Instruction: Write an article about: CIA veteran calls for US war on China and Russia, threatening nuclear strikes, in elite Foreign Policy magazine. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Atlantic Council, China, CIA, Cold War Two, Foreign Policy magazine, Iran, Matthew Kroenig, media, MEK, NATO, new cold war, Russia, Taiwan, Ukraine

Output:
A CIA and Pentagon veteran who helps run NATO’s powerful think tank the Atlantic Council, Matthew Kroenig, published an article in elite Foreign Policy magazine calling for US war on both China and Russia, including “threatening nonstrategic nuclear strikes” and a new arms race. He has also advocated military attacks on Iran.

(Se puede leer este artículo en español aquí.)
A veteran of the CIA and Pentagon who now helps to run one of the most powerful think tanks in Washington, Matthew Kroenig, has published an article in highly influential Foreign Policy magazine calling for the United States to prepare to wage war on China and Russia.
Kroenig served in important national security state roles in the George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump administrations, and has significant sway in DC foreign-policy circles.
Kroenig insisted that the US military should “threaten nonstrategic nuclear strikes” on China over Taiwan and Russia over Europe.
Referring to Washington’s conflict with Beijing and Moscow as a “new cold war,” he also called for boosting the $768 billion annual US military budget even further, maintaining that “the United States can afford to outspend Russia and China at the same time.”
The CIA and Pentagon veteran emphasized that Washington must take on both Eurasian superpowers, simultaneously, in order to maintain US unipolar hegemony, which he acknowledged is in decline.
Kroenig made these arguments in a widely circulated February 18 article in the elite Foreign Policy magazine, titled “Washington Must Prepare for War With Both Russia and China.”

Matthew Kroenig currently serves as deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council, the de facto think tank of the US-led NATO military alliance.
The Atlantic Council, which is funded by the US government, other Western governments, NATO, and the weapons industry, has massive influence in Washington, helping to craft foreign policy for every administration.
In addition to his work for the CIA and Defense Department in the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations, Kroenig was a national security adviser for the presidential campaigns of Republicans Mitt Romney, in 2012, and Marco Rubio, in 2016.
He is also a life member of the elite Council on Foreign Relations, and a tenured professor of government and foreign service at Washington’s prestigious Georgetown University.
In short, Kroenig is a highly influential figure in US foreign-policy circles with impeccable credentials, and his extremely hawkish views calling for simultaneous US war on China and Russia reflect the opinions of many of his colleagues in Washington.
Matthew Kroenig encapsulated the view of many Washington foreign-policy elites that the United States must wage war in order to maintain its unchallenged hegemonic control over the planet, writing:
The United States remains the world’s leading power with global interests, and it cannot afford to choose between Europe and the Indo-Pacific. Instead, Washington and its allies should develop a defense strategy capable of deterring and, if necessary, defeating Russia and China at the same time.
One of the tactics the United States could use to maintain its unipolar hegemony, Kroenig argued, is the threat of nuclear war:
Finally, if necessary, Washington could always take a page from its Cold War playbook and rely more heavily on nuclear weapons to offset the local, conventional advantages of its rivals. The presence of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe helped deter the massive Soviet Red Army for decades. Similarly, the United States could rely on threatening nonstrategic nuclear strikes to deter and, as a last resort, thwart a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan or a Russian tank incursion into Europe.
To be sure, there are risks associated with nuclear deterrence, but nuclear weapons have played a foundational role in U.S. defense strategy for three-quarters of a century—and will likely continue to do so for decades to come.
Warning that “Moscow and Beijing are forging a closer strategic partnership, including on military matters,” Kroenig insisted that the United States must drastically increase military spending, to “outspend Russia and China at the same time”:
First, Washington should increase defense spending. Contrary to those who claim that constrained resources will force tough choices, the United States can afford to outspend Russia and China at the same time. The United States possesses 24 percent of global GDP compared to a combined 19 percent in China and Russia. This year, the United States will spend $778 billion on defense compared to only $310 billion in Russia and China.
Moreover, the United States could go so far as to double defense spending (currently 2.8 percent of GDP) and still remain below its Cold War average (close to 7 percent of GDP). Indeed, given that this new Cold War is every bit as dangerous as the last one, a meaningful increase in defense spending, focused on the 21st century’s emerging defense technologies, is in order.
…
In short, even if this new strategic competition becomes a two-versus-one arms race, Washington is likely to prevail.
He called for US allies to significantly increase their military spending as well, writing, “European allies should invest in armor and artillery while Asian allies buy naval mines, harpoon missiles, and submarines.”
Kroenig noted that the Joe Biden administration is soon expected to publish a new US National Defense Strategy, which will essentially call for Washington to focus exclusively on containing China, not Russia. But this strategy was allegedly delayed because of the Ukraine crisis.
Some US policymakers have called for easing tensions with Moscow and trying to form an alliance with Russia against China, but Kroenig argued this is “not realistic.”
This is by no means the first time Matthew Kroenig has advocated for a US war.
In 2012, he published an article in Foreign Affairs, the official journal of the elite Council on Foreign Relations, calling for the US military to launch attacks on Iran.

In 2021, Kroenig spoke at an anti-Iran conference organized by the extremist Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK) cult, which many hawkish figures in Washington have supported to try to bring about regime change in Tehran.
He praised MEK front the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) for supposed intelligence it has gathered on Tehran’s alleged nuclear program.

Matthew Kroenig is certainly not the only US intelligence official calling for war on China.
In November 2021, another CIA veteran, David Sauer, published an op-ed in The Hill titled “America must prepare for war with China over Taiwan.”
“To deter China, the United States must rapidly build up its forces in the Pacific, continue to strengthen military alliances in the region to ensure access to bases in time of conflict, and accelerate deliveries of purchased military equipment to Taiwan,” Sauer wrote.


Instruction: Write an article about: NATO expanding into Asia-Pacific to militarily encircle China as well as Russia. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Australia, China, Japan, Jens Stoltenberg, NATO, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea

Output:
While it wages a proxy war on Russia in Ukraine, the US-led NATO military alliance plans to encircle China and expand into the Asia-Pacific region, collaborating with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand.

The deceptively named North Atlantic Treaty Organization is expanding into the Asia-Pacific region.
NATO has waged wars on Libya, Afghanistan, and the former Yugoslavia. Now the US-led military alliance has its crosshairs set on both Russia and China.
Former top State Department officials have admitted that the “United States and its NATO allies are engaged in a proxy war with Russia” in Ukraine.
While it is flooding Ukraine with weapons and training far-right fighters to kill Russians, NATO is simultaneously threatening China, and expanding its presence in the Asia-Pacific in hopes of containing Beijing.
In a press conference on April 5, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that the Western powers plan to “deepen NATO’s cooperation with our Asia-Pacific partners, including in areas such as arms control, cyber, hybrid, and technology.”
Stoltenberg complained that “China has been unwilling to condemn Russia” over its war in Ukraine, and made it clear that Beijing is NATO’s next target.
NATO leader Jens Stoltenberg announced the Western powers plan to “deepen NATO’s cooperation with our Asia-Pacific partners, including in areas such as arms control, cyber, hybrid and technology”
Their goal is to militarily encircle China
Read more here: https://t.co/PE3LAJpQVz pic.twitter.com/QUkjtpaPVQ
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) April 9, 2022

NATO held a meeting of the foreign ministers of its member states at its headquarters in Brussels on April 6 and 7, where they pledged to increase their military support for Ukraine and escalate the proxy war on Russia.
This gathering featured representatives from several European states that are not NATO members, including Georgia, Finland, and Sweden.
But even more noteworthy was the presence of numerous Asian-Pacific countries at the NATO meeting in Brussels: Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand.
It goes without saying that these Asian-Pacific nations are far from the North Atlantic region.
Government representatives from Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea at the NATO meeting on Ukraine in Brussels on April 7
Ronald Reagan designated Japan, South Korea, and Australia “major non-NATO allies” of the United States back in 1987.
Japan and Australia are members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad, an anti-China alliance created by Washington to try to isolate and destabilize China.
The US military still has 55,000 troops stationed in Japan, where they have been since the end of World War II. Washington also has 28,000 troops in South Korea, which have remained there since the early 1950s.
Japan and South Korea joined the Western powers in imposing sanctions on Russia over its military intervention in Ukraine.
As the United States escalates its new cold war on China, NATO is expanding its military cooperation with these Asian-Pacific powers.
Just as NATO repeatedly violated its promises and expanded onto Russia’s borders, militarily encircling Moscow, Washington’s goal is to surround Beijing with antagonistic military forces.
In 2021 the major Japanese media outlet Nikkei revealed that US Indo-Pacific Command is spending $27.4 billion over six years to militarize the region, including by “establishing a network of precision-strike missiles along the so-called first island chain.”
In a huge escalation of Washington's new cold war on China, the US military is building a network of precision-strike "anti-China" missiles along the islands surrounding China.
This massive act of aggression will cost $27.4 billion over the next six years https://t.co/nW9kfW3G9J pic.twitter.com/azKxBQrWbs
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) March 7, 2021

Nikkei explained, “The first island chain consists of a group of islands including Taiwan, Okinawa and the Philippines, which China sees as the first line of defense.”
US Indo-Pacific Command wrote clearly in its “Pacific Deterrence Initiative” that its goal is to “focus resources on vital military capabilities to deter China.”
In other words, this is a US plan to encircle China, threatening it at any moment with a massive missile installation.
NATO is going to play an increasingly important role in this plan to militarily surround and threaten Beijing.
The US-led military cartel boasts on its website of its close alliance with Japan. And Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi has stated openly that the East Asian country is cooperating with NATO over Ukraine.
In July 2021, a top South Korean government official traveled to Brussels “for talks on common security challenges and NATO’s partnership with Seoul.”
The military cartel disclosed that they discussed “China’s rise, as well as opportunities for stronger cooperation between NATO and the Republic of Korea, including in the areas of cyber defence and arms control.”
Then in October, South Korea’s first vice minister of foreign affairs visited NATO headquarters as well.

