the Second World War.

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

Millions had to do forced labour in the territories occupied by Japan, including hundreds of thousands of Chinese people. Some Chinese forced labourers were also sent to Japan to work in mining and other industries. Thousands of these forced labourers 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 judgement 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 apologise 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 labourers 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 victim countries in Asia, and properly resolve relevant issues left over from history with a responsible attitude.”

The Department of Defense report on the Israeli-US war on Iran admits that it has been costly, has seen extensive destruction of US facilities in the Middle East, and has run down Pentagon munitions. Since it is being issued by a department headed by notorious liar and braggart Pete Hegseth, it is hard to take the report too seriously on the positive side. But to the extent that it admits any downsides to the war on Iran at all, that admission is especially interesting coming from this administration.

The report acknowledges a cost of $33.4 billion by the end of June. But it admits that this figure does not include the cost of repairing some 20 US military bases that have been damaged or destroyed, or other damaged facilities. The number is laughably low, with independent analysts putting it at $113 billion already by late June. Another analysis suggests that just the interest payment this year on the billions borrowed by the US government to pursue this debt-financed war could range up to $26 billion.

And all those calculations don’t include the cost of the war to taxpayers in higher gasoline and diesel prices and the general price inflation they entail. Extra energy costs for American consumers since 28 February alone have come to $100 billion.

The DoD admitted that 14 US service personnel are dead in this war, 7 of them of enemy fire, and 417 servicemen have been wounded. Again, this is Hegseth’s department, and the likelihood is that the real numbers are higher, since his office has been accused of lowballing us with doctored casualty figures.

The War Costs website puts US deaths at 18 and wounded at 820 as of 7 September, with a cost to that point of $120 billion.

US embassies and consulates have been damaged by Iran, at a cost of over $180 million, and 3,500 US diplomatic personnel were either deployed elsewhere or given permission to flee for their lives. Other sources put diplomatic evacuees at up to 4,000. The State Department helped another 9,000 American civilians flee the region. This statistic shows an incredible exodus of American diplomats, businessmen and others from a region dominated and sometimes occupied by the US in recent decades. One State Department observer called it “unprecedented.” Even in the last days of the US presence in South Vietnam as the latter was falling, less than a thousand US diplomats were spirited out of the country.

And you know that kerfuffle about whether the attack on Iran depleted key US munitions? The report is remarkably frank: “The Office of the Under Secretary for Acquisition and Sustainment (OUSW[A&S]) said that the munitions expenditure in OEF has resulted in strategic inventory shortfalls and revealed industrial base bottlenecks for munitions resupply.”

The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that half of certain kinds of anti-missile and -drone interceptors have been depleted from the US arsenal, including Patriot, THAAD and PrSm. Of offensive precision missiles, a third have been used up, including Tomahawks and Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles. A third of ship-to-air anti-missile missiles (SM-2, SM-3, SM-6) are also used up.

Here is another moment of frankness: “USCENTCOM reported that Iranian strikes damaged and destroyed hundreds of buildings and structures at U.S. bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, and Jordan during the conflict. In addition, dozens of U.S. aircraft were destroyed or damaged during OEF.”

In fact, all the 20 or so US military bases in the Middle East have been damaged or rendered inoperable, including the HQ of the Fifth Fleet in Manama, Bahrain, with billions of dollars of damage to sophisticated radar and signals intelligence installations that had tracked incoming Iranian drones and missiles. This loss of US capability is the real reason Washington and Tel Aviv have taken a breather from assaulting Iran. I say “20 or so bases” because a “base” is an ambiguous term, and some sources speak of more than 20. Sometimes small installations are termed “bases.”

It is impossible to know the exact status of most of these bases today, though the Manama base has been admitted by the Pentagon to be inoperable. Iranian and Middle East outlets say that the al-Udeid base in Qatar, which had over 10,000 personnel, has been emptied out, but there is no USG or Western press corroboration. Al-Udeid took substantial damage from a missile strike that got through this past summer. It also isn’t clear how many of the 3,500 to 5,000 US troops that were in the UAE are still there. One of the reasons the Iranians began targeting hotels in Dubai was that they had intelligence that US government personnel had been moved off base and into commercial buildings. Most US troops appear to have left Iraq, and all will be gone by the end of the month, according to the Baghdad government.

Whatever the exact numbers, Iran damaging or destroying “hundreds of buildings and structures” and rendering some bases inoperable, and hitting aircraft like AWACS on the ground, are all signs of a US military debacle bigger than any we have seen since Vietnam. That’s what you have to conclude from the Pentagon report if you read between the lines just a bit and ignore the Hegsethian beer muscles and besotted bravado.

