APRIL

The Trade War Begins?

April continued many of the same themes from March, beginning with the apparent start of a trade war between China and the US as China made good on its threats of retaliation in a major way. China expanded its list of tariffs, targeting 128 US exports with up to 25% in increased tariffs. China’s Global Times newspaper ran an editorial saying that if anyone thought China would restrict itself to symbolic reactions, “say goodbye to that delusion,” and that countermeasures taken would be more than just those minimally required to satisfy a domestic audience. The immediate consequence of China’s countermeasures was a drop in the dollar and a plunge in US stock market values. The Trump administration responded however by further increasing the scope of tariffs on China, designed to target a range of Chinese technology exports produced under the “Made in China 2025” program, as a means of pressuring China on its technology transfer policies. By the end of the month, Trump’s policy on China (which some analysts in the media saw as a pressure tactic that formed part of an effort to negotiate new trade arrangements with China), began to produce ironic results, with Trump suggesting at one point he would consider rejoining the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Withdrawal from the TPP was one of Trump’s very first acts in assuming office. (Note that while it was reported that Trump had changed his mind and was considering rejoining the TPP, he then changed his mind again and decided against it.)

While the notion of a “global trade war” appeared to be the product of overblown, fear-filled representations in the US and international corporate media, it became clearer that the focus of Trump’s concerns was specifically China. What appeared then to be a growing move toward an economic Cold War with China (precisely at the same time as the US relied on China to pressure North Korea—a counterintuitive strategy), began to produce a series of interesting ramifications. One such ramification was felt in US universities. “Globalization has transformed American universities into a front line for espionage,” argued Daniel Golden, author of the recently published book, Spy Schools. Ironically, The New York Times, having energetically fanned the flames of anti-Russian hysteria and xenophobic paranoia, it now accused the Trump administration of doing just that, only with reference to China and Chinese researchers on US campuses who may soon face tighter restrictions in gaining access. What media elites obfuscate, of course, is that deglobalization is increasingly a fact. Whether the favourite target is Russia (for Democrats) or China (for Trump’s Republicans), either way the logic, means, and outcomes are the same: diminished international cooperation at the heart of the globalist ethos.

Professor Peter Navarro, Donald Trump’s adviser on international trade, had this to say about the president’s plan for tariffs against China:

“the Chinese have refused to end their unfair trade practices; and the US trade deficit in goods with China has grown from $347bn in 2016 to $375bn during Mr Trump’s first year in office. While the trade deficit balloons, China continues to steal US intellectual property and force American companies operating there to surrender their leading edge technologies in exchange for access to the Chinese market. Today, Chinese sovereign wealth funds and other state actors are scouring Silicon Valley trying to buy up the crown jewels of the American high-tech industry”.

Added to that, the administration released an explanation of the impending crack down on China, in which the following was pointed out:

“Year after year, China continues to distort global markets and harm U.S. businesses and consumers with unfair trade practices.  For example, China’s unfair industrial policies, like their ‘Made in China 2025’ policy initiative, clearly state China’s goal of taking away domestic and international market share from foreigners.  Members of all political parties, the U.S. business community, and workers around the world are concerned about China’s behavior”.

The New Cold War

In what initially seemed like an attempt to begin repairing a relationship with Russia that US actions had plunged to its worst state since the Cold War, Trump reportedly invited Vladimir Putin to a meeting at the White House. The invitation came during Trump’s telephone call to congratulate Putin on his election victory, which itself provoked the ire of the liberal imperialist media (that is, the majority of the US media). Such talk would not continue even to the end of the month, and the suggestion was quickly dropped and never mentioned again in April. With the US’ mass expulsion of Russian diplomats in late March, a Kremlin aide basically discounted the chances for any meeting. Immediately following that, in the first week of April Trump announced a further round of sanctions against Russia. The Russian ambassador to the US attested to never having seen such anti-Russian hysteria being mass orchestrated in the US. Even early in the month, the White House spokesperson boasted at a press briefing: “the President is absolutely correct when he says no one has been tougher on Russia”—then made the unilateral demand that for relations with Russia to improve, it was up to the Russian side alone to “improve its behaviour”. Amplifying the “no one has been tougher” theme, the Trump administration catalogued for the public all of its actions against Russia, along with a litany of accusations against Russia (even some media detailed Trump’s “tough on Russia” actions). A long Cold War 2 is assured when all of the dominant parties in the US now agree that the best way to prove one’s patriotism is by bashing Russia. Reaching the height of absurdity, by the end of the month the Democrats launched a lawsuit against Russia, WikiLeaks, and the Trump campaign, in another desperate attempt to justify their election defeat as the result of external forces—the worst of conspiracy theories fuelling the new Cold War agenda. The lawsuit would later rightly be thrown out of court.

