• Many Russian Marxists began considering the threat of a new world war at the very outset of the “Special Military Operation” (the official term for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine). Since 2022, a series of long-smoldering local conflicts have flared up — in Ukraine, Gaza, Nagorno-Karabakh, Syria, and among the Turkish Kurds — reinforcing the belief that the present moment echoes the run-up to 1914, when a proliferation of local tensions ultimately culminated in World War I.

• From the start, however, Kagarlitsky took a different view. He argued the present moment more closely resembles the Crimean War of 1853–1856, in which a "small victorious war" turned into a disaster for Russia, ultimately triggering sweeping reforms — including the abolition of serfdom.

• While written in response to immediate questions, Kagarlitsky’s letters focus on underlying structural and geopolitical trends rather than momentary developments. His central argument — that we are not heading toward a Third World War, but rather toward an era of intensifying regional conflicts and systemic crises — remains strikingly consistent with global events in 2025.

• His reflections on the Sino-American relationship have proven especially prescient. Kagarlitsky argued China, unlike Germany before 1914, is not seeking global hegemony but is instead building a China-centric economic zone while continuing to rely heavily on access to US and European markets. The recent escalation of the US–China tariff dispute supports his view: rather than leading to open confrontation, the conflict has played out as an economic tug-of-war — disruptive but carefully managed by both sides, underscoring the interdependence neither can afford to sever outright.

• Similarly, Kagarlitsky warned that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though severe, would not spiral into a global war — primarily due to the disinterest of major powers, such as China, and the strategic restraint shown by regional actors, such as Iran and Hezbollah. That assessment still holds: despite ongoing violence and immense human cost, the conflict has remained regionalised, not globalised.

• Kagarlitsky identifies a new condition of modern warfare: wars not fought to win, but to prolong power. This applies to Israel, to Russia, and — potentially — to other declining regimes. In these cases, war is not a continuation of economics by other means, but of domestic politics — a desperate attempt to sustain fragile legitimacy through external conflict. When peace threatens power more than war, the very logic of political survival becomes destructive. It is a grim insight — but a necessary one for understanding the dynamics of today’s fragmented and protracted conflicts. 

• ‘For many elites, peace is more frightening than war’

• I have seen comparisons to World War I — or rather to the period that preceded it — in many different texts for some time now. And indeed, there are similarities. World War I was preceded by an unprecedented globalisation of the economy, which eventually reached the limits of available markets. As a result, competition increased and, as Marxists of the time said, inter-imperialist rivalry intensified. Naturally, only libertarians believe that markets operate on their own. In reality, market competition inevitably fuels political confrontation — in its most extreme forms.

• But that is the similarity. There are also fundamental differences. For one, in the early 20th century, relatively stable blocs had formed: Germany and its allies versus the old empires (Britain, France and Russia), later joined by the US, whose ruling class at the time pursued a non-aggressive strategy. Rather than trying to push Britain out of its hegemonic position, the US chose to support it, gradually replacing it in that role — at first only partially.

• It is important to note that the arena of rivalry used to be the same territories, the same markets. Today, the situation is qualitatively different. Only the Russian elite continues to play by the rules of the late 20th century, and only a few domestic Marxist dogmatists persist in analysing the situation through those categories.

• The fact is, China is not striving for hegemony within the world-system at all. Rather, it is constructing a China-centric economic space around itself, using the rest of the world merely as a source of resources. Naturally, it needs to export goods — to Europe, the US and Russia. But Chinese capital does not consciously seek to create or reshape new markets; it simply exploits them. China’s rise is becoming destructive for the world-system precisely because there is not even an attempt to struggle for hegemony. After all, hegemony is not merely about domination — it is about organising and developing the system in an orderly way. And that is entirely absent here.

• For the US, a war with China holds no real prospects — but that does not solve the main problem: as long as the neoliberal regime of global trade persists, China will continue to take advantage of it. And if you want to change that, then you need to radically overhaul the entire system. Trump [during his first term] tried to introduce protectionist measures (which were painful for Chinese capital), but he never intended to reform the system — not even in a reformist sense (let alone a revolutionary one). That approach will not work.
• "There won’t be a war — but the struggle for peace will be so fierce that no one will be spared."

• From what I have already said, it logically follows that the conflict in the Middle East will not escalate into a world war. Not least because of China’s position — it has no need for war. China is not trying to reclaim anything from the West. This is not pacifism — it is arrogant indifference. China needs calm, especially since the internal situation in the Middle Kingdom is far less stable than it may appear.