After a meeting of the heads of state of NATO’s 30 members in Brussels in June 2021, the US-led military cartel published a joint declaration clearly revealing that it sees China as a threat.
“China’s growing influence and international policies can present challenges that we need to address together as an Alliance,” NATO wrote.
The military cartel claimed China and its cooperation with Russia “present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order and to areas relevant to Alliance security.”
This statement was released eight months before Russia invaded Ukraine.
NATO has planned on targeting China for years, and is now only using Beijing’s refusal to condemn its major strategic partner Moscow as an excuse to continue escalating an aggressive campaign of military encirclement that it had planned long before.


Instruction: Write an article about: Iran at UN: ISIS would be Europe’s neighbor if not for Iran, Syria, Iraq. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Ebrahim Raisi, Iran, Iraq, ISIS, Qasem Soleimani, sanctions, Syria, UN, United Nations

Output:
At the United Nations, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi called US intervention “the biggest hindrance” to peace and stability, denouncing murderous American sanctions and the new cold war.

In the Western press, Iran is often portrayed as an irrational actor. Media propaganda depicts Iranians — like North Koreans, Syrians, Chinese, and people in any other Official Enemy country targeted by the United States for regime change — as crazy barbarians, using racist, colonial-esque tropes.
But if you listen to the speech Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi delivered to the United Nations General Assembly on September 23, you see the exact opposite is true: Iran is the nation promoting international law, peace, and stability; whereas it is the United States that is waging war around the world and overthrowing any government that refuses to obey it.
Raisi sent a message of cooperation. While stressing the commonalities shared by Abrahamic religions and calling for coexistence, the Iranian president condemned the United States for fueling disharmony, extremism, and terrorism.
If Washington had had its way, were it not for the resistance led by Iran, Syria, and Iraq, “ISIS would be the Mediterranean neighbors of Europe,” Raisi pointed out.
US interventions have only led to “blood-spilling and instability,” he said, recalling the CIA coup that overthrew his nation’s elected government in 1953.
Raisi called the ongoing US military occupations of Syria and Iraq the “biggest hindrance to the establishment of democracy” in West Asia, quipping, “Freedom does not fit in the backpacks of soldiers coming from outside the region.”
And the way Washington wages war on independent countries is shifting, he noted. Unilateral economic “sanctions are the United States’ new way of war with the nations of the world.”
The Iranian president stressed that “sanctions, and especially sanctions on medicine, at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic are crimes against humanity.”
Raisi is invariably demonized in the Western press as a “hardliner,” but his UN speech shows that Iranian leadership highly emphasizes rationality (a term he mentioned several times), diplomacy, and multilateralism.
At the UN, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi stressed that ISIS would be Europe's neighbors were it not for the resistance led by Iran, Syria, Iraq and al-Muhandis and Soleimani (whom the US killed)
"Freedom does not fit in the backpacks of soldiers coming from outside the region" pic.twitter.com/bFWYJBcyFM
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 23, 2021

“It has been our policy to strive for the preservation of stability and territorial integrity of all the countries of the region,” Raisi said.
“If not for the power and role of Iran, alongside the governments and peoples of Syria and Iraq, as well as the selfless efforts of martyrs Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and General Qasem Soleimani, today, ISIS would be the Mediterranean neighbors of Europe,” he stressed.
The fact that Raisi named Soleimani and al-Muhandis is significant: both were murdered by the Donald Trump administration in a criminal act of war on January 3, 2020.
He is emphasizing that Washington murdered two of the most important figures in the fight against ISIS.
The Iranian president continued, warning that “ISIS will not be the last wave of extremism.”
Raisi indirectly criticized Washington’s new cold war on China and Russia, stating, “The new drive to come up with cold war-esque divisions will not help foster the security of humans, by isolating independent countries.”
In another jab at US support for extremist groups, he went on, “Even more bitter is the use of terrorism as an instrument for foreign policy, because you cannot fight terrorism with double standards. You cannot make a terrorist group such as ISIS in a certain place, and claim to fight it somewhere else.”
Finally, Raisi stated clearly, “The military presence of the United States in Syria and Iraq is the biggest hindrance to the establishment of democracy and will of nations.”
“Freedom does not fit in the backpacks of soldiers coming from outside the region.”
Iranian President Raisi at the UN: "Sanctions are the US' new way of war" on the world
US interventions only lead to "blood-spilling and instability," and "it is the oppressed people from Palestine and Syria to Yemen and Afghanistan, as well as the US taxpayers, who have to pay" pic.twitter.com/JLoJGD7iEI
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 23, 2021

The Iranian president also condemned Washington’s addiction to military interventions and economic warfare.
“The United States’ hegemonic system has no credibility, whether inside or outside the country. What you see in our region today proves that not only the hegemonist and the idea of hegemony, but also the project of imposing Westernized identity have failed miserably.”
“The result of seeking hegemony has been blood-spilling and instability, and ultimately defeat and escape.”
“Today, the US does not get to exit Iraq and Afghanistan, but is expelled, and at the same time it is the oppressed people from Palestine and Syria to Yemen and Afghanistan, as well as the US taxpayers, who have to pay for this lack of rationality.”
“Today, the world doesn’t care about ‘America first’ or ‘America is back.’ If rationality prevails in the minds of the decision-makers, they have to realize that nations’ perseverance is stronger than the power of the superpowers.”
“Over the past decade, the US has been making the mistake of modifying its way of war with the world, instead of changing its way of life. An erroneous path cannot be brought to fruition by merely adopting a different method.”
“Sanctions are the US’ new way of war with the nations of the world.”
“Sanctions against the Iranian nation started not with my country’s nuclear program; they even predate the Islamic Revolution and go back to 1951, when oil nationalization went under way in Iran, which in turn led to a military coup backed by the Americans and the British against the then-government of Iran, which had been elected by the people.”
“Sanctions, and especially sanctions on medicine, at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic are crimes against humanity.”


Instruction: Write an article about: US kills 4th UN call for peace in Gaza, helping Israel violate Hague’s genocide ruling. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Canada, Gaza, Hague, ICJ, International Court of Justice, Israel, Joe Biden, Josep Borrell, Mélanie Joly, Palestine, Rafah, Security Council, UN Security Council, United Nations

Output:
The US used its veto power to block a fourth UN Security Council resolution that called for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. The Biden administration keeps sending weapons to Israel, helping it violate an ICJ ruling that says Netanyahu must respect the Genocide Convention and stop killing Palestinians.

The United States has since October voted against four United Nations Security Council resolutions that called for peace in Gaza.
Top UN officials have called for a ceasefire, but the US government has stood in their way, facilitating further violence.
In January, the highest UN judicial authority, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), ruled that Israel must abide by the Genocide Convention and stop killing Palestinians. But Tel Aviv ignored the Hague’s decision and killed thousands more Palestinian civilians.
By vetoing a fourth Gaza-related Security Council resolution on February 20, and by continuing to provide weapons to Israel, the US government has helped Israel violate an ICJ order.

The resolution that Washington vetoed on February 20 had been introduced by Algeria, and called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.
In the session, 13 of the 15 members of the Security Council voted in support of the resolution. The UK abstained, and the US was the only country that voted against it.
#BREAKING
US vetoes Algerian-led draft resolution that would have, inter alia, demanded an immediate humanitarian ceasefire that must be respected by all parties
IN FAVOR: 13AGAINST: 1 (US)ABSTAIN: 1 (UK)
Live coveragehttps://t.co/fLIqiQv9A4 pic.twitter.com/5lqhlix7RV
— UN News (@UN_News_Centre) February 20, 2024

The 13 nations that voted in support of the resolution were permanent members China, France, and Russia, plus Algeria, Ecuador, Guyana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, South Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, and Switzerland.
United States vetoes latest draft resolution on the ongoing crisis in #Gaza
The text was put forward by Algeria on behalf of Arab States. It demanded, among other issues, “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire that must be respected by all parties”
More: https://t.co/fLIqiQv9A4 pic.twitter.com/Nd1sCDQMEf
— UN News (@UN_News_Centre) February 20, 2024

The US designed the United Nations after World War II by concentrating power in the Security Council and giving permanent seats to the war’s five victors: the US, UK, France, Russia (the former Soviet Union), and China.
The Security Council’s permanent members have veto power, which Washington has abused to advance its foreign-policy interests.
On December 9, the US vetoed another resolution in the Security Council, which had been introduced by the United Arab Emirates and called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.
That vote was the same: 13 countries in support, an abstention from the UK, and the US veto.
#BREAKING United States vetoes Security Council draft resolution that would have demanded an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, and immediate and unconditional release of all hostages
VOTEIn Favour: 13Against: 1 (US)Abstain: 1 (UK) pic.twitter.com/hY0YcJ1JKF
— UN News (@UN_News_Centre) December 8, 2023