The left’s capacity to build knowledge, organisation, and struggle was a central theme at this year’s ManiFiesta, introduced during a discussion of Peter Mertens’ new book, The Last Days of the Old Normal. In the context of Europe’s ongoing armament, these questions are crucial not only for progressive movements in core countries but also for those building alternatives in Central and Eastern Europe.

The festival featured several sessions examining developments in Central and Eastern Europe, including an intervention by Ukrainian sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko on the class character of the Ukraine war. Another session—“East of the former wall: the AfD, the industrial crisis, and the war economy”—brought together Markéta Juřicová of the Czech party Levice, Orsolya Haboczki from the Hungarian progressive movement Szikra, German Bundestag representative Cem Ince from Die Linke, and Member of the European Parliament Marc Botenga from the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB-PVDA).

They discussed how the growth of the far right in core EU countries is interacting with events eastwards—and what lessons Western left movements can learn from their Eastern counterparts.

As Juřicová and Haboczki pointed out, while movements in the West are worried about the popularity of parties like the Alternative for Germany (AfD), many nations in Central and Eastern Europe already have experience with far-right participation—even leadership—in government. More than 15 years of Viktor Orbán’s rule in Hungary, Haboczki noted, offers an important lesson on far-right governments’ economic agendas and tactics. As the Orbán administration used identity issues to capture opposition parties’ attention, it channelled resources into the hands of the local bourgeoisie and served transnational capital by securing huge state subsidies, she said.

Right-wing parties in Eastern Europe also look to their international peers for inspiration. In the Czech Republic, Juřicová said the far right “loves” the AfD, picking and choosing many of the same topics the German group campaigns on. The discussion signalled this is particularly important to recognise, as the growth of extreme right parties is fuelled largely by popular dissatisfaction with mainstream parties’ programmes.

Ince emphasised this was the case in Germany, where a large share of AfD votes came from those believing the party would bring upheaval compared to the status quo, marked by massive job losses and cuts to welfare. But while European progressives recognise this, they still struggle to incorporate it into their programmes, recent experiences show. Instead, many of them ponder attempts to prevent the far right from seizing institutional power by providing support to establishment parties, failing to shape a concrete alternative to both the mainstream and the extreme right.

In Central and Eastern Europe, the work of progressive parties is further complicated by the need to rebuild credibility after decades of vilification of socialism and austerity measures implemented by liberal options, Haboczki added.

While recognising workers’ material concerns in Central and East Europe is imperative for building local alternatives, the panel showed it will also be necessary to build region-wide partnerships to challenge topics dominating the narrative in Germany, Belgium, and other core countries.

Militarisation stands out among these topics, as Botenga and Ince outlined in their interventions, though its implementation might differ by sub-region. Botenga added that German industry stands to gain the most from European armament, yet these gains will not trickle down to the working class—meaning the left in the region can find in anti-militarism a common cause to rally around.

Ince echoed these observations by emphasising that, even as their profit lines stand to gain from billions of euros directed towards rearmament, German companies continue to shift significant parts of their operations to countries including Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic—making most of the eroded workplace protections and labour rights. This shows that the left across Europe must work together to protect workers’ interests everywhere, building a joint struggle for peace and civilian industry, he indicated.

Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Mohsen Rezaei refuted United States President Donald Trump’s latest claims about his country seeking fresh talks. He reiterated that there will be no new talks with the US until it implements the conditions already agreed upon.

“Don’t get distracted by the US president’s mixed signals—from ‘no negotiations’ to ‘we are ready to talk’. The stakes around oil and the straits have changed. Damage control won’t stop what’s coming,” Rezaei said in a post on X on Tuesday, 15 September.

Rezaei was responding to Trump’s latest claims made on his social media post about Iran seeking a deal “quickly and badly”. Trump called Iran a “failing nation” and said he will decide “whether or not the US will choose to engage.”

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, during his visit to the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi earlier this week, also said there is no need for fresh talks with the US until the conditions in the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), signed between the two countries in June, are implemented.

Iran and Oman are seeking regional consensus.

On Monday, Iran claimed it had finalised an agreement with Oman regarding the management of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and said its details would be announced soon.

“The understanding between Iran and Oman, as two littoral states, has been finalised. In consultation with Oman, we will decide on the next step, including how to announce or register the understanding,” official spokesperson of Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Esmail Baghaei said in a press conference on Monday, 14 September.

He also claimed that a scheduled discussion over the issue with the Persian Gulf countries on Monday was cancelled at the last minute after Saudi Arabia’s intervention. He called the Saudi move “ill-advised” and a lost opportunity.