• The paradox is that military conflicts today are being initiated by regional players who are trying to drag in the great powers — the US, China and basically anyone they can. The ruling clique in Israel is defending itself from growing domestic discontent by diverting public attention to a war with an external enemy. That is [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s policy. But in reality, neither the US nor China, nor even Iran needs this war. It is a paradox: the forces once considered irresponsible and radical — Hezbollah, Iran — have shown restraint, while Israel (supposedly a civilised democracy) is displaying complete irrationality.

• In Russia, we see influential forces thinking along the same lines. And if we look at the situation in Lebanon, the war is not being waged to defeat Hezbollah, but to prevent peace — because peace would mean having to answer for everything. Including the war itself.

• As I have said before, we are not facing a new world war. What we are facing is the prolongation and expansion of numerous (or regional) conflicts that consume enormous human lives and resources.

• The cumulative casualties could be monstrous. They already are. But this is not a world war with two opposing global camps. And, moreover, I very much hope that the warring sides, each suffering from deep internal crises, will gradually slide toward peace. You cannot fight forever — especially when, from a geopolitical perspective, these wars have neither purpose nor meaning. No one can win — and no one really wants to. 

• But war for the sake of continuing war — that is a dead end. If holding on to power depends on endless war, then power itself will not last much longer. Alas, for many today, peace is more frightening than war. In the long run, peace means revolution. Or, at the very least, radical reforms.
• I think old [Immanuel] Wallerstein was right when he predicted the end of the current world-system — which, by the way, included the world wars themselves.

• For Germany, the territorial redivision of the world became a pressing issue due to purely commercial problems — particularly the issue of access to cheap resources in those same colonies. At the same time, Germany’s domestic market was extremely strong, which made the country well-prepared for war under conditions of commercial isolation (although by 1917–18 it was the looming economic catastrophe that forced Berlin to essentially capitulate).

• In our time, however, the main markets for China are precisely the US and Western Europe, and China’s grievances toward them centre on the fact that they are limiting Chinese capital’s access to their markets. As [University of Massachusetts economics professor] Jayati Ghosh noted several years ago, both India and China are already being forced to indirectly subsidise the West in order to prevent a collapse in demand for their goods. China’s (relative) weakness in terms of domestic consumption makes it objectively peace-seeking. Of course, the domestic market has grown impressively over the past 20 years — but for it to make a real qualitative leap, not only would social policy have to change, but the social structure itself.

• However, transitioning to a high-cost labour model undermines (in the short term) the country’s export potential. China still depends on exports, and despite rising labour costs, it remains a country with relatively cheap labour. The real competitive pressure China faces in this regard does not come from the West, but from India and, to some extent, Vietnam. By contrast, in 1914, the conflict was between countries with expensive labour, and capital needed new markets to offset the high cost of labour.

• Right now, China’s agenda is dominated by domestic changes, social and political. And yes, the desire to postpone or avoid these changes makes the Chinese party elite aggressive, prone to seeking external enemies to consolidate the nation. In such situations, leaders often try to launch a “small victorious war,” but Beijing currently has no such option: a conflict in Korea or around Taiwan would automatically escalate into a major war, one that China is not prepared for — and the elite understands this.

• Vietnam remains a possibility, but there is no pretext, and Beijing still remembers the humiliation of the previous [1979 Sino-Vietnamese] war [when Vietnam repelled China’s invasion]. Vietnam is, as some Vietnamese have put it, “the Prussia of East Asia” or “the Israel of the Far East.”

• Then there is the factor of the “Asian slowdown”. In the 1970s, we saw rapid growth in Japan (along with predictions of Japanese hegemony in the 21st century), followed by stagnation. Twenty years later, the same pattern repeated in South Korea. The same is true of the Asian Tigers. The reasons are:

  1. At a certain point, the original growth model exhausts itself and must be replaced;

  2. The socio-demographic composition of the population changes.

  In part, stagnation softens the internal crisis, buying time to restructure the system.
• But on the other hand, the disproportions, imbalances, and contradictions are accumulating on such a scale that collapse, not stagnation, may follow. This is why China’s leadership, aware of the growing threat, is interested in maintaining economic growth at virtually any cost. It will not risk losing access to its core markets.

