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Anyone who still believes in Switzerland must support the lawyers who have filed a lawsuit against Cassis.

It was not long ago that Switzerland could be proud of playing a role in the world. As a recognized neutral power, it could contribute to ending conflicts through discreet mediation or by hosting negotiations between warring parties. As the depositary state of the Geneva Conventions, it advocated for respect for international law in wars and enjoyed high esteem. It placed highly qualified personnel at the service of international justice to punish war criminals. In the Balkans, Carla Del Ponte is still regarded as an icon of justice today. Thanks to her, around a hundred high-ranking Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Albanian officials from Kosovo were convicted of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Neutrality and the defense of the rule of law were two pillars of Swiss identity and its reputation in the world.

A break occurred in 2022 when Bern, under pressure from the EU, adopted unnecessary sanctions against Russia. Between 2014 and 2022, we had contented ourselves with ensuring that European and American sanctions were not circumvented. This system preserved the credibility of our neutrality. Why could this system not simply have been continued after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a conflict that is not ours? This was never explained to us. The break with Swiss tradition continued during the Gaza war, triggered by the massacres committed by Hamas and other Palestinian militias on October 7, 2023. The International Court of Justice very quickly established on January 26, 2024, that there was a risk that the violence of the Israeli retaliation could constitute genocide. International law is clear: every state must do everything in its power to prevent genocide. This is something we failed to do in the 1940s when the Holocaust occurred.

Nevertheless, Bern has continued to authorize the sale of dual-use goods—items intended for both civilian and military purposes—to Israel. These goods could have been used to destroy 90 percent of schools, 80 percent of hospitals, and more than 70 percent of residential buildings in Gaza. And of course, some of these Swiss products may also be responsible for the deaths of 70,000 people in Gaza, including 83 percent civilians—figures confirmed by Israel. Authorizing the sale of these dual-use goods is akin to giving bullets to a person suspected of murder.

Furthermore, the Federal Council sees no problem with private and public institutions investing heavily in the Israeli arms industry. Elbit, which sold the famously non-functional drones to the Swiss Armed Forces (VBS), is a major beneficiary of these financial flows. This, despite the fact that this company has cost Swiss taxpayers 300 million. But even though Switzerland lost a lot of money on this purchase, some are not shy about profiting from it. The former head of Armasuisse, Jakob Baumann, is now Chairman of the Board of Directors of Elbit Systems Switzerland. Financing the Israeli arms industry is like giving money to someone suspected of murder so they can buy a gun.

One could argue that the defense of the law is a legal war, a form of lawfare. But then, should no murderer be brought to justice because they might be a victim of an unjust system? One could claim that in the Trump era, the law is worthless anyway, that everything is a matter of power relations. But what would be the consequence of abandoning our identity-forming values of neutrality and the rule of law? Renouncing what distinguishes us is the direct path to Switzerland’s subjugation to American and European interests.

Therefore, anyone who still believes in Switzerland must support the lawyers who have filed a lawsuit against Cassis.

Original article:  weltwoche.ch

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Ritorno di fiamma

Ci risiamo. Passano gli anni, ma le fissazioni degli USA sono sempre le solite. Col nuovo assetto di riequilibrio delle zone di influenza, la nuova Dottrina Donroe della NSS aggiornata, ecco che dopo il Venezuela tocca a Cuba.

Il presidente Trump ha firmato giovedì 29 gennaio 2026 un ordine esecutivo che dichiara una “emergenza nazionale”, sostenendo che Cuba rappresenti una presunta “minaccia insolita e straordinaria” per la sicurezza degli Stati Uniti. Il provvedimento introduce nuovi dazi nei confronti dei Paesi che “vendono o in altro modo forniscono petrolio a Cuba”, con l’obiettivo di aggravare l’asfissia energetica dell’isola, già fortemente peggiorata dopo l’attacco statunitense al Venezuela.

“L’ordine stabilisce un nuovo sistema tariffario che consente agli Stati Uniti di applicare dazi aggiuntivi alle importazioni provenienti da qualsiasi Paese che rifornisca di petrolio Cuba, direttamente o indirettamente”, si legge nel documento. Il testo, a onor del vero, non impone automaticamente tariffe, ma prevede una valutazione caso per caso, mentre per l’attuazione, conferisce al Segretario al Commercio, Howard Lutnick, il potere di stabilire se un Paese venda o fornisca petrolio a Cuba, sia direttamente sia tramite intermediari.

Successivamente, il Segretario di Stato Marco Rubio è autorizzato ad “adottare tutte le misure necessarie”, inclusa l’emanazione di nuove normative per applicare provvedimenti coercitivi contro i Paesi che inviano petrolio all’isola. L’Esecutivo si riserva tuttavia la facoltà di modificare o revocare tali misure qualora Cuba o i Paesi coinvolti compiano “passi significativi” per allinearsi agli “obiettivi di sicurezza e politica estera degli Stati Uniti”.

Le ragioni? Un classico della retorica americana: Washington accusa L’Avana di essersi “allineata” con Stati e “attori maligni ostili agli Stati Uniti”, citando tra questi la Repubblica Popolare Cinese, l’Iran e la Russia, che sarebbero anche responsabili del mantenimento a Cuba “della più grande struttura di intelligence dei segnali” al di fuori del proprio territorio. Inoltre, Cuba viene accusata di continuare a “diffondere le sue idee, politiche e pratiche comuniste nell’emisfero occidentale”, mettendo a rischio la politica estera statunitense.

Un copione già noto, no?

Guerra contro Cuba

Dopo il bombardamento statunitense di Caracas, durante il quale il presidente Nicolás Maduro e sua moglie Cilia Flores sarebbero stati sequestrati, le minacce di Washington nei confronti di Cuba si sono fatte costanti.

Il nuovo ordine esecutivo mira ad approfondire il blocco che il popolo cubano subisce da oltre 60 anni, facendo pressione sui Paesi della regione affinché aderiscano di fatto a questa politica aggressiva. Allo stesso tempo, le nuove misure cercano di impedire qualsiasi triangolazione petrolifera volta ad aggirare le sanzioni. Cuba consuma attualmente circa 120.000 barili di petrolio al giorno. Circa il 30% proviene dalla produzione interna, mentre i restanti due terzi sono importati. I principali fornitori dell’isola sono Venezuela, Messico e, in misura minore, Russia. Si stima che lo scorso anno Caracas abbia inviato tra 27.000 e 35.000 barili al giorno, pari a circa il 29% del consumo energetico cubano. Tuttavia, a causa del blocco militare e delle restrizioni imposte da Washington sul petrolio venezuelano, queste forniture sono state interrotte. Il nuovo ordine esecutivo sembrerebbe ora colpire direttamente le esportazioni messicane.

Di fronte alle crescenti pressioni statunitensi, la presidente Claudia Sheinbaum ha recentemente dichiarato che l’invio di petrolio a Cuba rappresenta “una decisione sovrana” del Messico, ricordando che tutti i governi messicani, indipendentemente dall’orientamento politico, hanno mantenuto relazioni con l’isola nel rispetto dei principi di non interferenza e autodeterminazione.

Una settimana prima, durante la consueta conferenza stampa del mercoledì 21, Sheinbaum aveva sottolineato gli effetti del blocco: “Cosa significa un blocco economico? Significa sanzioni contro i Paesi che offrono sostegno. Gli Stati Uniti lo hanno intensificato. Quando c’è un blocco, non è possibile importare o esportare liberamente, e le condizioni per lo sviluppo di un Paese diventano estremamente difficili.”

Secondo Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), nei primi nove mesi del 2025 il Messico ha esportato a Cuba 17.200 barili al giorno. Nell’ultimo trimestre il volume è diminuito a causa delle pressioni di Washington. Dichiarando una “emergenza nazionale”, l’ordine firmato da Trump consente al governo di imporre dazi aggiuntivi anche a partner con accordi di libero scambio, come il Messico, che fa parte dell’USMCA insieme a Stati Uniti e Canada. Considerando che tra l’80% e l’84% delle esportazioni messicane è destinato al mercato statunitense, si tratta di una misura particolarmente delicata. Allo stesso tempo, questa situazione potrebbe alimentare pressioni inflazionistiche negli Stati Uniti, soprattutto nei settori con catene di approvvigionamento fortemente integrate. Per di più, includendo tra i possibili sanzionati chiunque fornisca petrolio a Cuba, direttamente o indirettamente, Washington mira a bloccare anche spedizioni per motivi umanitari e a scoraggiare Paesi che potrebbero inviare aiuti tramite forniture provenienti da Russia o Cina.

