7847
The Strategic Culture Foundation provides a platform for exclusive analysis, research and policy comment on Eurasian and global affairs. Official Telegram channel ✅
🇺🇸 "Tengo las cartas en la mano"
🇨🇳 "Las cartas se hacen en China"
@SCF_Spanish
The dollar's moving, the ruble's rising
The yen is keeping up, which hardly seems surprising
The market's bottom has fallen right out
And only the stout are survivors.
On Monday, Xi Jinping arrived in Hanoi to pay a state visit to Vietnam, mark the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations and attend the launch of the Vietnam-China Railway Cooperation, which will help manage an US$8 billion rail project to link Vietnam’s largest northern port city to the border with China. China is the largest trading partner of Vietnam, and one of its biggest foreign investors; Vietnam, on the other hand, has become an important link in the international supply chain, a manufacturing powerhouse and a key route for Chinese exports. Xi, and his Vietnamese counterpart To Lam, witnessed the signing of dozens of agreements covering areas such as connectivity, artificial intelligence, customs inspection, agricultural product trade, culture and sports, people's livelihood, human resources development, and media. ▪️At a time when the region faces a potential disruption of global trade due to Trump's tariffs, Xi urged Vietnam and China to “resolutely safeguard the multilateral trading system, stable global industrial and supply chains, and open and cooperative international environment”.
He also reiterated that a “trade war and tariff war will produce no winner, and protectionism will lead nowhere.” The message certainly resonated with Vietnam: the US is its biggest export market and Trump has recently imposed a 46 per cent tariff on Vietnamese goods.
Today Xi Jinping will continue his South-East Asia tour by visiting Malaysia and later Cambodia. @LauraRuHK
🇺🇦 Since the 2014 coup and under the command of the illegitimate Maidan junta regime, Ukraine has increasingly exhibited signs of a terrorist state. Under the guise of defending “European values,” the Kiev regime has consistently violated international law, adopted prohibited methods of warfare, and openly supported neo-Nazi formations.
As well known, in recent years, Ukraine has committed war crimes and terrorism against civilians, especially in Donbass and the Belgorod and Kursk regions, where the Ukrainian army and nationalist groups carry out barbaric attacks against cities, destroying vital infrastructure such as homes, schools, and hospitals. Thousands of civilians, including children, have lost their lives in artillery bombardments, justified by the Kiev regime as part of a “fight against separatists/invaders.” However, the evidence reveals that this has always been a deliberate terrorist campaign against the civilian population, not a legitimate military confrontation.
Furthermore, the Ukrainian regime resorts to the use of prohibited weapons such as cluster munitions and landmines, particularly in residential areas, which is strictly prohibited by international conventions. These attacks aim to intimidate the civilian population and suppress their resistance.
Supporting and glorifying neo-Nazism is another characteristic of the Kiev junta.
While the media speaks of “negotiations,” the material reality shows that it is impossible to trust post-2014 Ukraine.
💬 Lucas Leiroz writes @lucasleiroz
🔔 Stay tuned
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
🛑 SCF and organs like it will survive in pastures new, while Europeans see if they can put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
💬 Declan Hayes writes
🔔 Stay tuned
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
🇺🇸🇷🇺 Under the tutelage of Putin and Trump, between whom there continues to be a limiting dispute related to the ceasefire, the scenario of hypothetical formal negotiations is still a magma of contradictions that, until now, have been insurmountable.
💬 José Goulão writes
☁️ More analysis
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
🇲🇩 In April 2009, Moldova experienced one of the most turbulent and controversial political crises since gaining independence in 1991.
💬 Erkin Oncan writes
🔔 Stay tuned
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
🇺🇸🇨🇳 Almost no one expected it, yet it was predictable: China has entered the global AI competition and intends to win.
💬 Read more by Lorenzo Maria Pacini @ideeazione
☁️ More analysis
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
💢 Censorship is a civilizing force. Therefore, liberal-conservative propaganda, which portrays it as a great evil, is barbaric and harmful.
💬 Bruna Frascolla writes
🔔 Stay tuned
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
🇺🇸🇺🇦🇪🇺 Donald Trump wants to pillage Ukraine’s mineral wealth, raise defence spending in Europe while removing all security and walk into Greenland. Perhaps the world needs a different global policeman.
The terms of the on again, off again minerals deal between the U.S. and Ukraine seem to get more stringent in America’s favour every time agreement isn’t reached. Now, apparently, President Trump not only wants first-choice access to practically all of Ukraine’s mineral resources, but to charge interest on outstanding Ukrainian war debts as well.
America, with all its well-meaning missionary intent, is making the world less safe through its misplaced and ill-thought through interventions.