Back on October 18, the US vetoed a resolution that had been introduced by Brazil, which the UN News Agency noted “would have called for ‘humanitarian pauses’ to deliver lifesaving aid to millions in Gaza”.
In this case, 12 countries voted in favor. The US voted against it, and two countries abstained: the UK and Russia.
US vetoes Security Council resolution that would have called for “humanitarian pauses” to deliver lifesaving aid to millions in Gaza
Favor: 12 (Albania, Brazil, China, Ecuador, France, Gabon, Ghana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Switzerland,UAE)Against: 1 (US)Abstain: 2 Russia, UK pic.twitter.com/y4tiAbRMUQ
— UN News (@UN_News_Centre) October 18, 2023

Why did Russia abstain on this resolution that had been introduced by Brazil?
This was because two days before, on October 16, there was a vote on a stronger competing resolution that Russia had introduced, which called for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.
This had been the first resolution concerning Gaza to be introduced in the Security Council since the war began on October 7.
In this first resolution, five countries voted in support of the ceasefire: China, Gabon, Mozambique, Russia, and the UAE.
Four countries voted against it – the major imperial powers that had colonized much of the world: France, Japan, the UK, and the US.
Six countries abstained: Albania, Brazil, Ecuador, Ghana, Malta and Switzerland. (Brazil only abstained because it had introduced its own competing resolution, which was voted on two days later, and vetoed by the United States.)
The Western powers killed a UN Security Council resolution that proposed a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza
The resolution was proposed by Russia
5 countries voted for the ceasefire:???????? China???????? Gabon???????? Mozambique???????? Russia???????? UAE
4 voted against:???????? France???????? Japan???????? UK???????? US… pic.twitter.com/6UMfoRRqQH
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) October 17, 2023

The US veto of the Algerian resolution on February 20 is particularly scandalous, because Washington did it after the top legal authority on Earth, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), located at the Hague, ruled in January that Israel had to stop killing Palestinians.
The Hague stated that there is sufficient evidence to investigate Israel on charges of genocide.
The ICJ was very clear in its ruling. It ordered (emphasis added):
Israel must, in accordance with its obligations under the Genocide Convention, in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of … (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
Since this ruling, Israel has killed thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, and injured tens of thousands more.
ICJ’s Israel genocide decision: Historic victory for Palestinians and Global South

The United States has also continued to send weapons to Israel, to help it kill Palestinians – and violate the Hague’s ruling.
Meanwhile, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) reported on February 5 that roughly 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza had either been killed or wounded by Israel, or were missing – trapped under the rubble of the buildings that Israel had destroyed with US weapons.
Furthermore, the WHO estimated that “60% of the 27,019 fatalities reported by the enclave’s health authorities have been women and children… with more than 66,000 now injured and requiring medical care that remains difficult to access”.
As of February 21, Israel had killed more than 29,000 Palestinians, according to the health ministry in Gaza.
The Gaza health ministry’s data has proven to be consistently accurate. Israeli intelligence agencies have used its casualty figures for their own analysis.
Moreover, despite US President Joe Biden’s misleading claims to the contrary, multiple medical experts published peer-reviewed scientific articles in the leading medical journal The Lancet, scrutinizing the data from the Palestinian health ministry and concluding that it is accurate. If anything, the death toll is conservative, and actually understates the number of Palestinians who have been killed by Israel.
In fact, the most mainstream of media outlets in the US, the Associated Press, or AP, published a report in January titled “Israel’s military campaign in Gaza seen as among the most destructive in recent history, experts say”. It wrote (emphasis added):
The Israeli military campaign in Gaza, experts say, now sits among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history.
In just over two months, researchers say the offensive has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II. It has killed more civilians than the U.S.-led coalition did in its three-year campaign against the Islamic State group.
The Israeli military has said little about what kinds of bombs and artillery it is using in Gaza. But from blast fragments found on-site and analyses of strike footage, experts are confident that the vast majority of bombs dropped on the besieged enclave are U.S.-made. They say the weapons include 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) “bunker-busters” that have killed hundreds in densely populated areas.

The Wall Street Journal reported in December that the US has sent Israel these 2,000-pound bunker buster bombs during the war.
The newspaper noted that, between October 7 and December 1, the US had delivered to Israel 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells.
In fact, the Biden administration has repeatedly bypassed Congress, using extraordinary measures to ship more weapons to Israel.
While US officials claim that they supposedly want a ceasefire in Gaza, the Wall Street Journal reported on February 17 that the US plans to continue shipping Israel tens of millions of dollars worth of additional weapons.
Even the European Union, which strongly supports Israel, has publicly criticized its atrocities in Gaza.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell admitted in a press conference on February 13 that Israel is carrying out a “slaughter” in Gaza.
Borrell highlighted the “illogical” hypocrisy of the US, arguing, “If you believe that too many people are being killed, maybe you should provide less arms in order to prevent so many people being killed”.
The top European diplomat stated:
I don’t pretend to be in charge of the foreign policy of the US. I have enough with the foreign policy of European Union. But let’s be logical.
How many times have you heard the most prominent leaders and foreign ministers around the world saying too many people are being killed? President Biden said this is too much on the top; it is not proportional.
Well, if you believe that too many people are being killed, maybe you should provide less arms in order to prevent so many people being killed. It’s not logical.
…
They [Palestinians] are going to evacuate. Where? To the moon? Where are they [Israel] going to evacuate these people?
So if the international community believes that this is a slaughter, that too many people are being killed, maybe they have to think about the provision of arms.
And by the way, today [February 13], a court in the Netherlands has said, has ordered the government to stop exporting the spare parts of the F-35 fighters to Israel, in order to be sure that the International Court of Justice ruling is being implemented.
So I don’t know; every member state is an owner of its foreign policy. But this is a little bit contradictory to continue saying that there are too many people being killed, too many people being killed; please take care of people; please don’t kill so many.
Stop saying please, and do something.
The Canadian government has been equally hypocritical. Canada’s Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly tweeted on February 10, “We are deeply concerned by reports of an Israeli military operation in Rafah. It would have devastating impact, putting the lives of Palestinians and foreign nationals, including [Canadians], seeking refuge in grave danger and making the vital delivery of humanitarian aid dangerous”.
However, local news outlet The Maple reported that the Canadian government has approved $28.5 million worth of new permits for military equipment exports to Israel during its brutal war on Gaza.


Instruction: Write an article about: Dick Cheney confirmed US goal is to break up Russia as a country, not just USSR. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Dick Cheney, Iraq, Iraq War, Russia, Soviet Union, USSR

Output:
Former Vice President and Iraq War architect Dick Cheney wasn’t content only breaking up the Soviet Union. Balkanizing Russia (and China) is a bipartisan foreign-policy goal among top US national security state officials.

Former US Vice President Dick Cheney, a lead architect of the Iraq War, not only wanted to dismantle the Soviet Union; he also wanted to break up Russia itself, to prevent it from rising again as a significant political power.
Balkanizing Russia, as NATO did to former Yugoslavia, is a fantasy shared by many hawks in the US national security state. They will never tolerate an independent government in Moscow, regardless of whether or not it is socialist.
Former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote that, “When the Soviet Union was collapsing in late 1991, Dick wanted to see the dismantlement not only of the Soviet Union and the Russian empire but of Russia itself, so it could never again be a threat.”
Gates made these comments in his 2014 memoir “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War.” This quote was highlighted on Twitter by journalist Jon Schwarz.
In Robert Gates's memoir "Duty," he describes how at the end of the Cold War, Dick Cheney—then secretary of defense—wanted to dismantle not just the Soviet Union but Russia itself. No one in the US knows or cares about this, but I bet lots of people in the Russian government do. pic.twitter.com/Dyb7NeXzJD
— ☀ Jon Schwarz ☀ (@schwarz) January 31, 2022

Cheney was one of the most powerful vice presidents in modern US history. He exercised significant influence over President George W. Bush, who had little foreign-policy experience and knowledge.
The fact that a figure at the helm of the US government not-so-secretly sought the permanent dissolution of Russia as a country, and straightforwardly communicated this to colleagues like Robert Gates, partially explains the aggressive posturing Washington has taken toward the Russian Federation since the overthrow of the USSR.
The reality is that the US empire will simply never allow Russia to challenge its unilateral domination of Eurasia, despite the fact that the government in Moscow restored capitalism.
This is why it is not surprising that Washington has utterly ignored Russia’s security concerns, breaking its promise not to expand NATO “once inch eastward” after German reunification, surrounding Moscow with militarized adversaries hell bent on destabilizing it.
Leading US imperial planner Zbigniew Brzezinski clearly stated in his 1997 opus “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives” that the goal was to contain and weaken Russia.
Washington had to “prevent the emergence of a dominant and antagonistic Eurasian power,” the former US national security advisor wrote, in order to maintain US “global primacy.”
US imperial planner Brzezinski stressed they must "prevent the emergence of a dominant and antagonistic Eurasian power" to maintain US "global primacy"
The US empire knows the biggest threat to its hegemony is if China & Russia can integrate Eurasia, and form a military alliance pic.twitter.com/8ekQrfOBrZ
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 21, 2021