È chiaro che l’intensificarsi delle ostilità contro Cuba si inserisce nella politica di massima pressione già adottata durante il primo mandato di Trump, arrivando persino a ostacolare l’arrivo di beni essenziali per affrontare anche la crisi sanitaria del 2020.

Nel mezzo di una grave crisi energetica, caratterizzata da blackout prolungati e ricorrenti, il tentativo attuale di strangolamento energetico avviene in un contesto in cui Cuba sta attraversando una delle crisi economiche più profonde della sua storia. Con una contrazione del PIL superiore all’11% negli ultimi cinque anni, la carenza di carburante ed elettricità non incide solo sulla vita quotidiana delle famiglie, ma compromette anche la capacità di produrre beni e servizi necessari per superare la crisi.

Detto in altre parole: Cuba deve cedere, o con le buone o con le cattive.

Una storia tappezzata di sanzioni

Per comprendere appieno la portata delle misure attuali, è necessario inserirle nel più ampio contesto storico delle sanzioni economiche che gli Stati Uniti applicano contro Cuba sin dai primi anni della Guerra Fredda. Dopo la Rivoluzione cubana del 1959 e la salita al potere di Fidel Castro, le relazioni tra Washington e L’Avana si deteriorarono rapidamente, soprattutto in seguito alla nazionalizzazione di proprietà statunitensi sull’isola. Nel 1960 l’amministrazione Eisenhower impose le prime restrizioni commerciali sull’esportazione verso Cuba, e nel 1962 il presidente John F. Kennedy formalizzò un embargo economico quasi totale, vietando la maggior parte degli scambi commerciali e finanziari. Tale embargo si inseriva nella strategia di contenimento del comunismo adottata dagli Stati Uniti nei confronti dell’Unione Sovietica e dei suoi alleati, in un momento di altissima tensione culminato con la crisi dei missili del 1962.

Nel corso dei decenni successivi, il sistema sanzionatorio si è progressivamente irrigidito e strutturato attraverso una serie di leggi approvate dal Congresso. Tra le più rilevanti vi sono il Cuban Democracy Act del 1992 (noto anche col nome Torricelli Act), che limitò ulteriormente i commerci con l’isola e introdusse restrizioni alle filiali estere di aziende statunitensi, e l’Helms-Burton Act del 1996, che codificò l’embargo in legge, sottraendone la revoca alla sola decisione presidenziale e attribuendo al Congresso un ruolo centrale. Quest’ultima norma estese inoltre la portata extraterritoriale delle sanzioni, prevedendo la possibilità di azioni legali contro imprese straniere che “traessero profitto” da beni nazionalizzati dopo la rivoluzione.

Con la fine della Guerra Fredda e il crollo dell’Unione Sovietica, Cuba perse il suo principale alleato economico e affrontò una grave crisi nota come “Periodo Especial”. Nonostante il mutato contesto internazionale, l’embargo rimase in vigore, giustificato da Washington con motivazioni legate alla promozione della democrazia e dei diritti umani sull’isola. Negli anni 2000, l’amministrazione di George W. Bush rafforzò ulteriormente alcune restrizioni, in particolare sui viaggi e sulle rimesse.

Una parziale inversione di tendenza si verificò durante la presidenza di Barack Obama, che nel 2014 annunciò un processo di normalizzazione delle relazioni diplomatiche con Cuba. Furono riaperte le ambasciate, allentate alcune restrizioni sui viaggi, sulle rimesse e su determinati scambi commerciali, e ampliata la possibilità di cooperazione in settori come telecomunicazioni e aviazione civile. Tuttavia, l’embargo legislativo rimase formalmente in vigore, poiché solo il Congresso può abrogarlo completamente.

Con l’arrivo dell’amministrazione Trump nel 2017, molte delle aperture introdotte da Obama furono revocate. Washington ripristinò restrizioni sui viaggi, limitò ulteriormente le transazioni finanziarie, inserì Cuba nella lista degli Stati sponsor del terrorismo (nel 2021) e attivò pienamente il Titolo III dell’Helms-Burton Act, consentendo cause legali contro imprese straniere operanti su proprietà nazionalizzate. In questo contesto si collocano anche le misure volte a ostacolare le forniture energetiche all’isola, colpendo in particolare le spedizioni di petrolio provenienti dal Venezuela e minacciando sanzioni contro compagnie di navigazione e Paesi terzi coinvolti nel trasporto.

Le sanzioni statunitensi contro Cuba non si limitano dunque a un embargo commerciale bilaterale, ma comprendono un complesso sistema di restrizioni finanziarie, bancarie, assicurative e marittime, con effetti extraterritoriali che possono incidere anche su imprese e governi di Paesi terzi. Le nuove tariffe e misure annunciate si inseriscono in questa tradizione, ampliando ulteriormente gli strumenti a disposizione dell’esecutivo statunitense per esercitare pressione economica. L’elemento tariffario rappresenta un’evoluzione significativa, poiché consente di colpire indirettamente partner commerciali degli Stati Uniti che mantengano relazioni energetiche con Cuba, anche se tali relazioni non violano direttamente il diritto internazionale.

Nel corso degli anni, la comunità internazionale ha più volte espresso contrarietà all’embargo: l’Assemblea Generale delle Nazioni Unite approva annualmente una risoluzione che ne chiede la fine, con un ampio consenso tra gli Stati membri. Tuttavia, gli Stati Uniti hanno mantenuto la propria posizione, sostenendo che le sanzioni rappresentino uno strumento legittimo di politica estera volto a promuovere cambiamenti politici sull’isola.

L’ordine esecutivo firmato da Trump e le nuove misure tariffarie si inseriscono in una lunga storia di tensioni tra Stati Uniti e Cuba, iniziata nel pieno della Guerra Fredda e mai del tutto risolta. Dall’embargo del 1962 alle leggi degli anni Novanta, fino alle recenti restrizioni energetiche e finanziarie, la politica statunitense verso l’isola ha fatto ampio ricorso a strumenti economici per perseguire obiettivi strategici e politici.

Nel contesto attuale, caratterizzato da una profonda crisi economica ed energetica cubana e da rinnovate tensioni geopolitiche, l’introduzione di nuove tariffe e la minaccia di sanzioni contro Paesi terzi rappresentano un ulteriore irrigidimento della linea di Washington; allo stesso tempo, tali misure sollevano interrogativi sugli effetti economici regionali e sulle possibili ripercussioni sia per Cuba sia per i partner commerciali coinvolti.

La questione delle sanzioni contro Cuba rimane un nodo centrale della politica estera statunitense nell’emisfero occidentale, un dossier che affonda le sue radici nel cuore del Novecento e che continua, purtroppo, ad evolversi. Ma fino a quando potrà durare o, meglio, quanto ancora Donald Trump aspetterà prima di compiere la sua nuova “missione di pace”?

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Ya desde octubre de 2024 he escrito sobre los BRICS+ titulado: BRICS+: Fin de la democracia y de Naciones Unidas tal cual las conocemos. Asimismo, tengo un artículo por ser publicado, en Brasil donde amplío ideas sobre el impacto de BRICS+ en América Latina y Colombia, como posibilidad de ampliación de BRICS+ hacia el pacífico. El mundo está en guerra mundial desde 2020 y sólo estamos esperando el calentamiento de una guerra total. Esa es la sensación hoy, que estamos a puertas del infierno, con dos mesas de negociación calientes y sin prospectivas de acuerdos satisfactorios. Las partes no ceden ni parece lo harán, respecto a sus premisas de soberanía o de intereses de élites locales y globales.

La mesa de EE.UU. – Irán, sólo manifiesta el diálogo sordo, hiriente y agresivo de una diplomacia que comprende que las cosas se desarrollarán por medios militares. Donald Trump se encuentra atrapado entre la presión del Lobbie sionista para que vaya a la guerra y fuerce un cambio de régimen y en una negociación que le llevará a meter a su administración en una guerra con riesgo de descrédito militar ante el potencial iraní, respaldado por Rusia y China. Es decir, no tiene alternativa, más que ir a la guerra. Ni Irán ni Israel aceptarán las condiciones que les son adversas. Estados Unidos por su parte, en cada vocero o su presidente, amenaza en medio de negociaciones.

