STRATEGIC ALERT Service

The World Bank’s International Development Association was hit with more criticism than it reckoned at the forum for African heads of state it organized April 29 in Nairobi, Kenya. The announced focus was on favorable lending terms and strategies to bolster sustainable development and promote foreign investment, but a number of participants disagree with the approach imposed by the West. […]

After decades of discussion and planning, a Small Modular Reactor (SMR) is now being built in South Korea. Such reactors, in the range of 50 to 300 megawatts, could be built with components mass produced in factories at far lower costs than the 1,000 megawatt and larger nuclear power plants (NPP). They would also be ideal for the establishment of […]

On May 3, China launched one of the most complicated space missions yet endeavored, which aims to retrieve samples from the far side of the Moon, for the first time ever. The Chang’e-6 mission involves four separate vehicles—an orbiter, a lander, an ascender and a re-entry module. Unlike most other missions, there will be no “direct” contact with the vehicles, […]

With no end in sight to Israel’s killings of Palestinians in Gaza, and with the U.S. Congress voting for another $15 billion aid package for Israel, protests have erupted on college campuses throughout the United States, leading to panicked calls from pro-war officials for a harsh crackdown on demonstrators. The protesters’ demands include an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, humanitarian aid […]

The visit of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing April 23-26 was part of the high-level exchanges that had been decided on by Presidents Xi and Biden last November at their summit in San Francisco. The primary purpose was to keep the all-important U.S.-China relationship on an even keel. The task assigned to Blinken by his boss Joe […]

Once rubber-stamped by the European Parliament on April 23, the new version of the so-called “Stability Pact,” which disciplines fiscal policies of EU member states, was approved on April 29 by the European Council of heads of government. Thus, after four years of the suspension decided at the onset of the Covid pandemic, fiscal austerity is once again to rule […]

It has been revealed that officials in the Green Party-led German Economy Ministry intentionally ignored and falsified expert opinions to suppress the support for extending the lifetime of the last three nuclear power plants (NPP) operating in Germany. At the time, faced with the prospect of severe power shortages after the German government abruptly decreed an end to imports of […]

After the U.S. Congress finally passed the supplemental war budget of $61 billion for Ukraine last week (cf. SAS 17/24), Kyiv’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba welcomed the vote, but told London’s The Guardian (april 24) that it was simply not enough. “No single package can stop the Russians”, he said. “The West has to realize the era of peace in […]

An Israeli-Palestinian settlement will not bring peace to the region unless there is also a peace agreement with Syria, where Israel still occupies the Golan Heights, and Lebanon. In addition, a rapprochement between the United States and Iran is required. A Southwest Asia peace conference would then be in order. Not one modeled on the abortive 1992 Madrid Peace conference, […]

It was reported by major news media that representatives of both Hamas and Fatah (Palestinian Authority) were in Beijing on April 26 to discuss cooperation on forming a unity government and putting an end to the slaughter in the territories. Many actors in the region have urged the Chinese to play a more active diplomatic role in the region, in […]