Regarding the Skripal controversy that was launched by the UK in March, the UK laboratory responsible for tracing the chemical agent could not in fact confirm that Russia had made the substance, in a direct contradiction to the absolute, categorical assertions by Boris Johnson, the UK’s foreign secretary ( a position he would occupy only for a few more months). Meanwhile, considering that the Novichok nerve agent was reputed to be extremely deadly, the Skripals continued their amazing recovery in private, while the immediate area of the alleged attack was never evacuated. Russia raised interesting questions about the close proximity of the UK’s chemical weapons laboratory, Porton Down, to the site of the attack. Readers should keep in mind that this supposed attack, allegedly by Russia, was used to rally NATO and the EU in mass expulsions of Russian diplomats, sanctions, and an extreme heightening in Cold War tensions with Russia. In May, Czech president Milos Zeman confirmed the following about the Czech Republic’s production and testing of Novichok, which liquidated the assertion that it could only have come from Russia: “Novichok was produced and stored. It was a small quantity, though. But we know where and how it was done. Let’s not be hypocritical. There’s no need to lie about this”.

Challenging Imperial Hegemony

In what sounded like a direct rebuffing of US dominance, China’s Defence Minister visited Moscow and declared, “The Chinese side came to let the Americans know about the close ties between the Russian and Chinese armed forces”. Then there were rumours of Chinese plans for military bases in various Pacific locations. This sort of challenge, and the broader challenges to imperial dominance by the US that are posed by Russia and China combined (when previously the dream was to have the US and China combined in a “G2” to rule the world), has to produce consequences. One consequence, as pointed out by Putin, is that the US is willing to construct a new world disorder that makes cooperation with Russia impossible.

The Promise of Peace on the Korean Peninsula

April saw a striking increase in peace efforts on the Korean peninsula, in a dramatic reversal of the state of affairs of the past year since Trump took office. The month began with South Korean performers, visiting the North, in a concert titled “Spring is Coming,” which was attended by Kim Jong-un and his wife. China praised North Korea for its commitment to diplomacy and peace. On April 27, an historic summit occurred between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his South Korean counterpart, Moon Jae-in. The two Korean leaders signed a declaration “vowing the halt of hostile acts, denuclearization, and a push for joint talks with US and China”. Then it was revealed that Trump had sent then CIA director Mike Pompeo on a secret mission to North Korea to begin talks about preparing for a summit (with the The New York Times in obvious distress over Trump endorsing the idea of a peace treaty finally ending the Korean War, and that Trump was acting far too independently of Japan). President Trump in the meantime could not stop talking about “what ifs” imagined about the upcoming meeting with Kim Jong-un. Statements from North Korea were comparatively fewer in number, but arguably of greater substance when they came, such as the announcement in late April that North Korea was suspending nuclear testing, and promised to destroy a test site—the reason being that it had completed its nuclear weapons development and would no longer need such tests. Kim Jong-un was seen as entering negotiations from a position of strength. Few US commentators, if any, observed that Trump’s enthusiasm for talks with North Korea simply validated the continuous and long-established Russian emphasis on dialogue. At a meeting with France’s Emmanuel Macron at the end of the month, President Trump declared that he thought Kim Jong-un was “very honourable” and “very open,” reversing himself on previous months of atrocious insults.

On the sidelines, the family of Otto Warmbier, understandably consumed by grief, kept up their media campaign about their son being tortured to death into what amounted to a dead-end lawsuit against North Korea. Unfortunately the Warmbier family bought into one imperial presumption: that the jurisdiction of US courts is the entire planet.

The US: A Permanent Occupation of Syria?

The return of “Trump 2016”—Trump the nationalist—seemed to gain weight when Trump suddenly announced in early April that he had ordered his generals to begin planning the US’ withdrawal from Syria, much to the consternation of the neoconservative-dominated Fox News, and its CIA-affiliated liberal imperialist twin on foreign policy, The Washington Post. On April 3, Trump declared:

“As far as Syria is concerned, our primary mission in terms of that was getting rid of ISIS….We’ve completed that task and we’ll be making a decision very quickly, in coordination with others in the area, as to what we will do”.