Por su parte ni rusos ni ucranianos se muestran entusiastas de las mesas de trabajo, según señaló el propio representante de la delegación rusa, Vladímir Mendisky. Tras las conferencias del Foro de Davos y Múnich, quedó claro la hostilidad europea, el sinsentido de la política exterior estadounidense y la banalidad del señor Zelensky, quien ofende y deplora a los propios socios. Se suma a esto su carácter anti histórico y vulgar, -llamó mierda histórica a los argumentos estructurales del conflicto dados por los rusos- lo que implica la carencia y renuncia de herramientas contextuales para cualquier tipo de diálogo.

Estos conflictos expresan el riesgo de guerras abiertas hacia escala nuclear o convencional con repercusiones económicas globales, los más álgidos que cualquier otro en el planeta. La negociación en marcha con Irán que se emparenta con la situación en Gaza y Oriente Medio, se suma a las supuestas ocho guerras que dice haber detenido Donald Trump, incluido el genocidio sobre Palestina y ampliado a Cisjordania, hecho condenado por más de cien naciones.

Así, en medio del estilo de diplomacia de mercaderes y magnates inmobiliarios, se avista el denominado ‘Consejo de Paz’, creado para la estabilidad y el arribo de la paz a Gaza, como una suma de naciones y adinerados de éstas mismas para invertir.

Al respecto, han sido invitados cerca de 50 países y 35 aceptaron o mostraron interés mientras 14 declinaron. El jueves 19 de febrero se reunieron por primera vez con un ‘inesperado’ primer tema: el plan para la reconstrucción de Gaza. Además, inversiones por 5 mil millones de dólares y tropas de paz en el terreno, hasta 20 mil soldados y 12 mil agentes. Dentro de los Estados que aceptaron está nada más ni menos que Israel. Por su parte China y Rusia, se han reservado el rechazo o aceptación a tal Consejo. Ninguno de los otros países fundadores BRICS, o sea, India, Brasil y Sudáfrica, se han sumado, ni contemplan hacerlo, pero otros afiliados de segunda generación como miembros plenos, sí participan: Egipto, Emiratos Árabes Unidos e Indonesia. De los miembros asociados a BRICS+, se sumaron al Consejo, Uzbekistán, Kazajistán y Vietnam.

Para el asunto aquí planteado esto es relevante y se puede apreciar que:

• El propio Donald Trump ha dicho el 23 de septiembre de 2025, que la ONU ya no es una institución creíble, que solucione los asuntos del mundo, que no tiene potencial ni propósito, con palabras vacías que no resuelven guerras. Luego el 22 de enero de 2026, señaló que la Junta de Paz -o Consejo de Paz- logrará lo que Naciones Unidas no ha logrado.
• El propio Consejo de Paz ya suma tantos miembros que BRICS+. Y es obvio que no son organizaciones o agrupaciones con idénticos objetivos, pero me refiero al potencial efectivo que debe derivar del grupo BRICS+, como señalé en mi artículo de octubre de 2024, BRICS+: Fin de la democracia y de Naciones Unidas tal cual las conocemos:

Si los BRICS+ están en verdad viendo hacia un rumbo no capitalista e indecible ahora su nombre, […] al menos desde la historia y la racionalidad material, entonces los BRICS+ que llevan en las venas dos de sus fundadores la sangre del socialismo, como experiencia latente y como tragedia, podrán sopesar y calibrar un sistema internacional que contemple lo mejor de esa experiencia. Ni China ni la Federación Rusa son occidentales y aunque la segunda bebió de las fuentes alemanas, francesas e inglesas particularmente, siempre hizo síntesis de ellas.

• En tal sentido, el Consejo de Paz para Gaza es a su modo una ONU 2.0; en tanto expresa las mismas relaciones de poder tradicionales ligadas a conveniencias mercantiles y occidentales que son reflejo de los principios de propiedad que determinan a la democracia occidental. De hecho, en el mismo artículo citado anteriormente, rescato una cita, (C.B. Macpherson, The real world of democracy,) allí ubicable, donde señalo:

“La democracia fue el decorado final de la sociedad capitalista de mercado. Aquella tuvo que acomodarse a la base que ya había sido preparada por la operación de la sociedad competitiva, individualista de mercado, y por la operación del estado liberal que sirvió a esta sociedad mediante un sistema de partidos que competían libremente entre sí, pero que no tenían un carácter efectivamente democrático. Fue el estado liberal el que se democratizó, y en este proceso la democracia se hizo liberal”.

• Por tal razón, ni China ni Rusia y demás socios fundadores de BRICS+ pueden sumarse a tal junta. Pesa el hecho de responder tal junta a viejas estructuras capitalistas donde lo jurídico es en esencia expresión y plataforma de la propiedad y nada más explícito de esto que una junta llena de decisores inmobiliarios, donde el espectro diplomático, histórico-crítico de la realidad palestina quedará soslayado.
• De esta forma, la paz es sólo un trámite de inversiones y no un análisis riguroso de asuntos estructurales, profundos, históricos – religiosos y étnicos. Cuando señalé que, Zelensky decía que “no pretende perder el tiempo en cuestiones históricas” … es la misma situación. Quieren arreglar guerras a partir de repartición de tierras, de formación de inversiones de reconstrucción, reubicación de personas en zonas marginales y no necesariamente aquellas a las que tienen derecho. Desean montar el negocio de la seguridad mediante tropas de paz, pero no construir desde procesos de sanación del dolor, del resentimiento y de un acceso a bienes y servicios para una población que lleva 80 años siendo expulsada sistemáticamente de su tierra histórica.
• Si vemos a los negociadores de Donald Trump, Kushner y Witkoff, seguidos de manera atenta por Larry D. Fink, -fundador, presidente y CEO de BlackRock, Inc.- y la primera reunión enfocada en la reconstrucción, podemos hacernos una idea del tipo de Junta para la Paz, que es más la Junta Inmobiliaria más ambiciosa y distante del objetivo de una paz ideada para reparar a las víctimas y honrar de la mejor manera a la memoria presente y futura.
• Lo cierto es que el eje de Naciones Unidas como espacio de diálogo y resolución de conflictos está acabado y espera la estocada final con el desenlace de las guerras con las cuales inicié este análisis. Ni el consejo de seguridad ni el secretario general de la institución, Antonio Guteres han logrado mostrar imparcialidad en diversos temas, como por ejemplo los sesgos del secretario sobre Rusia o sancionar o intervenir militarmente a Israel por su genocidio sobre la población palestina.
• Así, la astucia de Donald Trump con la formación de tal consejo, expresa la formación de un pivote anti ONU en el contexto de la transición al mundo multi polar a la cual EE.UU. se resiste y por lo mismo es un intento de marcar la pauta a BRICS+ en los temas que en prospectiva tal grupo llegará a liderar, como expresión de su forma de hacer negocios y respetar a las naciones más allá de los tamaños. En tal sentido, la vinculación de miembros BRICS+ de diversas categorías sí implica una alerta para los miembros fundacionales, ya que este no es un consejo para la paz sino para el mercado inmobiliario, militar, político y financiero, que como ya señalé, expresa de nuevo las relaciones de: poder es propiedad y propiedad es poder, en el marco de la democracia como ordenador jurídico del capitalismo.

El foro BRICS+ 2026, con India como país anfitrión, denominado: “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability” (Construyendo para la Resiliencia, la Innovación, la Cooperación y la Sostenibilidad) y que tendrá también una mesa dedicada a la Reforma de la gobernanza global: Incluyendo instituciones como ONU, OMC y sistemas de seguridad/ paz multilateral, en mi concepto debe centrarse en posicionar esta mesa temática adicional al objetivo central del foro, buscando la formación de un espacio de diálogo del ascendente Sur Global con el decadente Occidente Colectivo y en el marco de un respeto y promoción de las prioridades históricas, culturales, étnicas, religiosas, comerciales y formas de comprender y acceder el desarrollo o el ‘progreso’.

En tal sentido, puede haber una concordancia inercial entre BRICS+ y el Consejo de Paz para Gaza: la necesidad de superar a Naciones Unidas como foro propicio para las naciones. Mostrar así que no será BRICS+ un foro donde sus propuestas de gobernanza global apalanquen de nuevo el aparato jurídico que expresa las relaciones de propiedad de la vieja democracia, es otro imperativo para evitar la tragedia del gatopardo de Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa: Si queremos que todo siga como está, es preciso que todo cambie.