Also in 1997, Brzezinski penned an article proposing “A Geostrategy for Eurasia.” This imperial blueprint was published in Foreign Affairs, the magazine of the powerful Council on Foreign Relations.
The influential US policymaker insisted that Russia should be divided into a “decentralized political system”, with “free-market economics”.
Brzezinski proposed a “loosely confederated Russia — composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern Republic”. He added that “a decentralized Russia would be less susceptible to imperial mobilization”.
The Russian Federation of today consists of 22 republics. Moscow has long accused Washington of supporting secessionist movements within its borders, aimed at breaking away some of these republics, with the goal of destabilizing and ultimately dismantling Russia.
Russian security services have published evidence that the United States supported Chechen separatists in their wars on the central Russian government.
British academic John Laughland stressed in a 2004 article in The Guardian, titled “The Chechens’ American friends,” that several Chechen secessionist leaders were living in the West, and were even given grant money by the US government.
Laughland noted that the most important US-based pro-Chechen secessionist group, the deceptively named American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC), listed as its members “a rollcall of the most prominent neoconservatives who so enthusiastically support the ‘war on terror'”:
They include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth Adelman, the former US ambassador to the UN who egged on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be “a cakewalk”; Midge Decter, biographer of Donald Rumsfeld and a director of the rightwing Heritage Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the militarist Centre for Security Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence officer and one-time vice-president of Lockheed Martin, now president of the US Committee on Nato; Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading proponent of regime change in Iran; and R James Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one of the leading cheerleaders behind George Bush’s plans to re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines.
This was a Who’s Who of DC’s most influential hawks. Alongside Rumsfeld, Abrams, and company, Cheney was a key figure in these neoconservative foreign-policy circles in Washington, whose bellicose adherents fill the unelected US national security state bureaucracy, under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
That is to say that Cheney was by no means alone is seeking the breakup of the Russian Federation; it is a fantasy shared by many of his Beltway colleagues.
During the Second Chechen War in the 2000s, these avid proselytizers of the so-called “War on Terror” cheered on Chechen insurgents as they battled the Russian central government.
The fact that far-right Salafi-jihadists made up a significant percentage of the Chechen insurgency didn’t bother these anti-Muslim neocons – just as Islamophobic “War on Terror” veterans had no problem supporting extremist head-chopping Takfiri Islamists in the subsequent US wars on Syria and Libya.
Today many of these same neoconservative US national security state functionaries have turned their attention back toward supporting secessionist movements in China – in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, and especially Xinjiang.
The fact that the CIA cutout the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) openly publicizes its support for Uyghur separatist groups in China shows how transparent Washington’s geopolitical objectives are.
To further #humanrights & human dignity for all people in China, the National Endowment for Democracy has funded Uyghur groups since 2004. #NEDemocracy #HumanRightsDay https://t.co/C0LJEyWxq1 pic.twitter.com/OqZdehdxXN
— NEDemocracy (@NEDemocracy) December 10, 2020

The idea that the US foreign-policy apparatus, and NATO as a military bloc, seeks to prevent the rise of both Russia and China as independent powers is obvious to any truly impartial analyst.
Michael T. Klare, a professor emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, wrote at TomDispatch this January that “America’s top leaders have reached a consensus on a strategy to encircle and contain the latest great power, China, with hostile military alliances, thereby thwarting its rise to full superpower status.”
Klare continued:
The gigantic 2022 defense bill — passed with overwhelming support from both parties — provides a detailed blueprint for surrounding China with a potentially suffocating network of U.S. bases, military forces, and increasingly militarized partner states. The goal is to enable Washington to barricade that country’s military inside its own territory and potentially cripple its economy in any future crisis. For China’s leaders, who surely can’t tolerate being encircled in such a fashion, it’s an open invitation to… well, there’s no point in not being blunt… fight their way out of confinement.
…
For Chinese leaders, there can be no doubt about the meaning of all this: whatever Washington might say about peaceful competition, the Biden administration, like the Trump administration before it, has no intention of allowing the PRC to achieve parity with the United States on the world stage. In fact, it is prepared to employ every means, including military force, to prevent that from happening. This leaves Beijing with two choices: succumb to U.S. pressure and accept second-class status in world affairs or challenge Washington’s strategy of containment. It’s hard to imagine that country’s current leadership accepting the first choice, while the second, were it adopted, would surely lead, sooner or later, to armed conflict.
This goal is likewise clearly reflected in a 2019 report published by the RAND Corporation, a major Pentagon-backed think tank. Titled “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground,” the document discusses various ways to exploit Moscow’s “weaknesses,” encircle it, and contain it.
RAND listed the following “geopolitical measures”:
Measure 1: Provide Lethal Aid to Ukraine
Measure 2: Increase Support to the Syrian Rebels
Measure 3: Promote Regime Change in Belarus
Measure 4: Exploit Tensions in the South Caucasus
Measure 5: Reduce Russian Influence in Central Asia
Measure 6: Challenge Russian Presence in Moldova
Excluding perhaps concerning Moldova (at least openly), the US government has pursued all of these policies to a tee.
The Pentagon's privatized policymaking arm the RAND Corporation published a report in 2019 calling for the US to wage proxy war on Russia in Ukraine, Syria, Belarus, Caucasus, & Central Asia — the next region on the list, now being targeted via Kazakhstanhttps://t.co/sp6CTNFDeq pic.twitter.com/yxkxeJRuGh
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 6, 2022

The Moon of Alabama blog, which highlighted this RAND report, also noted that Victoria Nuland, the third-most powerful official in the Joe Biden administration’s State Department, served as Vice President Cheney’s principal deputy foreign policy adviser from 2003 to 2005.
Nuland, today under-secretary for political affairs, held a similar senior position in the Barack Obama administration’s State Department. She used her role there to help sponsor a violent coup in Ukraine in 2014.
A leaked phone call showed that Nuland chose who would make up the top members of the subsequent Ukrainian puppet government.
Current State Dep person running U.S. Russia policy is Victoria 'Fuck the EU' Nuland.
"From 2003 to 2005, Nuland served as the principal deputy foreign policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney" https://t.co/9rEQVt1uVB
— Moon of Alabama (@MoonofA) January 31, 2022

Like her mentor Cheney, Nuland is a hard-line neoconservative. The fact that he is a Republican and she works primarily in Democratic administrations is irrelevant; this hawkish foreign-policy consensus is completely bipartisan.
Nuland (a former member of the bipartisan board of directors of the NED) is also married to Robert Kagan, a patron saint of neoconservatism, and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century – the cozy home of the neocons in Washington, where he worked alongside Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and other top Bush administration officials.
Kagan was a longtime Republican, but in 2016 he joined the Democrats and openly campaigned for Hillary Clinton for president.
What all of this shows is that these hawkish foreign-policy positions are totally mainstream in Washington. Whether Republican or Democrat, Beltway policy-makers simply refuse to allow Russia and China to challenge US unipolar hegemony.
The idea that the United States, a country on the other side of the planet, should rule Eurasia – and frankly the world as a whole – is unquestionable and sacrosanct.
There are some exceptions and internal contradictions, but they are few and far between. The reality is that large parts of the US national security state clearly seek the balkanization of Russia and China. This quote from Dick Cheney only further confirms what was already apparent.


Instruction: Write an article about: US blocks Gaza peace proposal at UN for 3rd time, holding world hostage. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Security Council, United Nations

Output:
The US government has paralyzed the United Nations, voting against the rest of the world and preventing peace in Gaza by vetoing three different resolutions in the Security Council. Meanwhile, Washington continues giving weapons to Israel.

The United States has used its veto power in the United Nations Security Council three times in less than two months to kill resolutions calling for peace in Gaza.
Meanwhile, Washington is sending billions of dollars worth of weapons to Israel, directly assisting the country as it commits war crimes against Palestinian civilians.

On December 8, the Security Council voted on a resolution that called for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” and the unconditional release of all hostages.
The United States was the only country on the 15-member council that voted against the measure.
#BREAKING United States vetoes Security Council draft resolution that would have demanded an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, and immediate and unconditional release of all hostages
VOTEIn Favour: 13Against: 1 (US)Abstain: 1 (UK) pic.twitter.com/hY0YcJ1JKF
— UN News (@UN_News_Centre) December 8, 2023

This resolution had been introduced by the United Arab Emirates, and had the support of more than 90 UN member states.
The 13 Security Council members that voted for the measure were Albania, Brazil, China, Ecuador, France, Gabon, Ghana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Russia, Switzerland, and the UAE.
Close US ally the United Kingdom was the only country to abstain in the vote.
UN Security Council vote (on December 8) calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza:
FOR (13)????????Albania????????Brazil????????China????????Ecuador????????France????????Gabon????????Ghana????????Japan????????Malta????????Mozambique????????Russia????????Switzerland????????UAE(????????Backed by 90+ UN member states and Secretary-General… https://t.co/b0FM7mhLEn
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 9, 2023