• The conclusion is clear: The Chinese leadership, due to internal political reasons, is interested in preserving ideological tension with the West, but has no intention of crossing the line that would lead to a full-scale military conflict.

• And if you are looking for a historical analogy to today’s situation, it is not 1914 — it is the late Cold War-era between the Soviet Union and the United States, when both sides continued to build up their arsenals and even clashed in local conflicts, yet simultaneously expanded trade relations with one another. The only difference is that the Soviet Union, with its state-run economy, did not depend on selling surplus goods to Western Europe and the US, whereas for China, this is a matter of survival.

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• • The gravy is pure gold. I hate to play favorites, but this gravy is the star of the dish. It’s savory, incredibly creamy and comforting, and has just the right amount of tang.
      

• 6. The Tastiest, Best-Overall Pancake: Alison Roman’s Perfect Crispy Pancakes

• This recipe makes delicious, classic-tasting pancakes. The ingredients are once again pretty standard, although it does include an equal amount of baking soda to baking powder (only one other recipe used baking soda), along with flour, sugar, and salt. The wet ingredients are buttermilk, eggs, and melted butter. It has the best ratio of sugar and salt to flour, and the mix of leavening creates a fluffy pancake with the ideal thickness. The addition of baking soda helps neutralize the acidity of the buttermilk, so even though there is a lot of buttermilk, the pancakes are tender and ever-so-slightly chewy but not sour.

• One notable difference in the method that makes the batter smoother and easier to mix is that you first stir beaten eggs and buttermilk into the flour mixture to combine, and then you stir in melted butter. This added step helps prevent the butter from seizing in the cold dairy. The batter wasn’t completely smooth — it still had a few small lumps you expect in a pancake batter — but everything was well dispersed, and all the pancakes sampled tasted the same. 

• Like many other recipes, you need to adjust the heat when cooking so they don’t burn, but even so, these pancakes cook up a shade or two darker than some others. The darker color enhances the rich flavor of the pancakes, though, so don’t worry that they look too dark. 

• The recipe suggests cooking in coconut oil, which isn’t an ingredient common to cooking pancakes, but it is worth trying over the optional vegetable or canola oil. The pancakes do not taste like coconut, but it does add a different, pleasant taste and helps crisp the edges. Looks like this recipe is going to continue to be my go-to for now.

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• Behalve één: die van een linkse meerderheid die een progressieve regering steunt.

   

• Van alle kanten klinkt de eis: ‘Brussel heeft dringend een regering nodig’. Maar dus niet eender welke. Enkel een progressieve regering beschikt over een coherente meerderheid in de twee taalgroepen. Dit is echter niet de enige reden voor deze oproep.

   

• In Brussel is er voor een linkse politiek nog steeds een meerderheid, zowel in de stembusuitslag als in het parlement. Door hier een regering te vormen heeft links vandaag de macht om te tonen dat een andere weg mogelijk is.

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• die eerder in Le Soir verscheen. Daar staat ook de volledige lijst met alle ondertekenaars.

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• Tragically, Sankara was assassinated in a hail of gunfire, betrayed by his close friend Blaise Compaore.

• African Hub calls Thomas Sankara the best president in Africa’s history. During Sanakara’s four years as leader he:

      

   

• Sold off the government fleet of Mercedes cars and made the Renault 5 (the cheapest car sold in Burkina Faso at that time) the official service car of the ministers.

      

• As President, he lowered his salary to $450 a month and limited his possessions to a car, four bikes, three guitars, a fridge and a broken freezer.

      

• He opposed foreign aid, saying that “he who feeds you, controls you.”

      

• He was later killed in a French backed coup in 1987.

   

      
• African Hub calls Traoré, “The youngest and most loved President in the world.”
• especially given that Traoré is said to have survived 19 assassination attempts.

• Traoré himself came to power through a coup against another coup leader Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba who fled to Togo. Traoré was disillusioned by Damiba’s failure at handling the “jihadist” insurgency in his country. Armed jihadist groups, purportedly linked to Al Qaeda, are fighting Burkinabè government forces.