Las guerras en marcha o en ciernes entregarán otro mundo, otra reconfiguración del poder, como es habitual tras cada guerra de tales dimensiones y donde se avista el fin de la hegemonía occidental. Por lo mismo, no sería aceptable o al menos deseable que las nuevas estructuras confinen a la humanidad a las mismas relaciones de poder y representación obsoletas. Urge que BRICS+ lidere este proceso a contrapelo del Consejo de Paz y de la ONU.

Para ello, puede apoyarse en experiencias como el CAME, el Movimiento de Países No Alineados, el G77 o la ASEAN. Todas experiencias de trabajo y asociación históricas emparentadas con el Sur Global y desmarcadas de las dinámicas del poder habitual.

* Les invito a revisar los siguientes artículos de mi autoría derivados de análisis detenidos y revisión histórica de los acontecimientos que nos tienen en la inflexión grave a puertas de una guerra total.  

• August 27, 2025, El diálogo ruso-estadounidense es un acertijo, pero ¿Quién garantizará lo que se pacte?
• August 12, 2025, El estadista Putin vs el show man Trump en una reunión subordinada a múltiples intereses
• August 5, 2025, 360° de la guerra global actual
• June 24, 2025, La arquitectura BRICS+: un logro valioso, que es deseable contemple la experiencia del CAME
• February 16, 2025, Colombia: una soberanía limitada. ¿Qué puede ofrecer a BRICS+ y la Ruta de la Seda?
• November 22, 2024, A un mes de la Cumbre BRICS+ 2024: Kazán no fue, ni pretendía ni podía ser un nuevo Yalta
• October 30, 2024, BRICS+: Fin de la democracia y de Naciones Unidas tal cual las conocemos

Jeffrey  SACHS

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La historia presenta ocasionalmente momentos en los que la verdad sobre un conflicto se expone con tanta claridad que resulta imposible ignorarla. El discurso del ministro de Asuntos Exteriores iraní, Abbas Araghchi, el 7 de febrero en Doha, Qatar (transcripción aquí) debería ser uno de esos momentos. Sus importantes y constructivas declaraciones respondieron al llamamiento de Estados Unidos para que se entablaran negociaciones exhaustivas, y presentó una sólida propuesta para la paz en Oriente Medio.

La semana pasada, el secretario de Estado estadounidense, Marco Rubio, pidió negociaciones exhaustivas: «Si los iraníes quieren reunirse, estamos dispuestos».

Propuso que las conversaciones incluyeran la cuestión nuclear, la capacidad militar de Irán y su apoyo a grupos proxy en toda la región. A primera vista, parece una propuesta seria y constructiva.

Las crisis de seguridad de Oriente Medio están interrelacionadas, y es poco probable que una diplomacia que aísle las cuestiones nucleares de la dinámica regional más amplia pueda perdurar.

El 7 de febrero, el ministro de Asuntos Exteriores iraní, Araghchi, respondió a la propuesta de paz integral de Estados Unidos. En su discurso en el Foro Al Jazeera, el ministro de Asuntos Exteriores abordó la causa fundamental de la inestabilidad regional: «Palestina… es la cuestión determinante de la justicia en Asia Occidental y más allá», y propuso un camino a seguir.

La declaración del ministro de Asuntos Exteriores es correcta. El fracaso a la hora de resolver la cuestión de la creación de un Estado palestino ha alimentado, de hecho, todos los conflictos regionales importantes desde 1948.

Las guerras árabe-israelíes, el auge de la militancia antiisraelí, la polarización regional y los repetidos ciclos de violencia se derivan de la incapacidad de crear un Estado de Palestina junto al Estado de Israel.

Gaza representa el capítulo más devastador de este conflicto, en el que la brutal ocupación de Palestina por parte de Israel fue seguida por el ataque de Hamás contra Israel el 7 de octubre de 2023 y, posteriormente, por el genocidio de Israel contra el pueblo de Gaza.

En su discurso, Araghchi condenó el proyecto expansionista de Israel «perseguido bajo la bandera de la seguridad». Advirtió sobre la anexión de Cisjordania, que los funcionarios del Gobierno israelí, como el ministro de Seguridad Nacional, Ben Gvir, reclaman continuamente y para la que la Knesset ya ha aprobado una moción.

Araghchi también destacó otra dimensión fundamental de la estrategia israelí, que es la búsqueda de la supremacía militar permanente en toda la región. Afirmó que el proyecto expansionista de Israel requiere que

los países vecinos se vean debilitados —militar, tecnológica, económica y socialmente— para que el régimen israelí disfrute permanentemente de la ventaja.

Se trata, de hecho, de la doctrina Clean Break del primer ministro Netanyahu, que se remonta a hace 30 años. Ha sido apoyada con entusiasmo por Estados Unidos a través de 100 000 millones de dólares en ayuda militar a Israel desde 2000, la cobertura diplomática en la ONU mediante repetidos vetos y el rechazo sistemático por parte de Estados Unidos de las medidas de rendición de cuentas por las violaciones del derecho internacional humanitario por parte de Israel.

La impunidad de Israel ha desestabilizado la región, alimentando la carrera armamentística, las guerras por poder y los ciclos de venganza. También ha corroído lo que queda del orden jurídico internacional. El abuso del derecho internacional por parte de Estados Unidos e Israel, con gran parte de Europa guardando silencio, ha debilitado gravemente la Carta de las Naciones Unidas, dejando a la ONU al borde del colapso.

En las conclusiones de su discurso, ofreció a Estados Unidos una solución política y un camino a seguir.

El camino hacia la estabilidad es claro: justicia para Palestina, responsabilidad por los crímenes, fin de la ocupación y del apartheid, y un orden regional basado en la soberanía, la igualdad y la cooperación. Si el mundo quiere la paz, debe dejar de recompensar la agresión. Si el mundo quiere estabilidad, debe dejar de permitir el expansionismo.

Esta es una respuesta válida y constructiva al llamamiento de Rubio a una diplomacia integral.

Este marco podría abordar todas las dimensiones interrelacionadas del conflicto de la región. El fin de la expansión y la ocupación de Palestina por parte de Israel, y el retorno de Israel a las fronteras del 4 de junio de 1967, pondrían fin a la financiación y el armamento externos de los grupos proxy en la región.

La creación de un Estado palestino junto al Estado de Israel mejoraría la seguridad de Israel y la de sus vecinos. Un acuerdo nuclear renovado con Irán, que limite estrictamente a Irán a actividades nucleares pacíficas y que vaya acompañado del levantamiento de las sanciones de Estados Unidos y la Unión Europea, añadiría un pilar crucial para la estabilidad regional.

Irán ya aceptó ese marco nuclear hace una década, en el Plan de Acción Integral Conjunto (JCPOA) que fue adoptado por el Consejo de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas en la Resolución 2231. Fue Estados Unidos, durante el primer mandato de Trump, y no Irán, quien se retiró del acuerdo.

Una paz integral refleja los fundamentos de la doctrina moderna de seguridad colectiva, incluida la propia Carta de las Naciones Unidas. Una paz duradera requiere el reconocimiento mutuo de la soberanía, la integridad territorial y las garantías de seguridad iguales para todos los Estados.

La seguridad regional es responsabilidad compartida de todos los Estados de la región, y cada uno de ellos se enfrenta a una obligación histórica. Esta propuesta de paz integral no es nueva, sino que ha sido defendida durante décadas por la Organización de Cooperación Islámica (57 países de mayoría musulmana) y la Liga de los Estados Árabes (22 Estados árabes).

Desde la Iniciativa de Paz Árabe de 2002, todos estos países han respaldado, cada año, el marco de «tierra por paz». Todos los principales Estados árabes e islámicos, aliados de los Estados Unidos, han desempeñado un papel crucial en la facilitación de la última ronda de negociaciones entre los Estados Unidos e Irán en Omán. Además, Arabia Saudita ha recordado claramente a los Estados Unidos que solo normalizará sus relaciones con Israel a condición de que se establezca un Estado palestino.

Los Estados Unidos se enfrentan a un momento de la verdad. ¿Realmente quieren la paz o quieren seguir el extremismo de Israel? Durante décadas, Estados Unidos ha seguido ciegamente los objetivos equivocados de Israel.