He added that “the mission” is “very costly for our country and it helps other countries a helluva lot more than it helps us”. Trump was accused by the media, including his “friends” at Fox, of telegraphing US military intentions (for which Trump had excoriated Obama), creating a “vacuum” (i.e., terra nullius logic) which ISIS and/or Al Qaeda would fill, and of ceding ground to Russia and Iran—with the only acceptable alternative apparently being the permanent occupation of Syria or an effort dedicated to recolonization via regime change. Syria was apparently forbidden from occupying its own national territory.

Meanwhile those around Trump kept coy with any questions about a US withdrawal from Syria, even though his advisers reportedly had known for months before Trump’s announcement about his desire to get out of Syria soon. Apparently the Pentagon had developed plans for what elsewhere was called “nation building” except in Syria’s case it would be about building a state within a state. While it’s true that Tillerson and McMaster were both advocates for a long-term US intervention in Syria, and both were fired by Trump, the entry of Bolton would seem to simply continue the theme of unrestrained US intervention. The media panic about a diminished imperialist US stature was palpable, even if contrived. Meanwhile, reports of the numbers of US forces in Syria concealed the thousands of “private contractors” the US had also deployed.

Not even a week after Trump’s announced desire to withdraw from Syria, and almost a year to the exact date of the last US airstrike on Syrian government targets, suddenly there was yet another dubious chemical weapons atrocity—it would never be proven to have happened. On April 9, Trump now stated that a US military strike was likely, calling Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad an “animal” (Nikki Haley called him a “monster” and invoked “civilization”). Nikki Haley meanwhile announced at the UN that there would be no withdrawal of US forces from Syria. Trump vowed that US power would be used to “stop” atrocities (how this would be done after the fact of an attack made as much sense as anything else). Yet again Trump invoked “humanitarianism”. Once more there was a dangerous rush to judgment. Repeating the pattern from a year before, Trump seemed eager to follow a media-driven “do something” imperative.

Both the Russian and Syrian governments denounced the social media reports of a chemical attack in the Damascus suburb of Douma as fake news, propagated by the White Helmets who have known working ties with Al Qaeda. Russian forces could find no trace of any chemical agent in Douma. Russia’s UN ambassador asserted that the attack had been staged, and that there should be an impartial investigation before any rush, yet again, to take armed action. Early in March, Russia had publicly warned of a likely staged chemical attack designed to provoke foreign military aggression against Syria.

Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, in statements that are rarely carried by US media (which tend to feature only Nikki Haley, as if the UN was merely a stage for her soliloquies), offered a visceral condemnation of the US’ domineering attitude and belittled its supposed international friendships. After Haley announced—on what authority is not known—that the US and Russia “will never be friends”, Nebenzia responded:

“We’re not particularly keen to be friends with you. We’re not begging you for friendship. We want normal, civilized relations—which you arrogantly refuse, disregarding basic courtesy. You are misguided to think you have friends. Your so-called friends are just those who can’t say no to you. This is your only criteria for friendship”.

Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, also tore apart the now fashionable “logic” of asserting that alleged attacks are “highly likely” to have been perpetrated by X or Y. Before the US military strike on Syria, the US, UK, and France made their case at the UN Security Council—but there was widespread opposition in Europe and Latin America against any further foreign intervention and military escalation. Even among NATO members, Germany refused to take part in any strikes, while Italy banned use of its territory for conducting the strikes.

In the usual rush to action before evidence was verified, reprising the still recent Skripal controversy, the UK’s Theresa May called an urgent cabinet meeting to plan joining a US strike on Syria, without seeking the approval of parliament. More on this below.

To date, neither the attack nor the perpetrators have been corroborated. In what is now the standard routine in selling fiction as fact, the US claimed to have evidence (“very high confidence”) but would not share it since it was “classified”. In the first of a series of empirical rebuttals by Russia, its Ministry of Defense presented proof that the chemical attack was staged, which was ignored and thus unchallenged in Western media. Some analysts rightly condemned the rush to military action as “madness” in the rich tradition of many other false flag attacks, with the latest one predicted accurately by Russian sources, while the Syrian government publicly revealed its discovery of a chemical weapons factory run by rebels. Indeed, a report from February not only confirmed, according to US Defense Secretary James Mattis, that the US had never found any evidence of sarin gas being used in prior alleged talks—but that the US was anyway preparing to “act” against Syria for any future chemical weapons use. Added to this is the history of known US false flag attacks.