      

• Since coming to power in 2022, Traoré has quickly burnished his anti-imperialist and socialist convictions. Burkina Faso is a resource-rich but economically impoverished country. Traoré seeks to overturn that economic contradiction by removing the colonialists who exploited Burkina Faso. Traoré is quoted as saying: “We have been receiving French aid for 63 years, yet our country has not developed, so cutting it off from us now will not kill us, rather it will motivate us to work and rely on ourselves.” (Quoted by Qiraat Africa, published by the South Sahara Research Center, UK)

      

• Yet the West still has strings to pull on. Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali were suspended from the western-backed Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Subsequently, the three countries formed their own anti-imperialist grouping as the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).

      

• In 2023, French troops were ordered to leave Burkina Faso. The French embassy in the capital Ouagadougou is closed and French diplomats have been expelled. Some French passport holders have been detained on suspicion of espionage.

      

• Russian troops have since arrived to help Burkina Faso bolster its security. Nigeria’s Afro Page also reports the “arrival of 1700 Russian commandos, armed, coordinated, and highly trained” in Burkina Faso “not in secret … but boldly in broad daylight…. This is a message from the Kremlin to Washington.” In addition, 700 North Korean troops are said to have arrived in Burkina Faso.

      

• Gaining control over the resources of Burkina Faso is also underway. Burkina Faso has started to nationalize resources, particularly its gold mining sector. Burkina Faso’s prime minister Jean Emmanuel Ouédraogo realizes, “Our gold represents our greatest opportunity for economic resilience during these challenging times.”

      

• Africa Hub quotes Traoré: “We will mine our gold ourselves not for France, but for our people!”

      

• To achieve this, Traoré’s proposal is: “Targeting foreign exploitation, particularly by France, Traore has pushed to nationalize gold mines, like Boungou and Wahgnion, and approved a state-owned gold refinery in 2023 to process 400 kg daily, aiming to retain profits for local development.”

      
• If Langley (whose basic pay is estimated by Deepseek at $203,700 per year) had done his homework, instead of making unsubstantiated accusations, he would know that Traoré revealed his net worth at $128,566. He might also know that Traoré refused a presidential salary, continuing instead to receive the same salary he earned as a soldier. Malawi24 was impressed: “Traore’s decision is a stark contrast to the actions of his predecessors, signaling a new era of leadership focused on public service rather than personal enrichment.”

• It is abundantly evident that Traoré has the support of the people, as did Sankara. Despite Traoré having reportedly booted out French and American media from Burkina Faso, even the BCC, a media organ of empire, admits that Traoré “has captured hearts and minds around the world.”

      

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• Some chefs have switched from plastic cutting boards to wooden alternatives. One study of plastic cutting boards found that they shed as many as dozens of grams of microplastics per person per year.      MyImages_Micha/Getty Images/iStockphoto      hide caption 

   

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• About 460 million metric tons of the material are made each year, according to the United Nations

• Home cooks chop into plastic cutting boards, heat up plastic containers, sauté with plastic cooking utensils, encase ingredients in plastic wrap and toss plastic detergent pods in the dishwasher — all of which are possible vectors for microplastics exposure.

• Plastic food containers can be replaced with glass or metal ones. Public health experts warn against heating food in plastic.      Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images      hide caption 

   

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• "If that's happening in fish and in rodents in experiments that are being peer-reviewed and published, it's probably happening in us too," Brander said. "We just haven't demonstrated it yet."
• Maybe when it breaks, replace it,"

• Instead of using a plastic cutting board, she uses wooden ones. One recent study called plastic cutting boards a "potentially significant source of microplastics in human food" and found that a polyethylene chopping board could shed between 7.4 and 50.7 grams of microplastics per person per year.

   

   

• Bonneau stores food in glass or metal containers and saves all her jars to reuse later. Heating plastic containers can cause millions of microplastics and billions of nanoplastic particles to be released, one study found. (Microplastics have turned up in takeout food containers, plastic water bottles, paper coffee cups and more.)

• Home cooks can also use stainless steel or cast-iron pots and pans rather than nonstick cookware, which is often made with PFAS, a group of chemicals that have been linked to health problems in humans.

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• Insisting that Slovakia was “liberated” by the Soviets, Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, is the only EU and Western leader who traveled to Moscow to commemorate the end of World War II in the company of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Brazil’s Lula da Silva on May 9.