Las presiones políticas internas, las poderosas redes de presión, los errores de cálculo estratégicos y quizás un poco de chantaje acechando en los archivos de Epstein (¿quién sabe?) se han combinado para subordinar la diplomacia estadounidense a las ambiciones regionales de Israel.

La sumisión de Estados Unidos a Israel no beneficia a los intereses estadounidenses. Ha arrastrado a Estados Unidos a repetidas guerras regionales, ha socavado la confianza mundial en la política exterior estadounidense y ha debilitado el orden jurídico internacional que el propio Washington ayudó a construir después de 1945.

Una paz integral ofrece a Estados Unidos una oportunidad única para corregir el rumbo. Mediante la negociación de una paz regional integral basada en el derecho internacional, Estados Unidos podría recuperar la diplomacia genuina y ayudar a establecer una arquitectura de seguridad regional estable que beneficie a todas las partes, incluidos Israel y Palestina.

Oriente Medio se encuentra en una encrucijada entre la guerra sin fin y la paz integral. El marco para la paz existe.

Requiere, ante todo, la creación de un Estado palestino, garantías de seguridad para Israel y el resto de la región, un acuerdo nuclear pacífico que restablezca el acuerdo básico adoptado por la ONU hace una década, el levantamiento de las sanciones económicas, la aplicación imparcial del derecho internacional y una arquitectura diplomática que sustituya la fuerza militar por la cooperación en materia de seguridad.

El mundo debería unirse en torno a un marco integral y aprovechar esta oportunidad histórica para lograr la paz regional.

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A US-funded opposition journalist revealed the Trump DOJ has crafted a secret indictment of Venezuela’s Acting President to “hold it over her head,” and will execute it if she “derails.”

The Trump administration is using a secret indictment to assert leverage over Venezuela’s Acting President Delcy Rodríguez, according to the editor-in-chief of the US government-funded outlet, Armando.info.

“One of the information we manage is that the US is holding an indictment against [Rodriguez] to make it public, just in case she derails,” Valentina Lares Martiz revealed during a February 6, 2026 webinar hosted by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an outlet also sponsored by the US government.

“Just to hold it over her head?” asked OCCRP deputy editor Julia Wallace.

“Yeah, so, I think she, she and her brother [Jorge Rodríguez], they are in this survival mode, and they will have the capacity to move the pieces, as long as the US backs her up,” Armando.info’s Lares Martiz affirmed.

A January 17, 2026 report by the Associated Press revealed that the Drug Enforcement Administration classified Acting president Rodríguez as a “priority target” almost as soon as she was appointed as Vice President in 2018.

David Smilde, an academic who crusades for regime change in Venezuela at the US government and ExxonMobil-funded Atlantic Council, described the DEA investigation of Rodríguez as “logical.” Smilde explained to the AP that the investigation “gives the U.S. government leverage over her. She may fear that if she does not do as the Trump administration demands, she could end up with an indictment like Maduro.”

During the OCCRP webinar, Steven Dudley of the State Department-funded Insight Crime outlet remarked that “this isn’t without precedent, in terms of [the US government] hanging an indictment over somebody to cajole them into doing their bidding.”

Dudley added, “They don’t need an indictment to cajole people. They have a giant military, and they’ve shown that they’re willing to use that military. That is the biggest stick.”

Confronting “a military aggression unprecedented in our history”

Delcy Rodríguez stepped in as Acting President following a deadly US military raid on Caracas this January 3 which left over 100 dead, including 32 Cuban military officers, and resulted in the kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. In an interview with The Atlantic the following day, US President Donald Trump recognized Rodríguez as the new leader, but warned, “if she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”

Since then, Rodríguez has presided over the passage of an Organic Law on Hydrocarbons which rolled back the socialist reforms the late President Hugo Chavez made to the country’s state oil company, PDVSA. In a January 16 speech to Venezuela’s National Council of Economic Productivity, Rodríguez explained the impetus for the new law:

“Enough time has passed, and Venezuela has been subjected to an unprecedented economic blockade. Well, recently, there has been a military aggression unprecedented in our history, and Venezuela must move forward…without compromising historical principles or compromising Venezuelan dignity. And in that direction, we have made the decision, seeing the successful results of the business models contemplated in the organic anti-blockade law, to take the models that are there and incorporate them into the Organic Law on Hydrocarbons.”

While the law allows Venezuela to draw new revenue streams from an oil sector that has withstood years of punishing sanctions, the Trump administration has assumed custody of Venezuela’s oil revenue at the point of a gun, holding the profits in a private account in Qatar which is not accountable to Congress.

Rodríguez and her older brother, Jorge, have both served in influential roles under Maduro, with Delcy Rodriguez operating as Vice President while overseeing hydrocarbon policy. In 2018, she initiated a project to survive Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy, successfully guiding an Organic Anti-Blockade law through the Constituent Assembly which reformed PDVSA. Since Maduro’s abduction, the Rodríguez siblings have been under mounting pressure to accommodate onerous demands from Washington in order to prevent a destabilizing process of regime change. Looming behind every move is the memory of their father, Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, a leftist militant who was tortured to death in prison by CIA-trained interrogators under a pro-US government in 1976.

In the past, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has used sealed indictments to deny targets of its global lawfare regime the chance to pre-empt investigations. As The Grayzone revealed, Trump’s DOJ secretly indicted Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange on December 21, 2017, just one day after CIA spies learned that Assange was planning to leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he had been given sanctuary. On April 11, 2019, British police stormed the embassy on US orders and arrested Assange in a blatant violation of diplomatic sovereignty.

Colombian-born Venezuelan official Alex Saab was also the target of a secret US indictment that was only publicized after he was abducted from an airport in Cape Verde while on an official diplomatic mission in 2020.

During the OCCRP webinar, Armando.info’s Lares Martiz noted that the US slapped sanctions on Delcy Rodríguez in 2017, however, “she doesn’t have an open and formal investigation against her.”

But that could all change, she insisted, if the Acting President defies the Trump administration’s paternalistic instructions.

Pro-transparency Armando.info: based at a Delaware mailbox, funded by Washington

Lares Martiz is in a prime position to know if the US is preparing a secret indictment of Rodriguez, as the publication she edits, Armando.info, functions at the center of a network of US government-funded journalistic outlets which exist to shop dirt on Latin American leaders targeted by Washington.

Though its staff operate from Bogota, Colombia, Armando.info is registered at a post office box in Newark, Delaware, where it is listed by Delaware’s Division of Corporations as “not in good standing.”

One of Armando.info’s top donors is the National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA spin-off which channels US money into opposition parties and media promoting regime change. The outlet is also listed as a member of the “global network” of OCCRP, which has received most of its budget from the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

A 2024-25 Frontline documentary series about Armando.info’s work in Venezuela, “A Dangerous Assignment,” made it clear the outlet’s staff were dedicated anti-Chavista operatives seemingly coordinating their work with the US government. The documentary chronicled the investigation by Lares Martiz and her colleague, Roberto Deniz, of the Colombian-born Venezuelan official Alex Saab, who had spearheaded a food importation program known as CLAP that aimed to prevent widespread hunger amid crushing American sanctions by providing food at below market value to the Venezuelan public. Published by the US government’s Public Broadcasting Service, “A Dangerous Assignment” received “investment support” from Luminate, an NGO founded by US intelligence-adjacent billionaire Pierre Omidyar.

In 2020, Saab was abducted under orders from US authorities following a series of Armando.info reports accusing him of using the CLAP program as an avenue for corruption. He was released from US federal prison through a December 2023 prisoner swap. By this point, Armando.info’s leadership had left Venezuela following lawsuits by Attorney General Tarek William Saab.

In the aftermath of Maduro’s abduction, the Armando.info team is homing in on Saab once again, and apparently working to whip up a dossier on the newly-inaugurated president.

But during the OCCRP webinar, Lares Martiz conceded that she lacks compromising information on Delcy Rodriguez and her brother, Jorge: “they are hardly [in any] cases of corruption that I have written [about], or in Armando.info, or even OCCRP has investigated.”

But she suggested that US intelligence is actively investigating Venezuela’s state oil company in search of dirt on Venezuela’s new president. “Everything is related to corruption in PDVSA,” she remarked. “I think it’s going to be looked up very carefully.”