The United States helped to design the United Nations after World War II, concentrating power in the Security Council and giving permanent seats with veto power to the victors: the US, UK, France, USSR (now Russia), and China.
Many countries in the Global South have called to expand the Security Council and to eliminate the veto.
China and Russia have repeatedly expressed support for expanding the council. But Washington has adamantly opposed the initiative.
Global South leaders are particularly frustrated by the fact that the UK and France, each of which has a population of fewer than 70 million people, both have permanent seats on the Security Council, but not many of the most populous countries on Earth, such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nigeria, or Brazil.
Brazil’s left-wing President Lula da Silva stressed this November that the failure of the UN to bring peace to Palestine demonstrates that the system is “broken” and has a “lack of credibility”.
“The UN needs change”, Lula said, calling to expand the Security Council and remove the veto.
“The UN of 1945 does not work in 2023”, the Brazilian leader added.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has publicly called for a ceasefire in Gaza, but was rejected by Washington.
Guterres took the extraordinary measure of invoking article 99 of the UN Charter, for the first time in five decades.
Article 99 states, “The Secretary-General may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security”.
The Associated Press noted, “Article 99 is extremely rarely used. The last time it was invoked was during fighting in 1971 that led to the creation of Bangladesh and its separation from Pakistan”.
In the case of the Bangladeshi national liberation war of 1971, Pakistan’s right-wing military regime ethnically cleansed and committed genocide against Bengalis, with the support of the US government – specifically President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger.
The genocidal situation in Palestine is strikingly similar today.
This November, top UN experts warned that “grave violations committed by Israel against Palestinians… point to a genocide in the making”.
The UN experts wrote:
[Israeli officials] illustrated evidence of increasing genocidal incitement, overt intent to “destroy the Palestinian people under occupation”, loud calls for a ‘second Nakba’ in Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory, and the use of powerful weaponry with inherently indiscriminate impacts, resulting in a colossal death toll and destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure.
The Wall Street Journal reported on December 1 that the “U.S. has provided Israel with large bunker buster bombs, among tens of thousands of other weapons and artillery shells”.
In less than two months, Washington sent Israel approximately 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells.
In fact, Gaza is now one of the most heavily bombed areas in history, according to a report in the Financial Times.
Gaza is one of the most heavily bombed areas in history

The United States voted against two similar resolutions in October.
On October 16, the US and its allies the UK, France, and Japan voted against a measure introduced by Russia that called for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.
The Western powers killed a UN Security Council resolution that proposed a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza
The resolution was proposed by Russia
5 countries voted for the ceasefire:???????? China???????? Gabon???????? Mozambique???????? Russia???????? UAE
4 voted against:???????? France???????? Japan???????? UK???????? US… pic.twitter.com/6UMfoRRqQH
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) October 17, 2023

Two days later, the US unilaterally vetoed a resolution introduced by Brazil that urged “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza.
The UK abstained in that vote. Russia did too, but as a form of protest, arguing that the resolution was too weak, instead urging a ceasefire.
US vetoes Security Council resolution that would have called for “humanitarian pauses” to deliver lifesaving aid to millions in Gaza
Favor: 12 (Albania, Brazil, China, Ecuador, France, Gabon, Ghana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Switzerland,UAE)Against: 1 (US)Abstain: 2 Russia, UK pic.twitter.com/y4tiAbRMUQ
— UN News (@UN_News_Centre) October 18, 2023

At the Security Council meeting on December 8, Russia’s UN representative, Dmitriy Polyanskiy, warned that the United States was “leaving scorched earth in its wake”.
China’s ambassador, Zhang Jun, stated, “The task required of the Council is very clear and definitive – act immediately, achieve a ceasefire, protect civilians and avoid a human catastrophe on a larger scale”.
“The task required of the Council is very clear and definitive – act immediately, achieve a ceasefire, protect civilians and avoid a human catastrophe on a larger scale” – Zhang Jun, Permanent Representative of China pic.twitter.com/VY9LEf2vKs
— UN News (@UN_News_Centre) December 8, 2023

139 of the 193 members of the United Nations recognize Palestine as a sovereign state, but it is not officially a UN member state – because the United States has prevented it from becoming one.
Palestine does however have observer status in the UN (along with the Vatican).
The representative of the observer state of Palestine, Riyad Mansour, participated in the December 8 Security Council session.
“Millions of Palestinian lives hang in the balance, every single one of them is sacred and worth saving”, he cautioned.
By failing to approve a ceasefire, the Security Council is ensuring that Israeli “war criminals are given more time to perpetrate their crimes”, Mansour added.
The Palestinian representative asked, “How can this be justified? How can anyone justify the slaughter of an entire people?”


Instruction: Write an article about: Saudi Arabia kills 91, injures 236 in Yemen with US-made bomb from Raytheon. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Amnesty International, Joe Biden, Raytheon, Saada, Saudi Arabia, UN, United Nations, Yemen

Output:
Saudi Arabia attacked a detention center in Yemen’s Saada city with a US-made laser-guided bomb from Raytheon, killing 91 people and injuring 236 more. President Joe Biden claimed he would end US support for Saudi bombing, but has instead sold the monarchy more weapons.

(Se puede leer este artículo en español aquí.)
US-backed Saudi forces bombed a crowded detention center in Yemen three times on January 21, killing at least 91 people and injuring 236 more.
This massive atrocity in Yemen’s northwestern Saada governorate was carried out using US-made weapons, including a laser-guided bomb manufactured by top Pentagon contractor Raytheon.
Washington’s complicity was confirmed by Amnesty International, whose experts analyzed photos showing the remnants of a 500-pound GBU-12 Raytheon bomb.
Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s richest countries per capita, has been relentlessly bombing Yemen, the poorest nation in West Asia, since March 2015, with the steadfast support of the United States and Britain.
The war on Yemen has unleashed the largest humanitarian catastrophe on Earth, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Yemenis.
US assistance to the Saudi monarchy in this war has continued under the administrations of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden.
Even Amnesty International, which is notorious for its pro-Western bias, acknowledged that this massacre in Yemen is “the latest piece in a wider web of evidence of the use of US-manufactured weapons in incidents that could amount to war crimes.”
The organization wrote:
Since March 2015, Amnesty International’s researchers have investigated dozens of air strikes and repeatedly found and identified remnants of US-manufactured munitions. Amnesty International previously identified the use of the same US-made Raytheon bombs used on 21 January in a Saudi-led air strike carried out on 28 June 2019 on a residential home in Ta’iz governorate, Yemen, that killed six civilians — including three children.
The United Nations reported that the Saada detention center was full of roughly 2,000 people, including 700 migrants, at the time it was attacked “by three airstrikes in quick succession.”
The spokesperson of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Rupert Colville, made it clear that this was a civilian target, stating, “During the recent visit by our team this week, we saw no signs indicating that this site, formerly a barracks, continues to have a military function.”
On the same day of this attack, Saudi and Emirati forces supported by the United States and Britain also attacked Yemen’s telecommunications grid, taking down the entire country’s access to the internet.
The OHCHR reported that, in the first 28 days of year 2022, US-backed Saudi forces launched 1,403 airstrikes in Yemen.
President Joe Biden promised during his 2020 presidential campaign that he would cease US support for the war on Yemen. In February 2021, just weeks after he entered office, Biden claimed he was “ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arm sales.” This was demonstrably false.
The Biden administration has maintained support for Saudi Arabia and arms sales to the monarchy as it regularly bombs civilians in Yemen.
Amnesty International reported:
Since November 2021, the Biden administration has approved sales of — and awarded US firms contracts for — missiles, aircraft, and an anti-ballistic defence system to Saudi Arabia, including a $28 million deal for US maintenance of Saudi aircraft in mid-January.
Among these was the approved sale of $650 million in missiles to Saudi Arabia, also from Raytheon, which Congress greenlit despite motions to block it. In December, the administration stated it “remains committed” to the proposed sales of $23 billion in F-35 aircraft, MQ-9B, and munitions to the UAE — despite strong human rights concerns. Continuing to arm the SLC not only fails to meet the US’s obligations under international law, it also violates US law. The Foreign Assistance Act and Leahy Laws both bar US arms sales and military aid to gross violators of human rights.
The United Nations has called for an investigation into the attack.
Amid ??#Yemen’s escalating conflict, which saw deadly airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition on 21 January, we call for a transparent, independent and impartial investigation to ensure accountability for any breaches of international humanitarian law.https://t.co/pt3cg0urY5 pic.twitter.com/ZNtCEqXY8A
— UN Human Rights (@UNHumanRights) January 28, 2022


Instruction: Write an article about: Geopolitical game changer: China’s Iran-Saudi peace deal is big blow to petrodollar and US economic hegemony. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: BRICS, China, de-dollarization, dollar, gas, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, oil, petrodollar, Qasem Soleimani, Saudi Arabia, SCO, Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Syria, Yemen

Output:
China’s peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran is a big blow to the petrodollar that undergirds US economic hegemony. Both countries are top oil producers that are discussing selling energy in other currencies. They also applied to join BRICS, and are members of the Belt and Road Initiative.

China surprised the world on March 10, announcing that it had successfully sponsored peace talks between rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Four days of secret negotiations in Beijing led to a historic agreement in which the two West Asian nations normalized relations, following seven tense years without any official diplomatic ties.
Iraq had previously hosted peace talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but these were sabotaged in January 2020 when US President Donald Trump ordered a drone strike to assassinate top Iranian official Qasem Soleimani, who had been involved in the negotiations.
China’s diplomatic breakthrough is part of a larger process of Asian integration, and constitutes a step toward bringing both Iran and Saudi Arabia into the BRICS system and institutions like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
In addition to encouraging stability and peace in a region that has been devasted by decades of US wars and meddling, this deal will have huge economic repercussions across the planet.
More tangibly, the agreement is a significant blow to the petrodollar system that the United States has used to maintain the dollar as the global reserve currency, thus threatening the very foundation of its economic hegemony.