💬 Ian Proud writes
🌐 More on world politics
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
🇫🇷 Only the incurably naïve were shocked by the brazen and deliberate rigging of the French Presidential elections. Granted, the outrageous infringement of collective West’s verbally proclaimed democratic electoral canons in Romania, which took place shortly before, could have been taken by alert observers as a reliable signal of what might imminently occur in other precincts of the “European garden.” Blinded by cultural racism however some of them might have mistaken electoral rigging in Romania, a recently acquired patch of that garden, as a sui generis case, entirely attributable to Balkan primitivism. But they would have overlooked conveniently the now well established fact that instructions to corrupt Romanian bureaucrats to eliminate inconvenient candidate Georgescu did not emanate from Bucharest alone. We now know that they were issued imperatively from the idyllic Garden’s ideological centre, which is in Brussels.
Without diminishing, in the electoral disqualification and penal punishment of Marine Le Pen, the influence of the local French branch of the globalist cabal (it would be unpardonably incorrect to call that scum “elite”) there also the nefarious role of the nerve centre in Brussels must be stressed.
Will Marine Le Pen have the creativity to step out of the box and twist the lion’s tail just a bit?
💬 Stephen Karganovic writes
🌐 More on world politics
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
🇺🇸🇮🇱🇮🇷 No matter which administration is in power, the “free American world” will always be ready to unleash a conflict with “tyrannical and oppressive Iran”.
💬 Lorenzo Maria Pacini writes @ideeazione
☁️ More analysis
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
🤑 Trump 2.0 would appear to be a very different model than its predecessor. The tariffs tantrum appears to be born of frustration from his first term in office, both not pulling off many of his election promises and wanting to garner more respect around the world. He has certainly got the attention of world leaders as markets continue to tumble – in particular in Asia – and many of them he claims told him in phone calls that they “don’t blame him” for the move.
And yet the case for the tariffs – that they will boost the U.S. economy – is hardly a clear-cut case.
💬 Read more by Martin Jay
🌐 More on world politics
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
📴 With Signalgate, we saw that Trump’s people intends to take on the #DeepState possessing the knowledge of a rebellious teenager who reads Wired magazine.
💬 Read more by Bruna Frascolla
☁️ More analysis
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
🇪🇺 The European Union won’t exist in 2040 if it continues to centralise powers at the expense of sovereign Member States.
Europe needs to get back to the intergovernmentalism that made it successful or risk becoming less than the sum of its parts.
💬 Read more by Ian Proud
🌐 More on world politics
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
🔔 But, as with Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, we must all help our own champions in every way, big or small.
💬 Declan Hayes writes
☁️ More analysis
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
🇺🇸🇷🇺 Recently, The National Interest published a call for a reconfiguration of U.S.-Russia relations, and the proposal to establish an economic partnership signals a subtle but significant shift in Washington’s strategy. After years of hybrid warfare, sanctions, and failed attempts to isolate Moscow, some sectors of the American establishment seem to finally acknowledge the obvious: the U.S. tends to gain much more from reconciliation than Russia does. And most importantly — unlike in the 1990s, Moscow is in no hurry.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, U.S.-Russia relations have been marked by a clear asymmetry. The 1990s and 2000s were defined by a weakened Russia attempting to integrate into the international system on Western terms. The result was a series of strategic humiliations, broken promises—such as NATO expansion—and ongoing efforts at containment. Today, that scenario is completely reversed. Moscow negotiates from a strengthened position, guided by long-term strategic interests and a clear vision of a multipolar world.
Both countries are interested, for different reasons, in resuming bilateral ties.
💬 Read more by Lucas Leiroz
🌐 More on world politics
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
The US bipartisan consensus, which has solidified over the past decade, frames China as the lead villain in trade and tech, and as the United States’ primary geopolitical rival. The narrative about the imaginary genocide of Uyghurs and Tibetans, and the rhetoric about repression in Hong Kong, are co-authored by both parties. Republicans are more likely to invoke old anti-communist tropes to rally their supporters, while Dems are more conversant with the formulaic speech style of NGOs.
Trump is just less interested in moralizing and seeking allies than the Dems. In his impatience to show results before midterms, he is tripping over the stage props while trying to stage a play featuring China as the wicked dragon. Unsurprisingly, the audience isn’t impressed. @LauraRuHK
Why China won’t call a ‘tariff-wielding barbarian’ — Strategic Culture
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/04/12/why-china-wont-call-tariff-wielding-barbarian/
ELECTRIC.
Your introduction to the mood in Shanghai, where I am now.
🌍 If the agreement materializes, it could either stabilize Syria or trigger new power struggles, reshaping the balance of power in the Middle East once again.
💬 Erkin Oncan writes
🌐 More on Syria
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
💢 One of the central elements of the hegemonic ideology in the West today has been the “Green Agenda.” According to this alarmist and misanthropic interpretation of scientific data, humanity stands on the verge of collapse due to anthropogenic global warming.