On January 16, Rodriguez met in her office with CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Later that month, CNN reported that the CIA “is poised to help actively manage the Trump administration’s dealings with Venezuela’s new leadership.”

Original article:  thegrayzone.com

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Sin dall’inizio

Gli storici cinesi definiscono la Cina contemporanea come uno “Stato-civiltà”, ossia il risultato di un lungo processo storico fondato su secoli di interazioni tra regioni caratterizzate da differenti etnie e tradizioni culturali. Ciascuna di esse ha contribuito alla formazione di una cultura politico-giuridica e amministrativa condivisa, così come allo sviluppo di una dimensione spirituale e artistica comune.

Questo percorso storico ha finito per prevalere sulle spinte centrifughe che avevano generato conflitti e guerre tra le diverse aree del territorio, inducendole infine, nel II secolo a.C., ad accettare l’esistenza di un unico centro politico e amministrativo. Tale unificazione avvenne attorno a un sistema giuridico particolarmente avanzato, elaborato dalla regione che in quel momento si impose sulle altre: il regno della dinastia Qin, che aveva già strutturato un modello statale fortemente centralizzato.

Sotto la dinastia Qin venne inoltre standardizzato il sistema di scrittura, rendendo possibile la raccolta e la sistematizzazione delle principali correnti filosofico-religiose maturate nei secoli precedenti, in particolare il confucianesimo e il taoismo. Queste tradizioni fornirono l’ossatura ideale dell’unità imperiale. Nonostante le successive fasi di frammentazione politica, tale impianto concettuale rese possibile la ricostruzione di quello Stato-civiltà nel quale ancora oggi la Cina moderna si riconosce.

Nel corso del XX secolo, lo Stato cinese ha attraversato, sotto il maoismo, un’evoluzione per certi versi analoga a quella vissuta dalla Russia sotto il regime sovietico. In entrambi i casi, il tentativo di sostituire le antiche radici spirituali con una visione materialista, volta a mettere in luce le contraddizioni e le disuguaglianze sociali ereditate da strutture di tipo feudale, ha condotto all’esperienza del socialismo.

Col senno di poi, è tuttavia evidente che tale esperienza fu anche il prodotto di un innesto ideologico operato in Russia da ambienti che, già a partire dal tardo Settecento, miravano allo smantellamento delle sovranità nazionali. Ne derivò un sistema carico di contraddizioni, funzionale in larga misura agli interessi geopolitici di un Occidente dominato da élite oligarchiche, i cui obiettivi avevano alimentato l’espansione coloniale dell’Impero britannico.

Successivamente, sia in Russia sia in Cina, si è manifestata la crisi di questa organizzazione sociale, fondata essenzialmente sulla concezione marxista del materialismo storico. Una crisi dovuta all’incapacità di tale paradigma di prevenire fenomeni come la corruzione e l’iper-burocratizzazione, che finiscono per allontanare i cittadini dallo Stato e per attribuire a funzionari e apparati amministrativi un potere sproporzionato, spesso esercitato a scapito dell’interesse collettivo.

Civiltà, cos’altro?

In assenza di una civiltà intesa come patrimonio etico e filosofico condiviso, senza un retroterra spirituale che riconosca l’individuo come centro dotato di una personalità sovrana e capace di concepire, in termini etici, il bene proprio e altrui, qualsiasi sistema politico è destinato alla decadenza.

Un gruppo sociale che si propone di riformare in senso positivo l’assetto della società e dello Stato, una volta raggiunti i propri obiettivi, non riesce a preservare la coesione necessaria alla costruzione di una comunità stabile se non dispone di una solida base etico-filosofica. È per questa ragione che il materialismo, sul piano ontologico, risulta incapace di garantire una tale coesione.

La svolta intrapresa da Vladimir Putin e da Xi Jinping si colloca precisamente nel tentativo di correggere questa distorsione. Entrambi hanno riconosciuto la necessità di restituire alle rispettive comunità nazionali lo spirito originario che ne ha plasmato la civiltà, quel principio ispiratore che ne ha fatto una risorsa non solo per sé, ma per l’intera umanità.

È in questo contesto che emerge la questione del soft power. Molti analisti occidentali tendono a interpretare l’orientamento tradizionalista assunto dalla Cina come uno strumento di proiezione globale volto a competere con l’egemonia angloamericana. In tale prospettiva, il recupero di una dimensione etica della politica, anche sul piano delle relazioni internazionali, sarebbe motivato esclusivamente da calcoli di convenienza.

Gli stessi osservatori, tuttavia, riconoscono che il confucianesimo, essendo storicamente e antropologicamente ben definito, risulterebbe poco efficace come strumento di soft power globale, poiché incapace di oltrepassare i confini identitari che invece il soft power anglosassone riesce a superare attraverso la cancel culture e l’ideologia woke.

Questa apparente contraddizione finisce in realtà per confermare la genuinità della svolta intrapresa, orientata anzitutto a risolvere le tensioni interne generate dal modello cinese di socialismo di mercato. Al tempo stesso, essa rafforza l’idea di una reale volontà di cooperazione internazionale, in cui il concetto di “destino condiviso” non rappresenta una semplice formula propagandistica, ma un principio concreto su cui edificare relazioni paritarie e reciprocamente vantaggiose, fondate sulla logica win-win.

L’Occidente dovrà prima o poi riconoscere che il nuovo ordine multipolare non è nato per competere con l’Occidente, ma per fermarne la corsa che rischiava di trascinare il mondo nel baratro.

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Back to square one

Here we go again. Years go by, but the U.S.’s obsessions remain the same. With the new balance of power between spheres of influence and the updated Donroe Doctrine of the NSS, after Venezuela it is now Cuba’s turn.

On Thursday, January 29, 2026, President Trump signed an executive order declaring a “national emergency,” claiming that Cuba poses an alleged “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the security of the United States. The measure introduces new tariffs on countries that “sell or otherwise supply oil to Cuba,” with the aim of exacerbating the island’s energy crisis, which has already worsened significantly since the U.S. attack on Venezuela.

“The order establishes a new tariff system that allows the United States to apply additional duties on imports from any country that supplies oil to Cuba, directly or indirectly,” the document reads. To be fair, the text does not automatically impose tariffs, but provides for a case-by-case assessment, while for implementation, it gives the Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, the power to determine whether a country sells or supplies oil to Cuba, either directly or through intermediaries.

Subsequently, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is authorized to “take all necessary measures,” including issuing new regulations to apply coercive measures against countries that send oil to the island. However, the Executive reserves the right to modify or revoke these measures if Cuba or the countries involved take “significant steps” to align themselves with “U.S. security and foreign policy objectives.”

The reasons? Classic American rhetoric: Washington accuses Havana of “aligning” itself with states and “malign actors hostile to the United States,” citing among them the People’s Republic of China, Iran, and Russia, which are also responsible for maintaining “the largest signals intelligence facility” outside their own territory in Cuba. Furthermore, Cuba is accused of continuing to “spread its communist ideas, policies, and practices in the Western Hemisphere,” putting U.S. foreign policy at risk.

A familiar script, isn’t it?

War against Cuba

After the U.S. bombing of Caracas, during which President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were allegedly kidnapped, Washington’s threats against Cuba have become constant.

The new executive order aims to deepen the blockade that the Cuban people have been suffering for over 60 years, putting pressure on countries in the region to effectively adhere to this aggressive policy. At the same time, the new measures seek to prevent any oil triangulation aimed at circumventing sanctions. Cuba currently consumes about 120,000 barrels of oil per day. About 30% comes from domestic production, while the remaining two-thirds are imported. The island’s main suppliers are Venezuela, Mexico, and, to a lesser extent, Russia. It is estimated that last year Caracas sent between 27,000 and 35,000 barrels per day, accounting for about 29% of Cuban energy consumption. However, due to the military blockade and Washington’s restrictions on Venezuelan oil, these supplies have been cut off. The new executive order now appears to directly target Mexican exports.

Faced with growing U.S. pressure, President Claudia Sheinbaum recently stated that sending oil to Cuba is “a sovereign decision” by Mexico, recalling that all Mexican governments, regardless of their political orientation, have maintained relations with the island in accordance with the principles of non-interference and self-determination.

