Op-ed

Created
Sat, 15/02/2025 - 20:42

War is in the air more than peace these days. This reflects not only the salience of well-known strategic traps, but also the rapid emergence of cloud capital, which is in steering the world into these traps in four distinct ways. ATHENS – The West is on a war footing. The German government is working […]

The post Technofeudalism Is War’s Handmaiden – Project Syndicate appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Fri, 21/02/2025 - 21:10

Faced with President Trump’s economic moves, his centrist critics oscillate between desperation and a touching faith that his tariff frenzy will fizzle out. They assume that Trump will huff and puff until reality exposes the emptiness of his economic rationale. They have not been paying attention: Trump’s tariff fixation is part of a global economic […]

The post Donald Trump’s economic masterplan – UNHERD appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Fri, 21/02/2025 - 21:17

JD Vance, the US Vice President, told Europeans that their values are no longer America’s values. Pete Hegseth, the US Defence Secretary, added that Europeans “can’t make an assumption that America’s presence will last forever.” Keith Kellog, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, confirmed that Europe will not have a seat at the table […]

The post Europe in the Post-Atlanticist Era – The Guardian appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Tue, 21/01/2025 - 21:12

ATHENS – With Donald Trump back in the White House, the high tariffs he has pledged to slap on Chinese imports are not China’s greatest concern. China’s leaders understand that tariffs are more significant for Trump as political and symbolic moves than as economic weapons that will seriously impede China’s growth and development. The real […]

The post China’s Trump Dilemma – Project Syndicate appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Thu, 19/12/2024 - 22:52

Western power is as strong as ever. What has changed is that the combination of socialism for financiers, collapsing prospects for the bottom 50%, and the surrender of our minds to Big Tech has given rise to overweening Western elites with little use for the last century’s value system. ATHENS – A motley crew of […]

The post The West Is Not Dying, but It Is Working on It – Project Syndicate op-ed appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Tue, 10/12/2024 - 23:00

On 15th August 2021, when the Kabul US-puppet regime fell, I expressed relief that US imperialism was defeated and, simultaneously, horror at what the women of Afghanistan were about to suffer in the hands of the jihadist Taliban. Immediately, the US liberal-imperialist lobby attacked me for… celebrating the Taliban victory. You see, for imperialism’s stooges, […]

The post Lessons from Syria: An imperialist’s enemy is not always an anti-imperialist’s friend – China Academy op-ed appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Mon, 02/12/2024 - 23:54

If the US president-elect’s efforts to eliminate America’s trade deficit succeed, real-estate prices in Miami and Manhattan will crash, the cost of servicing government debt will skyrocket and the Dow Jones will plummet. Perhaps he should be reminded that the most vengeful of deities is one that grants him his sincerest wish. ATHENS – Donald […]

The post America’s Trade Deficit Is Not Afraid of Donald Trump – Project Syndicate op-ed appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Sat, 04/01/2025 - 21:48

On 9 February 1967, hours after the US Air Force had levelled the Port of Haiphong and several Vietnamese airfields, NBC aired a Star Trek episode featuring a concept that clashed mercilessly with what had just happened in Vietnam: the Prime Directive – a general ban on its Starship captains from using superior technology (military […]

The post Star Trek: A humanist communist manifesto for our times – UNHERD appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Mon, 06/01/2025 - 22:13

How does wealth manage to persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? By merely posing his dazzling question in 1952, Aneurin Bevan captured liberal democracy’s greatest paradox. Today, in the era of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance and their Big Tech brethren, Bevan’s time-honoured paradox has only grown preposterously. […]

The post Musk, Trump and the Broligarchs’ novel hyper-weapon – Le Monde 4-1-2025, full original English version appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Mon, 22/04/2024 - 22:18

Advocates of European unity used to celebrate the European Union as a peace project. But well before Russia invaded Ukraine, the European vision of a peaceful road to shared prosperity had begun to frazzle, and now the invasion has facilitated the EU’s mutation into something much uglier. ATHENS – Europe has become unrecognizable. Advocates of […]

The post A European War Union? – Project Syndicate op-ed appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.