It is speculated that the Saudi intervention is linked to recent attacks carried out by Yemen’s Ansar Allah forces inside its territories, hitting a crucial oil pipeline and King Khalid Air Base, along with other infrastructure.

Ansar Allah claimed its attacks inside Saudi Arabia were in retaliation to hundreds of Saudi airstrikes and over a decade-long blockade of the country.

Ansar Allah has also announced it will target Saudi ships carrying crude through the Bab al Mandeb in the Red Sea.

In the past, Saudi Arabia had accused Iran of supporting Ansar Allah militarily. Iran has denied such claims, calling Ansar Allah an ally with its own independent agenda.

Earlier, both Iran and Oman had claimed that the regional meeting on Monday was not postponed for a later date, with Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi saying the delay was in the “interest of consensus”.

The talks for an agreement over the joint management of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz with Oman began in June, after Iran proposed it.

On 25 August, Iran and Oman announced an initial agreement on the establishment of a temporary joint maritime corridor and a joint mine clearance project.

The agreement, once finalised, is expected to “restore safe navigation” through the Strait while preserving the sovereignty and sovereign rights of coastal states, Press TV reported.

The Strait of Hormuz is closed.

On the evening of 14 September, a super tanker hit a mine after trying to cross the Strait of Hormuz through what Iran calls the “illegal route” near Omani waters, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement.

Later it was reported that several of the crew members of the said ship were missing.

The IRGC reiterated its warnings to all the ships in the Persian Gulf to refrain from using the US-backed Omani route, repeating the claims about the Strait of Hormuz being shut and under its full control.

The IRGC has repeatedly questioned US President Donald Trump’s claims of the restoration of free navigation through the Strait, calling them lies.

The Strait, through which nearly 20% of the global energy trade flowed before the US-Israeli war on Iran began in February, has seen a massive fall in traffic, causing disruptions in energy supplies after the Iranians restricted traffic in retaliation.

Oil prices have crossed USD 100 per barrel several times since then. They again crossed the mark earlier this week due to the renewed escalation and fear of a blockade of oil trade through the Bab al-Mandeb, after Ansar Allah’s warnings of targeting Saudi ships.

Nearly 12% of global trade in energy happens through the Bab al-Mandeb.

On Monday, Iran reiterated that the US is solely responsible for the global Bab al-Mandeb by the blockade of oil trade in the region.

The US war and naval blockade against Iran are the direct reasons for the closure of the Strait, Ali Bahreini, Iran’s permanent representative at Geneva, said during a UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) meeting asking the international community to acknowledge the fact that such unilateral actions are harmful for the global economy.

Iran assured that it will lift the blockade on the Strait of Hormuz the moment the US announces the end of its war and lifts the naval blockade and economic sanctions on Iran.

Leaders of pro-independence parties in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales met in Cardiff on Monday to sign a memorandum of understanding laying out a plan for strengthened cooperation. The document commits Sinn Féin, the Scottish National Party (SNP), and Plaid Cymru to deepen exchanges on renewable energy, economic policy, and, notably, “supporting the right of each nation to determine its own future.”

“For the first time ever, people across these islands have First Ministers in Scotland, in Wales, and in the North of Ireland who are all committed to independence from the United Kingdom,” the memorandum states. “For people watching across these islands—for people watching around the world—there could be no clearer sign that Westminster’s time is coming to an end.”

The agreement includes commitments to break with the economic policy shaped in London and to build a different approach that would “create good jobs, tackle inequality and ensure that wealth and opportunity are spread more fairly.” It also outlines an energy strategy promising to leverage the three regions’ renewable resources to bring more affordable energy to communities.

However, the provision that has attracted the most attention is the commitment to realise the three nations’ right to self-determination. “We call for the British Government to prepare for, plan and facilitate constitutional change in each jurisdiction,” the party leaders wrote. “No Westminster government has the right to block democracy or undermine the principle that our people will decide their own future,” they added.

The meeting followed comments by British Prime Minister Andy Burnham on the possibility of independence referendums in Scotland and Ireland. Burnham ruled out—in different terms—such public votes, drawing criticism from independence-oriented parties.

In Ireland, his remarks were called out for contradicting Good Friday Agreement provisions that foresee a path to the island’s unity. “It is not an option that the British government can choose whether or not to exercise based on what is politically convenient, but a legal obligation that plays a critical role in underpinning the relative peace achieved since 1998,” the Workers’ Party of Ireland wrote.

The SNP insisted their ongoing efforts for achieving independence must be contextualised as a response to the aftermath of the 2014 referendum, where unionist parties argued that staying in the UK provided more stability and predictability. Following that vote—where a majority of Scots opted for remaining in the UK—British authorities failed to live up to such arguments, the party said, including when it comes to the protection of public services. “Westminster blocked legislation designed to protect the NHS from being opened up to US healthcare corporations in post-Brexit trade deals, treating our public health service like a garage sale item,” the SNP wrote.