• As a former Communist Party member, Fico may be sincere in being a Soviet nostalgist. He certainly seemed determined to join Vladimir Putin on the Red Square: Not only did he brave the disapproval of Slovakia’s neighbors and many of his own constituents, but after the Baltic countries closed down their airspace to Slovakia’s government plane, he found a circuitous workaround over the Black Sea.
• Slovakia’s deputy prime minister and Fico’s coalition partner, Tomáš Taraba, who entered politics through the country’s neo-Nazi circles
• His historical hero isn’t Stalin, though, but Jozef Tiso, the Catholic priest who served as president of the wartime Slovak state and sent tens of thousands of its Jewish citizens to Nazi death camps.
• Fico, for instance, is eager to portray the “angry and frustrated” Winston Churchill and his Fulton speech, delivered when “bodies of the last dead soldiers were still warm,” as responsible for erecting the Iron Curtain. Ľuboš Blaha, one member of Fico’s delegation and a member of European Parliament, posted a video from Moscow in which he argued that the war itself had been a culmination of “centuries” of Western efforts to destroy Russia and Slavic nations

• What makes these controversies extra extraordinary is that those minimizing Soviet and Russian tyranny are often the same ones who consider themselves defenders of national sovereignty against the real or imagined diktats of Brussels.

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• The story of European politics in the twentieth century can be told many ways: As the story of freedom or dictatorship; fragmentation or integration; north vs. south or east vs. west. But another way of telling it—especially in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and to some extent Hungary—is as the story of the right of small states. Yet somehow, a story of self-determination has, in a few years, been overtaken by a crude realism, accepting that the powerful do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must. But that view of international politics is hardly the epitome of small-nation patriotism—rather it is a reflection of arrogant imperialist thinking coming from the Kremlin, and now also from the White House.
• What is more difficult to understand is how the likes of Fico came to dominate the politics of their countries, especially under the banner of phony patriotism.

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• To use Thomas Piketty’s terminology, the “merchant right” has long understood that they needed to forge a coalition with middle-status people against the “Brahmin left.” They had to give them something, so they offered cultural issues that matter less to them than perpetuating their wealth.

   

• Trump innovates on this tradition. He’s brilliant at it. He genuinely feels condescended to and rejected by elites — the high New York elites, not the Brahmin left — and people sense his authentic anger against elites. He performs a certain strain of masculine toughness that conveys dignity among blue-collar men, saying, “I’m going to tell it like it is. I’m not mealymouthed like those white-collar professionals who suck up to each other. I’m a straight shooter.”

   

• Compare that to Hillary Clinton’s recent op-ed titled “How Much Dumber Will This Get?,” the first line of which is “It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity.” This type of condescension appeals to elites but not to middle-status people, who often feel they’re on the receiving end of this attitude from elites.

    

   

     

   

   
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• Both Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris faced what I call “the tightrope” — women must balance being seen as competent without seeming unlikable, or likable without seeming incompetent. It’s extraordinarily difficult. Whitmer and Gluesenkamp Perez show it’s possible, but whether it’s wise for Democrats to run a woman for president at this point — that’s a tight space.

    

   

     

   

   
• In truth, the Democrats have actively abandoned middle-status people for fifty years.

• Then my generation of hippies arrived with antiwar, abortion rights, and environmental concerns, followed quickly by race and gender issues. They were all noble causes, but what’s missing? If you already have a stable middle-class life, you can worry about the end of the world. If you don’t, you’re worried about the end of the month, as the yellow vest protesters in France put it.

   

• Democrats were seduced away from the politics of the New Deal coalition by neoliberalism: self-regulating free markets, consumers benefiting from globalization. What a vision! But the consummation wasn’t what they had hoped. After World War II, productivity and wages grew together — then, with the introduction of neoliberalism, wages stalled while productivity grew eight times faster. If wages had maintained that growth line, they’d be 43 percent higher today. Three-fourths of that decline happened in the fifteen years after 2000.

   

• I’m not sure Democrats realize this. They seem intent on rescuing neoliberalism. Right now, in response to Trump’s tariffs, they’re basically saying, “We need a return to the perfectly functional global economic order. Trump has rocked the boat too much.” That strikes me as ignorant of how dissatisfied middle-status Americans are with existing conditions.

    

   

   

   

   

• That’s another terrible message. You’re trying to appeal to voters who’ve been royally screwed by the establishment for fifty years, and your argument is that we should defend the established order?

   

• Issue by issue, there are certain nonnegotiables. We won’t embrace racism, simply put. But the conversation can’t stop there. Many people of color voted for Trump, not because they’re racist but because he was communicating in a register they understood and liked. We need to figure out how to talk to them.

   

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