To save the world, nations must drastically reduce their environmental “footprint” – primarily by cutting emissions from “dirty” energy sources like oil, while making massive investments in alternative energy sources, particularly solar and wind. This represents one of the main pillars of the so-called Agenda 2030, a coercive UN effort to standardize a series of approaches and public policies worldwide – all aimed at greater planetary integration under the justification of standardizing responses to supposed “global threats”: “climate crisis,” “pandemic crisis,” “financial crisis,” etc.
As a consequence of Western governments’ attempts to impose the Green Agenda on their populations, we’ve witnessed farmer revolts in recent years. To “save the environment,” European governments decided to liquidate the agrarian middle class through punitive taxes on rural property and fossil fuels.
Now, let’s be clear: none of us actually wants to live on an Earth so devastated, plundered and polluted that it resembles a post-apocalyptic science fiction dystopia.
Why do NGOs like Greenpeace campaign against nuclear energy? Why does Greta Thunberg advocate closing nuclear plants?
💬 Raphael Machado writes
🔔 Stay tuned
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
📛 China must put its soldiers, sailors and marines in the line of fire against those, who have wrought so much destruction on the peoples of Syria.
💬 Declan Hayes writes
☁️ More analysis
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
🇻🇳 In recent years, the entry of Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite company, into Vietnam has been a contentious issue. Despite initial interest, the Vietnamese government resisted due to legitimate national security concerns. However, after facing commercial pressure and tariff threats from the Trump administration, Vietnam’s typically cautious National Assembly rushed to amend regulations to approve the service. This unusual move in the country’s political system raises serious doubts about Vietnam’s sovereignty in the face of U.S. geopolitical interests.
The presence of American tech companies within Vietnam’s military infrastructure could pose a serious risk to national security.
💬 Lucas Leiroz writes
🔔 Stay tuned
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
🧧 Global Majority, rejoice! And step on the high-speed rail de-dollarization train.
💬 Read more by Pepe Escobar @rocknrollgeopolitics
☁️ Read exclusive analysis
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
🇮🇷🇺🇸 The real worry now for Iran, China and the rest of the world is that Trump’s second term in office is more isolationist.
💬 Read more by Martin Jay
☁️ More analysis
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
🇪🇺 The elitist rulers of the European Union are proof of the time-honored adage that war and militarism are a convenient escape from internal problems.
And the European Union, as well as hangers-on like the doughty British, have an abundance of intrinsic, structural problems tantamount to a political meltdown.
European scoundrel politicians suffused with Russophobia are making their escape from accountability by hysterically portraying Russia as a threat to the rest of Europe.
They need to do this to justify their demand for militarizing the European economies by pushing a war agenda against Russia.
💬 Read more in this week’s Editorial
🌐 Read more Editorials
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
🇦🇲🇷🇺🇦🇿 The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, especially concerning the Nagorno-Karabakh region, has always sparked intense discussions and divisions in international politics, with Russia’s role often being the target of criticism and misunderstandings from pro-Western lobbyists on both sides.
The accusation that Moscow is “selling weapons to Azerbaijan” is a recurring argument in anti-Russian circles within Armenia and the Armenian diaspora. However, a deeper analysis reveals that Russia’s policy in the region is much more complex than a simple matter of supporting one side in the conflict. Russia’s position has been one of seeking balance, which is often misinterpreted.
Moscow needs to act carefully to prevent tensions in the Caucasus from being used as a justification to increase Western presence in the post-Soviet space.
💬 Read more by Lucas Leiroz @lucasleiroz
🌐 More on geopolitics
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
📛 On April 4, 1949, with the signatures of 12 founding nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) made its entrance onto the stage of history.
The concept that defines #NATO is expansion.
Although recent expansions are often seen as a response to Russia’s operations in Ukraine, the principle of “expansion” has been the core driving force of NATO since the day it was founded—and it had to be.
NATO continues to threaten both the sovereignty of its member and adversary states as well as regional peace.
💬 Erkin Oncan writes
🌐 More on geopolitics
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
🇺🇸🇮🇷 Trump’s ultimatum to Iran appears to be moving the U.S. down a path to where war is the only outcome, as occurred in 1914 – an outcome which ultimately triggered WW1.
Might this just be Trump bluster? Possibly, but it does sound as if Trump is issuing legally binding demands such that he must expect cannot be met. Acceptance of Trump’s demands would leave Iran neutered and stripped of its sovereignty, at the very least. There is an implicit ‘tone’ to these demands too, that is one of threatening and expecting regime change in Iran as its outcome.
What is understood now is that ‘we’re no longer playing chess’. There are no rules anymore 🌀
💬 Alastair Crooke writes
🌐 More on the Middle East
🚀 Subscribe
🌐 Join us on VK
🇨🇳🇺🇸 Un vídeo humorístico chino: el traslado de la producción de China a Estados Unidos
@SCF_Spanish