A week earlier, during her regular press conference on Wednesday, January 21, Sheinbaum had highlighted the effects of the blockade: “What does an economic blockade mean? It means sanctions against countries that offer support. The U.S. has intensified this. When there is a blockade, it is not possible to import or export freely, and the conditions for a country’s development become extremely difficult.”

According to Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), in the first nine months of 2025, Mexico exported 17,200 barrels per day to Cuba. In the last quarter, the volume decreased due to pressure from Washington. Declaring a “national emergency,” the order signed by Trump allows the government to impose additional tariffs even on partners with free trade agreements, such as Mexico, which is part of the USMCA along with the United States and Canada. Considering that between 80% and 84% of Mexican exports are destined for the U.S. market, this is a particularly sensitive measure. At the same time, this situation could fuel inflationary pressures in the U.S., especially in sectors with highly integrated supply chains. Moreover, by including anyone who supplies oil to Cuba, directly or indirectly, among those who could be sanctioned, Washington also aims to block shipments for humanitarian reasons and discourage countries that might send aid via supplies from Russia or China.

It is clear that the intensification of hostilities against Cuba is part of the maximum pressure policy already adopted during Trump’s first term, even going so far as to hinder the arrival of essential goods to deal with the 2020 health crisis.

In the midst of a severe energy crisis, characterized by prolonged and recurring blackouts, the current attempt at energy strangulation is taking place in a context in which Cuba is experiencing one of the deepest economic crises in its history. With GDP contracting by more than 11% over the last five years, fuel and electricity shortages not only affect the daily lives of families, but also undermine the ability to produce the goods and services needed to overcome the crisis.

In other words, Cuba must give in, willingly or by force.

A history littered with sanctions

To fully understand the scope of the current measures, it is necessary to place them in the broader historical context of the economic sanctions that the United States has been applying against Cuba since the early years of the Cold War. After the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and Fidel Castro’s rise to power, relations between Washington and Havana deteriorated rapidly, especially following the nationalization of U.S. property on the island. In 1960, the Eisenhower administration imposed the first trade restrictions on exports to Cuba, and in 1962, President John F. Kennedy formalized a near-total economic embargo, banning most commercial and financial exchanges. This embargo was part of the United States’ strategy of containing communism vis-à-vis the Soviet Union and its allies at a time of high tension that culminated in the 1962 missile crisis.

Over the following decades, the sanctions system was progressively tightened and structured through a series of laws passed by Congress. Among the most significant are the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 (also known as the Torricelli Act), which further restricted trade with the island and introduced restrictions on foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies, and the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, which codified the embargo into law, removing its revocation from the sole decision of the president and giving Congress a central role. The latter law also extended the extraterritorial scope of sanctions, providing for the possibility of legal action against foreign companies that ‘profited’ from assets nationalized after the revolution.

With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba lost its main economic ally and faced a severe crisis known as the “Periodo Especial.” Despite the changed international context, the embargo remained in force, justified by Washington on grounds related to the promotion of democracy and human rights on the island. In the 2000s, the George W. Bush administration further tightened certain restrictions, particularly on travel and remittances.

A partial reversal of this trend occurred during the presidency of Barack Obama, who in 2014 announced a process of normalizing diplomatic relations with Cuba. Embassies were reopened, some restrictions on travel, remittances, and certain trade were eased, and the possibility of cooperation in sectors such as telecommunications and civil aviation was expanded. However, the legislative embargo remained formally in force, as only Congress can completely repeal it.

With the arrival of the Trump administration in 2017, many of the openings introduced by Obama were revoked. Washington reinstated travel restrictions, further limited financial transactions, added Cuba to the list of state sponsors of terrorism (in 2021), and fully activated Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, allowing lawsuits against foreign companies operating on nationalized property. This context also includes measures aimed at hindering energy supplies to the island, particularly targeting oil shipments from Venezuela and threatening sanctions against shipping companies and third countries involved in transport.

U.S. sanctions against Cuba are therefore not limited to a bilateral trade embargo, but include a complex system of financial, banking, insurance, and maritime restrictions, with extraterritorial effects that can also affect companies and governments of third countries. The new tariffs and measures announced are part of this tradition, further expanding the tools available to the U.S. executive to exert economic pressure. The tariff element represents a significant development, as it allows the U.S. to indirectly target trading partners that maintain energy relations with Cuba, even if those relations do not directly violate international law.

Over the years, the international community has repeatedly expressed its opposition to the embargo: the UN General Assembly annually approves a resolution calling for its end, with broad consensus among member states. However, the U.S. has maintained its position, arguing that sanctions are a legitimate foreign policy tool aimed at promoting political change on the island.

The executive order signed by Trump and the new tariff measures are part of a long history of tensions between the United States and Cuba, which began in the midst of the Cold War and has never been fully resolved. From the 1962 embargo to the laws of the 1990s, to the recent energy and financial restrictions, U.S. policy toward the island has made extensive use of economic instruments to pursue strategic and political objectives.

In the current context, characterized by a deep economic and energy crisis in Cuba and renewed geopolitical tensions, the introduction of new tariffs and the threat of sanctions against third countries represent a further tightening of Washington’s line. At the same time, these measures raise questions about the regional economic effects and possible repercussions for both Cuba and the trading partners involved.

The issue of sanctions against Cuba remains a central issue in U.S. foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere, a dossier that has its roots in the heart of the 20th century and which, unfortunately, continues to evolve. But how long can it last, or rather, how long will Donald Trump wait before carrying out his new ‘peace mission’?

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En las últimas dos semanas se han enviado dos mensajes importantes a Irán, ambos rechazados.

Uno procedía de Estados Unidos y el otro de Israel. El primero era: «Nosotros [Estados Unidos] llevaremos a cabo un ataque limitado y ustedes deberían aceptarlo; o, al menos, dar solo una respuesta simbólica». Teherán rechazó esta petición, afirmando que consideraría cualquier ataque como el inicio de una guerra a gran escala.

El mensaje de Israel, transmitido a través de uno de los diversos mediadores, era: «No participaremos en el ataque estadounidense». Por lo tanto, pedía a Irán que no atacara a Israel.

Esta petición también recibió una respuesta negativa, junto con la aclaración explícita de que, si Estados Unidos iniciaba una acción militar, Israel sería atacado inmediatamente. Paralelamente, Irán informó a todos los Estados de la región de que cualquier ataque lanzado desde su territorio o espacio aéreo daría lugar a un ataque iraní contra cualquiera que facilitara dicha acción militar estadounidense.

Como contexto, la percepción iraní de la amenaza de una acción militar estadounidense superó el nivel de amenaza manejable, convirtiéndose en una amenaza existencial. En consecuencia, escribe el analista iraní Mostafa Najafi, los dirigentes iraníes

llegaron a la conclusión de que un ataque estadounidense, aunque fuera de alcance limitado, [no] pondría fin al conflicto… [Más bien, se traduciría] en una sombra de guerra persistente y en mayores costes de seguridad, económicos y políticos para el país. Sobre esta base, una respuesta global a cualquier ataque, aun aceptando sus consecuencias, se considera una estrategia para restablecer la disuasión e impedir que continúe una presión militar prolongada.

Según el servicio informativo de Hallel Rosen del canal israelí Channel 14 sobre las conversaciones entre el comandante estadounidense del CENTCOM, el general Cooper, y sus homólogos israelíes el 25 de enero, parece que Cooper y su equipo dijeron a sus colegas israelíes que la administración estadounidense solo buscaba una operación «limpia, rápida y gratuita en Irán», que no requeriría un gasto considerable de recursos, ni implicaría la participación de Estados Unidos, ni causaría complicaciones generalizadas dentro de Irán.

Irán, por supuesto, no es Venezuela. Parece que la búsqueda de Trump de una operación destacada para Irán, con un enfoque «In-Boom-Out», está resultando difícil de alcanzar. Implica un riesgo demasiado alto de no ser considerado un candidato ganador, especialmente en un momento en que la popularidad de Trump está en declive.

Los enviados estadounidenses Steve Witkoff y Jared Kushner habían llegado a Israel (desde Davos, donde se habían centrado tanto en Ucrania como en Gaza) para reunirse con Netanyahu el sábado, cuando el equipo del CENTCOM estaba en la ciudad.

Sin duda, Witkoff transmitió a Netanyahu, desde el punto de vista político, las dudas de Trump sobre el posible ataque a Irán, que el general Cooper estaba esbozando en Tel Aviv.