Pro-union critics suggested the memorandum’s commitments risk diverting public attention from everyday issues toward lengthy constitutional discussions. However, Sinn Féin, the SNP and Plaid Cymru contrasted this with a different approach, insisting that independence would allow more space for challenging harmful policies imposed by the British government and for realising a different vision of society.

The 18th BRICS summit concluded in New Delhi on Sunday, 13 September, with the unanimous adoption of the New Delhi declaration condemning wars in West Asia and reiterating calls for a more democratic and multilateral world order.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the formation of the grouping, with the core objective of democratising global governance and promoting multilateralism and cooperation among the countries of the Global South.

This year’s summit was held around the theme of “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability”.

The summit, hosted by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was also attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, and Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, among others.

Several heads of international organisations, including the secretary general of the UN, Antonio Guterres, also attended the summit.

In the context of ongoing US attempts to outright control the region in complete disregard to the independence of the countries and the international law, the BRICS joint declaration underlined that “the character of Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace, built on mutual respect, peaceful settlement of disputes, and non-intervention” must be respected.

It particularly expressed “deep concern on the situation relating to Cuba due to the tightening of unilateral [US] blockade measures against the country, their adverse effects on the Cuban economy, energy supplies and the worrying humanitarian impact on the Cuban people,” and demanded the immediate end of all such political and economic measures in accordance with UN General Assembly resolutions.

The 11 members of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, Iran, Indonesia, China, Ethiopia, Egypt, the UAE, and South Africa, with Saudi Arabia yet to formally join) represent over 30% of the global economy and nearly half of the world’s total population.

Israel and the US must respect international law.

Though the joint declaration did not explicitly name the US and mentioned Israel once, it expressed great concern over the wars in Iran, Palestine, and Lebanon, demanding the aggressors respect international law and resolve all standing conflicts through the multilateral forums and diplomacy.

It also expressed serious concerns over “deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure and peaceful nuclear facilities under full safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)” in Iran, calling them a violation of international law.

The joint US-Israeli aggression, both in June 2025 and since February this year, targeted several civilian infrastructures, assassinated political figures and bombed civilian nuclear facilities in Iran in complete violations of existing laws and norms, endangering massive human destruction.

The joint declaration also underlined the need to ensure the smooth flow of “global trade, supply chain and energy” in accordance with international law.

Both Iran and the UAE, which hosts US bases used for attacks on Iran, are full members of BRICS. The UAE has condemned the Iranian retaliation to US bases in the country and recently announced the suspension of all trade and economic relations with Iran.

The Abu Dhabi crown prince Sheikh Khalid Bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, representing his country at the summit in New Delhi, had a brief conversation with Pezeshkian on the sidelines.

The BRICS nations also criticised the continued violations of the ceasefire in Gaza, declared in October last year, by the Israeli forces. It demanded a halt of the plan for “forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza” and asked Israel to fully respect the human rights of Palestinians.

It reiterated its support for a two-state solution within the 1967 borders and full membership for the Palestinian state in the UN.

BRICS nations also condemned the continued violations of the ceasefire and sovereignty and territorial integrity of Lebanon by Israel, demanding the withdrawal of all its forces from occupied Lebanese territories.

Against unilateralism and attempts to undermine multilateral institutions

BRICS nations reiterated their joint commitment to “reforming and improving global governance”, including the UN and global financial and trade institutions, by promoting a more just and equitable, representative and accountable international and “multilateral system in the spirit of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits”.

BRICS also condemned the attempts to “unilaterally undermine the work of global multilateral institutions and impair the implementation of their respective mandates” in a likely indication of the recent US attacks on the UN and International Criminal Court (ICC).

In the context of US attempts to “economically isolate” Iran and threats of secondary sanctions on countries that do not comply with its measures, its sanctions on Cuba and various other countries, the BRICS joint declaration condemned the repeated invocations of all forms of “unilateral coercive measures”, calling them contradictory to international law.

Such measures “have far-reaching negative implications for human rights, including the rights to development, health and food security”, with disproportionate effects on poor and vulnerable sections of the society, the declaration noted.

Several leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, called for greater unity and cooperation among the BRICS members and the countries of the Global South to pave the way for the democratization of the international order and greater mutual economic development.

Xi called the Global South the key driver of world multipolarity, asking them to jointly defend the rule of law in international politics.

The BRICS joint declaration also called for a greater collective push for the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and named the global eradication of poverty as one of its central objectives.democratisation