Ironically, in the name of “the international community,” the US committed itself to act unilaterally, in violation of the UN Charter, in an act of aggression against a sovereign member of the UN. Israel was quick to take advantage and lead the way in striking targets in Syria with missiles. The only thing that the US attack on Syria actually stopped was any further talk from Trump about withdrawing from Syria. Trump appeared, as some said, to be “bipolar,” first beating his chest to Russia about the impending US missile strike, which heightened a sense of international terror of the prospects of a nuclear war, then suddenly striking a conciliatory tone, bemoaning the current state of US–Russian relations. Once again this year, Trump would publicly boast that no one had been tougher on Russia than him, making this a recurring theme of his foreign policy. Russia warned Trump not to engage in Twitter diplomacy, and to avoid doing damage in Syria to cover up the lack of evidence on the ground (not that the US ever suggested it would launch strikes at the very same spot which had already suffered from an alleged chemical attack). In addition, Russia seemed to publish open warnings to the US that it would militarily oppose any US strikes on Syrian soil, along with direct statements warning the US of unspecified consequences. The result was that US, British and French forces took great care not to attack Russian forces, but otherwise there was zero response from Russia when the attack on Syria (below) actually came.

One question is whether Trump was ever really sincere about withdrawal from Syria. John McCain, who next to Lindsey Graham is one of two senators posing as de facto Secretaries of State in the welcoming US media, spared no time in blaming Trump for provoking the crisis by first announcing his intention to withdraw US forces from Syria—aiming at Trump’s intentions seemed to be the whole point of this episode. In response to the constant criticism at home, some thought that Trump ordered the strike on Syria in order to boost his approval ratings and gain positive mileage in a media landscape that is almost uniform in its rejection of him—in fact some evidence suggested there was a surge in support for Trump after the strike. Mainstream, that is, corporate imperial media in the US was rife with accusations and counter-accusations by liberals keen to promote military intervention, while denigrating those asking the most basic questions about evidence. The US media, along with Muslim American organizations, were unanimous in their demands for regime change in Syria. Though on the right, and generally supportive of Trump, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson was astoundingly one of the very few who objected to the conformist, pro-war command in the media to just “shut up and obey”. If that is in any way an accurate reflection of reality, then the anti-Trump opposition is doing the rest of the world a great deal of harm, and not by accident. (Indeed, “Antifa” protesters would mob Carlson’s home later in the year—this was the only person at Fox that they targeted.)

As was now too customary to be ironic, it was a range of right-wing alternative media personalities—Trump supporters—who came out to denounce Trump’s decision to attack Syria, showing once again how far the left has ceded the anti-war territory to the right. Sebastian Gorka came out in an attempt to quell internal opposition—“Donald Trump is not a neoconservative and never will be”—in what was a tortured, twisted justification for military intervention, but somehow also in the name of non-intervention at the same time. Others emphasized that this was merely a limited action, and that Trump has no intention of getting stuck in Syria.

Two things were missing from the debate. One was an answer to the basic question of why the Syrian government would launch such an attack, when it was winning. The Commander of US Central Command, Army General Joseph Votel, publicly confirmed that the Syrian government had won the war. Second, there was still no rational explanation of why, even if true, deaths from chemical weapons attacks were less acceptable than deaths during the ordinary course of war in Syria. US Secretary of Defense James Mattis made the astounding statement that belief´justified the US military attack, and confirmed the US had no actual evidence of the so-called chemical weapons attack (see also here). The belief was based, of all things, on “social media reports” by unspecified NGOs and “open source outlets”. In fact, the US attack took place before the “Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) team was scheduled to arrive in Douma to determine whether chemical weapons had indeed been used there”. As Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergey Ryabkov, put it: there has been an “endless, primitive and unsubstantiated bogus stories, which are made up—sometimes by high-ranking US officials,” that “Russia didn’t fulfill its obligations” in ensuring the removal of chemical weapons from Syria, when the US had previously certified that all such weapons had indeed been removed.