Saudi Arabia has long been one of the world’s leading producers of oil, in the top three (along with the US and Russia). Iran has consistently been among the top 10 producers of crude.
As de facto leader of OPEC, Saudi Arabia has significant influence over the price of oil on the global market. Since the 1970s, Riyadh has agreed to sell its crude in dollars and then invest those petrodollars in Treasury securities, helping to strengthen the value of the greenback and increasing global demand for the US currency.
But the petrodollar system is facing new challengers. The Saudi government publicly confirmed in January that it is considering selling oil in other currencies.
This declaration came just a few weeks after Chinese President Xi Jinping took a historic trip to Riyadh. There, Beijing signed agreements with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Arab League.
Xi announced that China would be buying oil and gas from the Persian Gulf region with its own currency, the renminbi, not dollars.
“China will continue to import large quantities of crude oil from GCC countries, expand imports of liquefied natural gas … and make full use of the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange as a platform to carry out yuan settlement of oil and gas trade“, he said.
BRICS is making “a fairer system of monetary exchange” to challenge the “dominance of the dollar”, South Africa revealed.
Saudi Arabia, which applied to join BRICS, is considering selling oil in other currencies.
China says it will by Gulf energy in yuanhttps://t.co/fDWhqExVAw
— Geopolitical Economy Report (@GeopoliticaEcon) March 13, 2023

Xi’s trip to Riyadh was a resounding success when compared to Joe Biden’s attempt at a “reset” in July 2022. A photo of the US president refusing to shake hands and instead fist-bumping with the de facto Saudi ruler, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), was a symbol of a trip that was widely panned as a diplomatic failure.
At the time, Biden had been struggling with significant consumer price index inflation at home, with midterm elections on the horizon. The US president pressured MBS to increase oil production in an attempt to bring down prices. But Saudi Arabia and OPEC+ refused to do so.
Riyadh’s gradual move away from its historical role, firmly ensconced in the heart of the US-led camp, reflects a larger global trend toward a multipolar world.
Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states are adopting a more non-aligned foreign policy that balances the US and Europe against China and Russia.
This also is a result of China’s growing economic importance, as the biggest economy in the world (according to a purchasing power parity measurement, which is more accurate than nominal GDP).
China is the largest trading partner of both Saudi Arabia and Iran. Beijing enjoys close relations with the West Asian nations.
In its readout announcing the peace deal, China’s Foreign Ministry described itself as “a reliable friend of the two countries”.
Iran and Saudi Arabia have formally applied to join the extended BRICS+ bloc, alongside founders Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
BRICS is currently planning to “develop a fairer system of monetary exchange”, to weaken the “dominance of the dollar”, South Africa’s Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor revealed in January.
As part of this process, BRICS is considering creating a new international reserve currency, based on a basket of currencies of its members.
As BRICS seeks to economically integrate the Global South, China’s massive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will provide the physical infrastructure to do so. And both Iran and Saudi Arabia are also important parts of the BRI.

Complementing the BRICS system is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which brings together China, India, Pakistan, Russia, and numerous Central Asian republics in a massive association representing around two-fifths of the global population and more than one-third of the world’s GDP.
Iran is in the process of becoming a full member of SCO. The organization’s Secretary-General Zhang Ming visited Tehran in March. He met with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who “described the SCO as the world’s largest regional international organisation that plays an important role in maintaining regional and global security and stability”.
In 2021, Saudi Arabia became an official SCO dialogue partner, in a step toward membership. Qatar and Egypt did the same in 2022.
If all of these countries can be economically and politically integrated, the extended BRICS+ bloc would be the world’s commodities powerhouse.
BRICS founding members Russia, China, and Brazil are among the top 10 biggest producers of oil in the world, along with Saudi Arabia and Iran.
If the West Asian nations officially join, BRICS+ will include at least half of the world’s top 10 oil producers, representing more than one-third of global petroleum output.
OPEC, too, would become a natural partner of BRICS, given Saudi Arabia’s key role in the organization, along with Russia’s influential voice in the extended OPEC+.

It is not just oil that is central in this geopolitical shift. Gas and other commodities are crucial as well.
Russia is the world’s second-largest producer of natural gas. Iran is the third biggest, China is the fourth, and Qatar is fifth.
Algeria, which has also expressed interest in joining BRICS+, is a major gas producer.
Qatar is tied with the United States as the biggest producer of liquified natural gas (LNG) on Earth. Algeria is in the top 10.
This alliance is deeply complementary. China is the world’s largest consumer of oil, and one of the biggest importers of gas.
Already for over a decade, China has bought more oil from West Asia than has the United States. Beijing imports one-third of its energy resources specifically from the Persian Gulf region.
And as the planet transitions away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy technologies, minerals will become increasingly important. BRICS-curious countries are very well placed here as well.
Brazil is the second-biggest producer of iron ore, followed by fellow BRICS members China, India, Russia, and South Africa in third, fourth, fifth, and seventh place, respectively. Potential BRICS member Iran is the eighth largest.
China and Brazil are top producers of lithium, the “white gold” needed for batteries. So, too, is Argentina, which has applied to join BRICS+, and virtually attended the bloc’s summits in 2022.
Iran announced this March that it also found significant lithium reserves, which could be the second biggest in the world.
What all of this shows is that, by extending and including countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran as new members, BRICS+ could become a commodities powerhouse, with significant influence in global markets.
None of this would have been possible if Saudi Arabia and Iran were at war with each other. Now that they have normalized relations, Asian integration is likely to move forward, full steam ahead.
Countries by their current account balance (red is a deficit, green is a surplus)
The Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 established the US dollar as the global reserve currency. At that time, the dollar was pegged to gold at the price of $35 per troy ounce, making it essentially as good as gold.
US military spending in its wars on Korea, Vietnam, and beyond led Washington’s gold reserves to run low. So in 1971, President Richard Nixon unilaterally ended the convertibility of the dollar into gold, making the greenback a freely floating fiat currency.
This led to a period of instability, which was further compounded by OPEC’s 1973 oil embargo.
In 1974, Nixon sent his Treasury secretary, William Simon, to Saudi Arabia. “The goal” of the trip, Bloomberg explained, was to “neutralize crude oil as an economic weapon and find a way to persuade” Saudi Arabia “to finance America’s widening deficit with its newfound petrodollar wealth”.
Washington signed a historic agreement with Riyadh, pledging to protect the Gulf monarchy in return for Saudi Arabia selling its oil exclusively in dollars, depositing those petrodollars in US commercial banks, and investing in Treasury bonds.
Bloomberg explained: “The basic framework was strikingly simple. The U.S. would buy oil from Saudi Arabia and provide the kingdom military aid and equipment. In return, the Saudis would plow billions of their petrodollar revenue back into Treasuries and finance America’s spending”.
This petrodollar system helped ensure global demand for the dollar, because countries that imported oil and other commodities needed dollars to pay for them.
As economist Michael Hudson showed in his book Super Imperialism, the ballooning US current account deficit was almost entirely from military spending, as Washington waged war after war and built a constellation of foreign bases across the globe.
For most countries, such a consistent, long-term deficit would lead to a devaluation of their national currency and related economic problems. But not for the US, thanks in part to the petrodollar system.
The status of the dollar as global reserve currency and the steady demand for dollars to import oil and other commodities granted the United States an “exorbitant privilege” that has allowed it to maintain this massive current account deficit (importing significantly more than it exports).
The 2008 financial crash, however, inspired some countries to think about alternatives. China, specifically, floated the idea of unseating the US dollar as the global reserve currency.
The governor of China’s central bank, Zhou Xiaochuan, published a white paper in 2009, arguing that the “crisis again calls for creative reform of the existing international monetary system towards an international reserve currency with a stable value, rule-based issuance and manageable supply, so as to achieve the objective of safeguarding global economic and financial stability”.
Ever escalating Western sanctions on China and allies such as Russia, Iran, and Venezuela have only further incentivized Beijing to seek new financial alternatives.
US-dominated institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have taken note. In 2022, an IMF report warned of the “erosion of dollar dominance”, acknowledging that the share of foreign-exchange reserves of central banks around the world held in dollars had shrunk from 70% to 60% in the previous two decades.

This was not a massive decrease, but it is part of a steady trend that is likely to accelerate, as the United States wages a new cold war on China and Russia.
According to the Federal Reserve, the US dollar is involved in roughly 80% of international trade, but this varies greatly depending on the region.
The use of other currencies for trade in Asia is increasing, as countries targeted by unilateral Western sanctions develop new financial mechanisms to trade with their national currencies.

For more than a decade, China has already been using yuan to buy oil from Iran.
After the Donald Trump administration unilaterally sabotaged the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), back in 2018, Reuters noted that the newly imposed US “sanctions could advance China’s ‘petro-yuan’”.
The NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine was a shot of adrenaline into the arm of de-dollarization. Unprecedented US and EU sanctions led Moscow to develop new financial arrangements with its top trading partners in Asia.
Russia has made importers of its gas pay in rubles, while using local currencies in bilateral trade with countries like India and Iran.
China is also conducting more and more bilateral trade with Russia in yuan.
It took a while, but the call that the People’s Bank of China made in 2009 for a new international monetary system is now coming to fruition.
And if Beijing is serious about challenging the hegemony of the US dollar, Saudi Arabia is a key player it needs on its side.
Before the landmark peace deal this March, China had been worried it may have to choose between either Iran or Saudi Arabia. Now, it can maintain good relations with both.
The normalization of ties between Tehran and Riyadh is a significant development in a larger process of Asian integration. (This is frequently referred to as Eurasian integration, but Europe has essentially politically expelled Russia from the continent over the proxy war in Ukraine, leading Moscow to seek closer ties with its Asian neighbors instead.)
In his 1997 opus “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives”, US imperial strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski warned that “the most dangerous scenario” for Washington’s unipolar hegemony “would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an ‘antihegemonic’ coalition”.
US sanctions and aggressive policies toward these three powers have pushed them to unite in exactly the way that Brzezinski feared.
In 2021, China and Iran signed a historic, 25-year economic and strategic partnership agreement estimated at $400 billion. Reporting on the deal, Forbes summarized: “a power shift threatens Western energy“.
Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi took an important trip to China in February 2023. It was the first visit by an Iranian president in 20 years.
In a readout on the meeting, Beijing’s Foreign Ministry affirmed, “China always views and develops relations with Iran from a strategic perspective, and no matter how the international and regional situation changes, China will remain steadfast in developing friendly cooperation with Iran and advancing China-Iran comprehensive strategic partnership“.
Condemning US attacks on Iran, “Xi Jinping emphasized that China supports Iran in safeguarding its sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and national dignity, supports Iran in resisting unilateralism and bullying, opposes external forces interfering in Iran’s internal affairs and undermining its security and stability”.
China and Russia are already close allies, with a comprehensive strategic partnership that they say has “no limits”. Even with the unprecedented Western sanctions imposed on Moscow in 2022 over the proxy war in Ukraine, China declared that Russia is its “most important strategic partner” and called their friendship “rock solid”.
At the same time, Iran and Russia are deepening their integration, especially economically. The two countries are building trade routes to circumvent Western sanctions.
The multibillion-dollar International North–South Transport Corridor (INSTC) will connect India’s western Mumbai port to Iran’s southern Bandar Abbas port, with goods then traveling north on rail networks, passing through the Caspian Sea, and reaching Russia.
INSTC will not only cut out the need for products to transit through the Mediterranean Sea; it will also nearly halve the transit time of 40 to 60 days on average to instead just 25 to 30 days, while reducing costs by approximately 30%.

China, Russia, and Iran are likewise developing alternatives to the SWIFT inter-bank messaging system, which is dominated by the United States.
As part of the proxy war in Ukraine in 2022, the US and EU disconnected several Russian banks from SWIFT – a scandalous decision that was called the financial “nuclear option“.
In response, in January 2023, the central banks of Iran and Russia made an agreement to integrate their inter-bank communication and transfer systems, connecting 52 branches of Iranian banks that use Iran’s SEPAM system to 106 banks using Russia’s System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS).
Even Riyadh is moving closer to Moscow.
In 2021, Saudi Arabia and Russia signed a military cooperation agreement. Riyadh has also been buying significant military equipment from Moscow.
Russia’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia told state media Sputnik in 2023 that Riyadh “is a regular and trusting dialogue at the highest level”, adding that the two countries’ relations have “a real prospect of reaching the level of strategic partnership“.
Despite China’s diplomatic breakthrough, clearly, no one expects the Saudi monarchy to become a friend of Iran and to join the anti-imperialist Axis of Resistance.
That said, Riyadh’s balancing of relations with Washington and Brussels on one side and Beijing and Moscow on the other reflects the transition toward a multipolar world.
Persian Gulf monarchies that were long loyal clients of the United States have gradually moved toward a more non-aligned foreign policy.
There are certainly profound ideological differences between the Wahhabi and ultra-conservative strains of Sunni Islam sponsored by the Gulf states and the revolutionary Shia liberation theology promoted by Iran.
But Riyadh’s normalization of relations with Tehran is a sign that the kingdom’s animosity toward the Islamic Republic was much more motivated by geopolitical pressure from the United States than it was religious disagreements.
Washington has sought regime change in Tehran ever since the Iranian people’s 1979 revolution overthrew the country’s Western-backed dictator. And the US has long seen Saudi Arabia as a key ally, even a proxy, needed to enforce its “maximum pressure campaign” against Iran.
Through decades of illegal unilateral sanctions, constant destabilization operations, and relentless information warfare and propaganda, the United States has desperately tried to make Iran into a pariah state.
China has effectively neutralized this US strategy by brokering peace between West Asia’s arch-rivals.
The outrage in Israel reflects the growing realization that Iran has not been isolated. The regime of Benjamin Netanyahu is furious. Tel Aviv sees the peace agreement as a threat, because it thwarts its plans to divide Arabs and Iranians, Sunnis and Shia.
The US has spent years trying to form an alliance between Israel and the Persian Gulf Arab states against Iran. The Donald Trump administration took a victory lap in 2020 with the signing of the so-called Abraham Accords, which were mostly symbolic, but formalized diplomatic relations between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Israel.
US President Donald Trump signing the Abraham Accords normalizing relations between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain in 2020
The fact that the US and Israel see China’s peace talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia as a threat demonstrates the fundamental difference between Beijing’s and Washington’s policies.
China wants stability in the region, to deepen economic integration and trade. In Beijing’s readout on the negotiations, top diplomat Wang Yi stressed that “the improvement of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran has paved the way for realizing peace and stability in the Middle East”.
Wang added that “China supports countries in the Middle East in upholding strategic autonomy, strengthening solidarity and cooperation, getting rid of external interference, and really holding the future of the Middle East in their own hands”.
This approach could hardly be more different from US foreign policy toward the region, which derives from an obsessive drive to destabilize and control it, to advance the geopolitical objectives of the Wolfowitz Doctrine, to maintain “full-spectrum dominance”, to bring about regime change “in seven countries in five years“.
Just in the two decades since September 11, 2001, US wars against Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Yemen killed millions of people, created tens of millions of refugees, and devastated entire countries.
Washington and its allies intentionally stoked sectarianism, giving rise to extremist Salafi-jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS.
Countries like Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon in particular suffered heavily from this sectarian conflict.
Now that Saudi Arabia and Iran have normalized relations, these battleground nations serve to benefit the most.
This is a key reason why Iraq spent years trying to broker a deal itself. But the US government, again, intentionally sabotaged Baghdad’s peace initiative by murdering Qasem Soleimani in January 2020, when the top Iranian general was negotiating with Saudi Arabia.
Thanks to China’s diplomacy, the war in Yemen may also finally come to an end, after nine years.
Saudi Arabia’s gruesome bombing campaign, sponsored by the United States and Britain, has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and unleashed the largest humanitarian catastrophe on Earth.
West Asia will undoubtedly be the first region to benefit from the diplomatic breakthrough between Saudi Arabia and Iran. But the geopolitical and economic implications are truly global.
Decades from now, historians will likely look back at this agreement as a watershed moment, reflecting China’s new role on the global stage as a negotiator of peace, symbolizing the end of US unipolar hegemony and the rise of a multipolar world.


Instruction: Write an article about: Taiwan separatists lose key ally, Honduras recognizes China – just 12 small countries remain. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: China, coup, Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, Nicaragua, Taiwan, Xiomara Castro

Output:
Honduras’ leftist President Xiomara Castro officially recognized China. Now only 12 UN member states have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan separatists. They have a combined population of less than 39 million, or 0.49% of the planet.

Update (March 26):
Honduras announced on March 25 that it officially established formal diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China.
The Honduran Foreign Ministry publicly recognized the One China Policy – that there is only one China, represented by the People’s Republic, and that Taiwan is a province of it.
“The two governments agreed to develop links of friendship”, the Honduran Foreign Ministry wrote, pledging to negotiate “agreements in areas of cooperation, such as finance, trade, infrastructure, energy, technology, culture, tourism, education, and health, among others, based on mutual benefit and shared integral development”.
“With this historic decision, the Government of the Republic widens the horizon of development for the Honduran people”, the Foreign Ministry added.
?????| La República de Honduras y la República Popular China establecen Relaciones Diplomáticas. pic.twitter.com/slUPC26fbt
— Cancillería Honduras (@CancilleriaHN) March 26, 2023

Original article (March 16):
The government of Honduras has announced that it is breaking formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan and recognizing the People’s Republic of China.
Honduras’ leftist President Xiomara Castro had pledged during her 2021 campaign that, if she won the election, she would recognize China. This March, she fulfilled that promise.
This means that just 12 United Nations member states have formal diplomatic relations with the so-called “Republic of China” on the island of Taiwan.
The other 99.51% of the global population live in countries that formally recognize that there is only one China, and that Taiwan is a province of the People’s Republic of China.

These 12 UN member states that recognize Taiwan have a combined population of only 38.9 million – representing just 0.49% of the global population of 8 billion.
The following list consists of the countries that still do not have formal relations with the People’s Republic of China, accompanied by the size of their populations, according to CIA World Factbook data:
12 UN member states:
Guatemala – 17.98 million
Haiti – 11.47 million
Paraguay – 7.44 million
Eswatini – 1.13 million
Belize – 419,137
Saint Lucia – 167,591
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines – 100,804
Marshall Islands – 80,966
Saint Kitts and Nevis – 54,817
Palau – 21,779
Tuvalu – 11,639
Nauru – 9,852
Non UN member:
Vatican City – c. 1000

Even the United States technically recognizes that Taiwan is part of China, at least on paper.
Washington signed Three Communiqués with Beijing when the governments normalized diplomatic relations. The first communiqué, signed in 1972, stated clearly:
The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position.
Despite its legal commitments, Washington has been gradually increasing its support for separatist forces in Taiwan.
The US military has deployed troops on Taiwan island, and sold it billions of dollars of weapons. Top US officials like former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi have also made provocative trips to the Chinese province, backing separatists.