The anticipated US attack began on Saturday, April 14, as announced by Trump in a televised address. The US claimed—and this amazing statement was not queried by the media—that it struck a chemical weapons storage facility (if true, then that alone would have caused a catastrophe on the ground, dwarfing any one alleged Syrian government chemical attack), as well as a research and development facilities, or three targets in total. Syria claimed that its air defenses intercepted a third of the 30 missiles fired by the US—while the US claimed to have fired roughly 120 missiles (which would seem extreme given that only three small targets were selected)—elsewhere the number claimed was either 103 or 105, with other claims being that Syria intercepted 71 of the missiles. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that all countries were required to act in accordance with the UN Charter, which bars any member state from launching an attack on another, without any provocation or immediate threat to its security—especially when there is no UN Security Council approval. If anything, justifications used for the attack proved that it violated international law. Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman observed how it was seemingly impossible for Syria to entertain ideas of a peaceful future, even for a moment, without instantly being subjected to the threat of foreign terror. Vladmir Putin argued that the unilateral attack would have, “a devastating impact on the whole system of international relations,” reminding everyone that, “Washington already bears the heavy responsibility for the bloody carnage in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya”. The former vice-chair of the Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Willy Wimmer, a former state secretary to Germany’s Minister of Defense, offered some cutting insights:

“Since the illegal war against Yugoslavia in 1999, they [the US, the UK and France] want to have their own international structure. They want to destroy the Charter of the UN. They are no longer interested in having an international organization, which can work. And, therefore, they do their utmost to create their own world where they can do what they want to do. The attitude of the French, British and Americans is the same attitude, which was used by Adolf Hitler in 1939 to enter into World War Two. Since 2011, when the war in Syria started, it was, from the very beginning, a common effort of the US, British and French to destroy, by force, the Syrian state… for their own purpose. Now they have to face reality, and the reality is that Syria survived as an independent state by the help of Russia and Iran, mainly, and the support of both of these countries was in strict accordance to
international law”.

The US claimed the action was not designed to overthrow the Syrian government, or intervene in the civil war. Of course, the US was already involved in the so-called “civil war” (it is an international war), on the side of anti-government forces. Initial claims by the US that this was (another) “one off” action were, as usual, almost immediately contradicted by other factions in government, such as Nikki Haley who, in her usual bellicose manner, declared the US remained “locked and loaded”. As usual, US media virtually ignored anyone else speaking at the UN Security Council, usually framing Haley as if she sat alone and was speaking only to herself (which is perhaps more reflective of reality than media propagandists intended). Thus the poignant statement by Syria’s UN ambassador, Bashar Jaafari, revealing that US forces illegally occupied a third of Syrian territory, went mostly unnoticed.

Both the UK and France took part in the missile strikes, in both cases without the consent of their respective parliaments, further showing how much executive power is inflated and distorts “liberal democracy” in Western nations engaged in seemingly permanent warfare. British Opposition Leader, Jeremy Corbyn, disputed the legal authority for Britain’s participation in the attack, refuting the “humanitarian intervention” angle. Corbyn denounced the government’s violation of international law, and that it appeared to answer to Donald Trump rather than the parliament. Reactions from the British public against prime minister Theresa May participating in the air strikes on Syria were almost uniform for being particularly scathing. One British opinion poll showed more opposed the air strikes than supported it, with the number of opposed growing if such action could risk conflict with Russia. Another British opinion poll showed that only 22% of the public would support a missile strike on Syria, on the eve of the attack itself. In both France and Britain, parliamentary opposition to the apparent US takeover of those nations’ foreign policies was acute, where memories of the disastrous interventions in Iraq and Libya remained alive. Theresa May’s defensive gainsaying did little to assuage opponents. In the US Congress, an array of representatives on both sides of the partisan divide denounced the US attack as a violation of US laws. In all three cases—the US, UK, and France—what became evident is that the airstrikes, ordered unilaterally by the executives, damaged democracy in those nations. By avoiding debate in parliament, those who ordered the air strikes were relieved of the responsibility of presenting convincing evidence of the Syrian government’s alleged culpability in the alleged chemical attack.

As for evidence, witnesses of the alleged chemical attack in Douma told the press, at a gathering organized by Russia’s mission at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague, completely contradicted the reports published in the West. Their memorable statements cast, at the very least, enormous doubt on the veracity of videos and what they were purported to show. This event was mostly ignored by Western media. Summing up their testimonies: no attack, no victims, no chemical weapons. Poking enormous holes in the so-called “evidence” of the attack, Russia’s delegation to the OPCW asserted that Russia would not tolerate another false flag attack on Syria. In a report that was widely ignored by Western media—one whose implications placed the “chemical attack” in Syria in the same rank as Iraq’s fabled WMDs—the OPCW itself concluded in July that “no organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the environmental samples or in the plasma samples taken from alleged casualties”.