Xiomara Castro (of no relation to Cuba’s revolutionary leader Fidel Castro) made this historic announcement on March 14.
In a tweet, Castro said, “I have instructed Foreign Minister Eduardo Reina to arrange the opening of official relations with the People’s Republic of China, as a demonstration of my determination to fulfill the Plan of Government and expand the frontiers of liberty in concert with the nations of the world”.
He instruido al Canciller Eduardo Reina, para que gestione la apertura de relaciones oficiales con la República Popular China, como muestra de mi determinación para cumplir el Plan de Gobierno y expandir las fronteras con libertad en el concierto de las naciones del mundo.
— Xiomara Castro de Zelaya (@XiomaraCastroZ) March 14, 2023

Castro’s decision enraged US politicians.
Republican Senator Bill Cassidy tweeted threateningly, “The Honduran people will suffer because of her failed leadership”.
Honduran President Xiomara Castro is moving her country closer to Communist China while the world is moving away. The Honduran people will suffer because of her failed leadership.
— U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (@SenBillCassidy) March 15, 2023

In a subsequent interview explaining the decision, Reina said that China has offered to help Honduras economically.
There are “great needs that the Honduran people have”, and, “Unfortunately, the needs are enormous, and we have not seen this response” from Taiwan, the foreign minister emphasized.
Reina also noted that Honduras is trapped in billions of dollars of odious debt owed to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other US-dominated institutions, and China could potentially ease this burden.
US-backed coup regimes trapped Honduras in unpayable odious debt, warns new President Xiomara Castro

Honduras is one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere. Roughly three-quarters (74%) of its population of 10 million live in poverty.
The United States sponsored a military coup in Honduras in 2009, which overthrew the country’s democratically elected left-wing President Manuel Zelaya and installed a brutally repressive right-wing regime.
This ultra-conservative coup regime, which was closely linked to drug trafficking, ran Honduras with an iron first from 2009 until the end of 2021. Poverty skyrocketed, and violence and organized crime became such systemic problems that Honduras had the highest murder rate on Earth.
Meanwhile, the coup regime, which blatantly stole two elections, enjoyed the staunch support of not only the United States, but also Taiwan.
In fact, during the November 2021 vote, Taiwan meddled in Honduras’ elections. Honduran activists published photos and videos across social media that showed Taiwan providing aid to the right-wing National Party, the party of the coup regime.
Taiwan is meddling in Honduras' presidential election, coming up on the 28th, giving aid to the ruling right-wing National Party, which has brutally ruled the country since a US-backed 2009 military coup
The leftist Libre Party candidate pledged to establish relations with China https://t.co/EMzwYQKOo9
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 25, 2021

Taiwan has been similarly meddling in the political system of Honduras’ western neighbor, Guatemala, pressuring the country to maintain diplomatic relations.
The Associated Press reported in 2022 that Taiwan paid Guatemala $900,000 to hire a top ally of Donald Trump to lobby in Washington on behalf of its right-wing President Alejandro Giammattei, a notoriously corrupt millionaire and dual citizen of Italy.
Honduras’ southern neighbor, Nicaragua, on the other hand, has a leftist government led by the Sandinista Front.
In 2021, Nicaragua broke ties with Taiwan, recognizing the People’s Republic of China. Since then, Managua and Beijing have become close allies, and the two governments are negotiating a comprehensive free trade agreement.
China is helping Nicaragua expand its public housing program, building thousands of homes for poor and working families. Beijing has also signed agreements to develop infrastructure, hospitals, and renewable energy.
Nicaragua has even made plans with China to construct an interoceanic canal, which would challenge the monopoly of the Panama Canal and offer enormous economic opportunities for the Central American nation.
Nicaragua’s revolutionary Sandinista government had first recognized China back in the 1980s, but after a decade of a CIA-sponsored Contra terror war and an illegal US blockade against Nicaragua, a right-wing regime came to power in 1990, which reveretd to diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
Sandinista Nicaragua allies with China, Russia, Iran against US imperialism


Instruction: Write an article about: West killed peace proposal to end Ukraine war, Russia supported negotiated settlement. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Boris Johnson, Britain, EU, Europe, European Union, Josep Borrell, Russia, UK, Ukraine, United Kingdom

Output:
Russia and Ukraine agreed to a negotiated settlement to end the conflict in April, but British Prime Minister Boris Johnson intervened to stop the peace deal, and the US and EU escalated the proxy war to try to weaken Moscow.

Russia and Ukraine agreed to a negotiated settlement to end the conflict in April, but British Prime Minister Boris Johnson intervened to stop the peace deal, and the US and EU escalated the proxy war to try to weaken Moscow.

In May, Ukraine’s avowedly anti-Russian newspaper Ukrainska Pravda published a bombshell report that got virtually no attention in the West, titled “Possibility of talks between Zelenskyy and Putin came to a halt after Johnson’s visit.”
The article noted, “The Russian side… was actually ready for the Zelenskyy-Putin meeting. But two things happened, after which a member of the Ukrainian delegation, Mykhailo Podoliak, had to openly admit that it was ‘not the time’ for the meeting of the presidents.”
The newspaper continued:
According Ukrainska Pravda sources close to Zelenskyy, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson, who appeared in the capital almost without warning, brought two simple messages.
The first is that Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with.
And the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not.
Johnson’s position was that the collective West, which back in February had suggested Zelenskyy should surrender and flee, now felt that Putin was not really as powerful as they had previously imagined, and that here was a chance to “press him.”
Three days after Johnson left for Britain, Putin went public and said talks with Ukraine “had turned into a dead end”.

The fact that Russia and Ukraine were willing to end the conflict diplomatically was further confirmed later by Foreign Affairs, the media arm of the powerful Council on Foreign Relations, which has a revolving door with the US government.
Fiona Hill, who served as the senior director for Europe and Russia on the US National Security Council in the Barack Obama administration, co-authored an article for the September/October edition of Foreign Affairs titled “The World Putin Wants.”
The former top US national security official overseeing Russia policy wrote:
According to multiple former senior U.S. officials we spoke with, in April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement: Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries. But as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated in a July interview with his country’s state media, this compromise is no longer an option.
These terms had apparently been ironed out in face-to-face peace talks in Istanbul, Turkey on March 29.
Hill did not reveal what killed the peace process, but the Ukrainska Pravda report from May made it clear that it was Western pressure on Ukraine that sabotaged the negotiated settlement.
As US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stated publicly on April 25, Washington’s goal was to use the proxy war in Ukraine to “weaken” Russia.
“Experts react: After Russia-Ukraine talks in Istanbul, is an end to war imminent?,” Atlantic Council, April 1, 2022
“Possibility of talks between Zelenskyy and Putin came to a halt after Johnson’s visit – UP sources,” Ukrainska Pravda, Roman Romaniuk, May 5, 2022
“The World Putin Wants,” Foreign Affairs, Fiona Hill and Angela Stent, September/October 2022
“Report: Russia, Ukraine Tentatively Agreed on Peace Deal in April,” Antiwar.com, Dave DeCamp
Brookings Institution funders in 2021 annual report
“No middle way between being independent country and colony, Putin says,” Russia’s Tass, June 9, 2022
“In long speech, Putin recognizes two Ukrainian regions as independent, a potential pretext for war,” Washington Post, February 21, 2022
“Foreign Affairs Council: Remarks by High Representative Josep Borrell upon arrival,” in Luxembourg on April 11, 2022:
JOURNALIST: Russians have criticised you for saying that the battle will be won on the battlefield. Do you still believe that this will be the case?
BORRELL: Normally wars have been won or lost on the battlefields. Yes.
Touched by the resilience, determination and hospitality of @ZelenskyyUA & @Denys_Shmyhal.
I return with a clear to do list:
1. This war will be won on the battlefield. Additional €500 million from the #EPF are underway. Weapon deliveries will be tailored to Ukrainian needs. pic.twitter.com/Jgr61t9FfW
— Josep Borrell Fontelles (@JosepBorrellF) April 9, 2022


Instruction: Write an article about: US-backed coup in Pakistan overthrows PM Imran Khan over his independent foreign policy. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: coup, Imran Khan, Pakistan, podcast

Output:
Benjamin Norton speaks with Pakistani scholar Junaid S. Ahmad about the US-backed coup against Prime Minister Imran Khan, aimed at reversing his alliance with China, Russia, and Iran and support for Palestine.

In this episode of the Multipolarista podcast, Benjamin Norton is joined by Pakistani scholar Junaid S. Ahmad to discuss how Pakistan’s elected Prime Minister Imran Khan was overthrown in a US-backed coup aimed at reversing his independent foreign policy – like his close alliance with China, improved relations with Russia and Iran, and staunch support for Palestine.
Part 1 of 2

This video is also available on Rumble and Rokfin.

You can also download the podcast at Substack.
You can watch or listen to part 2 here:
Who is Pakistan’s Imran Khan? From athlete to protester of US wars to overthrown prime minister

Read Junaid’s article “Pakistan warns of foreign-backed regime-change attempt, to disrupt China/Russia alliance”
Pakistan’s opposition is trying to overthrow Prime Minister Imran Khan with a no-confidence motion.
Khan says he has proof of foreign funding for a regime-change op to reverse his independent foreign policy – especially his alliance with China and Russiahttps://t.co/wdIqWDlqss
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) April 1, 2022