Nikki Haley, US ambassador to the UN, jumped at the opportunity to push events in Syria in an anti-Russia direction, and without the permission of President Trump—and reportedly to his great annoyance—decided that she would announce that the US was about to apply additional sanctions against Russia, for its support of Syria (or “Assad” as she likes to say). Except she was wrong—the administration quickly hung Haley out to dry, and completely contradicted her. Trump seemed late in understanding that Haley and her team were part of an internal, “Never Trump” neoconservative element. There would be no further sanctions on Russia over this issue. In the end, Haley looked like a fool, and the White House appeared confused and divided. Predictably, The New York Times published moaning articles like this one, replete with the usual Russiagate fake news and conspiracy theory (see the correction at the bottom of their article), where the main theme is that Trump is not enough of a war-monger and needed to escalate tensions with Russia. Other liberal imperialist organs were similarly convinced that in not razing Syria with total US war against the country, Trump was somehow showing “restraint,” and this was taken to be evidence of some sort of “Trump doctrine”.

By the end of April, Trump repeated his claim to want withdrawal from Syria:

“We want to come home. We’ll be coming home. But we want to leave a strong and lasting footprint…. do want to come home, but I want to come home also with having accomplished what we have to accomplish”.

Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, countered that the US had no intention to leave Syria.

The US can Occupy Syria Forever, but is Forbidden to Occupy its Own Country?

The nationalist immigration policies spearheaded by the Trump administration were to come under a direct challenge by a slow-moving “caravan” of migrants headed for the US border via Mexico. The caravan was supported by a NGO calling itself “People without Borders” and its journey was seemingly abetted by Mexican authorities. One of the responses of the Trump administration was to sign an order sending National Guard units to the border with Mexico. President Trump pointed to a situation of “lawlessness” on the US–Mexican border and described it as “fundamentally incompatible with the safety, security, and sovereignty of the American people”. But while the US had to debate whether to send troops, to the US’ own border, there was to be no debate about whether to send US troops all the way to Syria. The jarring juxtaposition of the two contrasting stances came out in a single question by a reporter at a White House press briefing—a reporter who nevertheless failed to note the contrast:

“there seems to be a perception that, at times, the President makes announcements and then the White House has to come up with policy to match what the President said. Like with the talk about the military at the border, there weren’t really a lot of details about that at first. And with the issue with Syria, and him saying he wanted to, kind of, pull all the troops back”.

In another White House press briefing, reporters once again failed to notice the bizarre contradiction between their thinly veiled criticisms of Trump’s desire to pull US troops back from Syria, while apparently complaining about the decision to send troops to the US border.

Prelude to Withdrawal: Trump and the Iran Nuclear Agreement

Amid cherry blossoms, champagne, and displays of haute couture, Emmanuel Macron met with Donald Trump for a three-day visit, in a lavish display of what many of us understood to be an absolutely phoney friendship (the problem for Macron is that Trump also understood that). It seemed then that Trump might be open to remaining in the agreement (the JCPOA), if “new ways” of “containing” Iran were found, as Macron intimated. Trump also threatened Iran with unspecified retaliation should it restart its nuclear development, if the US withdrew from the JCPOA. In spite of the display of mutual affection, Macron proceeded to address a joint session of Congress, in which he took apart major planks of Trump’s America First policy. If Macron thought that this insult to Trump was smart diplomacy, then he was very poorly advised—and he would reap the appropriate benefits of his decision very shortly.

Top Articles for April

• “Will China Really Supplant US Economic Hegemony?” Kenneth Rogoff, Project Syndicate, April 2.
• “America’s self-satisfied ‘Me Generation’ has abandoned the anti-war movement,” Robert Bridge, RT, April 2.
• “Assange works for the people – now we need to save him,” Slavoj Žižek, RT, April 2.
• “‘The Business of War’: Google Employees Protest Work for the Pentagon,” Scott Shane and Daisuke Wakabayashi, The New York Times, April 4.
• “We work for Google. Our employer shouldn’t be in the business of war,” The Guardian, April 5.
• “What’s Been Stopping the Left?” Dani Rodrik, Project Syndicate, April 10.
• “The Max Bootification of the American Right,” Michael Warren Davis, The American Conservative, April 13.
• “Caught in a lie, US & allies bomb Syria the night before international inspectors arrive,” Eva Bartlett, RT, April 15.
• “Trump: Prisoner of