El mensaje principal que Witkoff habría transmitido era la invitación que Trump había hecho ese mismo fin de semana tanto a Netanyahu como a Putin para que se unieran al Consejo de Paz de Trump (incluido el componente de Gaza).

Putin afirmó estar dispuesto a responder a la invitación de Trump al Consejo de Paz, siempre y cuando los documentos fueran examinados por su Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, y también sugirió que Moscú podría estar dispuesta a pagar la cuota de 1000 millones de dólares exigida para la adhesión permanente, retirándola de los activos rusos congelados en Estados Unidos, añadiendo que también se podrían utilizar fondos adicionales congelados para reconstruir «los territorios que han sufrido durante las hostilidades entre Rusia y Ucrania [–] una vez firmado el acuerdo de paz».

Putin declaró que tenía la intención de plantear estas últimas ideas en una reunión al día siguiente con Witkoff y Kushner, así como con el presidente palestino Abbas, cuya visita a Moscú estaba prevista para ese mismo día.

De este modo, se selló el punto de encuentro entre el conflicto ucraniano y el de Gaza.

La atención mundial se centra en la niña de los ojos de Trump: el plan para la reconstrucción de Gaza. Este proyecto estrella promovido por Trump, escribe Anna Barsky en Ma’ariv (en hebreo),

pretende transformar la Franja en una entidad civil restaurada y próspera, siguiendo el modelo de los Estados del Golfo». Al frente de esta visión se encuentran dos de sus asesores más cercanos: Jared Kushner y Steve Witkoff, que están presionando a Trump para que presione a Israel para que acepte iniciar la reconstrucción en las zonas de Gaza actualmente bajo el control de las FDI, dentro de la zona desmilitarizada.

Mientras los asesores más cercanos al presidente Trump presionan para que se reconstruya rápidamente la Franja, Israel insiste en que, sin un desarme completo, real e irreversible de Hamás, no puede haber reconstrucción, ni siquiera en el territorio bajo control de las FDI… [El plan Witkoff] representa, por tanto, un resultado totalmente contrario a la visión del mundo de Netanyahu, afirman fuentes israelíes… Según ustedes, el primer ministro no solo desea impedir un escenario de este tipo, sino que también dispone de instrumentos prácticos para hacerlo».

«¿Por qué la administración Trump está invirtiendo tanta energía en la reconstrucción de Gaza?», preguntó Nahum Barnea, el decano de los corresponsales políticos israelíes, a un hombre que ha estado en el centro de las conversaciones entre los dos gobiernos durante el primer año de Trump:

Dinero», respondió el hombre. «Son solo negocios. Reconstruir Gaza costará cientos de miles de millones de dólares. El dinero debería provenir de los Estados del Golfo. Los empresarios cercanos a Trump están tratando de obtener su parte, en comisiones de intermediación, en empresas de construcción y evacuación, en seguridad y mano de obra.

«Espere», dijo [Barnea]. «Pensaba que Turquía y Egipto estaban vigilando los fondos para la reconstrucción, no los partidarios de Trump». [El hombre] sonrió. «Ambos. Le sorprenderé», dijo. «Los empresarios israelíes también están mostrando interés. Creen que parte de este buen material acabará en sus manos».

Barnea estaba asombrado: «Los negacionistas que destruyeron las casas de Gaza despejarán sus ruinas y construirán sus ciudades. ¡Final feliz!».

Así es como están evolucionando las cosas. La pregunta que atormenta a la clase política israelí es qué pasaría si Trump decidiera que el proyecto de reconstrucción de Gaza se impulse sin el consentimiento de Israel:

Tengan en cuenta que «Kushner y Witkoff no se consideran «adornos». Tienen una visión coherente para Gaza, que contrasta claramente con la visión israelí», afirma Barsky citando a su fuente de alto nivel.

Barnea observa con ironía: «Netanyahu se asegurará de hacer un farol en la segunda fase del plan». Sin embargo, el amigo de Barnea sonríe: «Puede que no haya reconstrucción, [pero] habrá dinero», dijo.

El presidente Putin, sin duda, ve todo esto. ¿Y adivinen qué? Cuando Witkoff y Kushner llegaron a Moscú, deseosos de discutir la admisión de Putin en la Junta de Paz, los primeros iban acompañados de Josh Gruenbaum, otro inversor judío estadounidense —un nuevo miembro activo del equipo negociador de Trump— que había venido a negociar con Netanyahu el control posmilitar de Gaza bajo la Junta de Paz de Trump. (Gruenbaum acaba de ser nombrado asesor principal de la Junta de Paz).

Witkoff, Kushner y Gruenbaum claramente se preocupan por el proyecto inmobiliario en Gaza. Putin debe darse cuenta de ello.

Probablemente Putin tiene controlada a la administración estadounidense. Al fin y al cabo, fue él quien sugirió que parte de los fondos congelados por Rusia podrían utilizarse para reconstruir «los territorios que han sufrido durante las hostilidades entre Rusia y Ucrania».

En Davos, Trump mencionó un fondo de reconstrucción de 800 000 millones de dólares para Ucrania, no como una subvención directa (para gran decepción de Zelensky), sino condicionado a la retirada ucraniana de Donbás, algo que Zelensky rechazó.

Sin embargo, Zelensky necesita desesperadamente dinero ahora (como estafas que repartir entre sus seguidores).

Y Witkoff y Kushner necesitan el apoyo de Putin para desbloquear los fondos del Golfo para el «proyecto insignia» de Trump: la reconstrucción de Gaza.

También necesitan el apoyo de Putin para presionar a Netanyahu para que finalmente inicie la Fase 2 de Gaza. Putin se reunió con el presidente Abbas poco antes de su encuentro con Witkoff, Kushner y Gruenbaum.

Putin tiene peso en esto; en su respuesta inicial al Consejo de Paz, destacó en particular la importancia de las decisiones del Consejo de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas sobre Palestina. Si Witkoff quiere que el peso político de Putin conduzca a la reconstrucción de Gaza, en contra de los intereses de Netanyahu, la dimensión palestina tendrá que entrar en juego, de una forma u otra.

Ushakov, asistente de Putin, también señaló que «se discutió la situación de Groenlandia».

¿Una influencia adicional? ¿El trío empresarial discutió la explotación conjunta del Ártico por parte de Estados Unidos y Rusia?

En la geopolítica de Trump, todo es «negocio».

Traducción: Observatorio de trabajador@s en lucha

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President Donald Trump’s proposed Board of Peace had decidedly rocky beginnings. In Europe, only Hungary and Bulgaria have joined so far. Others, in the West and around the world, have expressed reservations. It isn’t difficult to see why. The presentation of the new international organisation was a typically Trumpian cocktail that was heavy on braggadocio and light on detail: its mission undefined, with an unclear scope (is it about Gaza, Ukraine, or the whole world?), a garish logo, weirdly reminiscent of Command and Conquer: Red Alert or of Sid Meyer’s Civilisation series, and the eyebrow-raising suggestion that joining the group might require a one billion dollar entry fee all contributed to make the project seem a tad unserious. Should we give it a chance, though?

When one strips away the aesthetics, the branding, and the inevitable Trumpian bombast, what he ends up with is a diagnosis that is actually profoundly reasonable. The truth of the matter is that the system of performatively multilateral global governance we inherited from the mid-20th century isn’t just cracking; it’s sinking. Though meant as a sort of “assembly of nations” that might fairly represent humanity’s diverging interests and concerns, the UN is now one of the clearest symbols of that failure.

The UN is a decent idea gone awry. Everyone—and that includes its most committed defenders—knows it. While the Security Council was designed as the neuralgic centre of the global order and as a tacit recognition of the unique role of the world’s great powers in shaping international security, its membership has long failed to accurately represent the existing balance of power. Its structure mirrors the geopolitical realities of 1945, not those of 2026. It is incomprehensible, for instance, that the world’s third-largest economy by purchasing power parity-measured GDP, India, is denied a seat at the Council. As diminished as Germany’s own global stature may be, it is hard to understand why London, but not Berlin, enjoys membership. The same goes for Japan and Brazil, a state of 220 million people that is hegemonic in South America as well as the South Atlantic. This fossilisation of the Council has made it increasingly illegitimate in the eyes of the world. Worse, by failing to genuinely include the world’s main powerbrokers, it is becoming increasingly useless.

The eeriest trend, however, is the transformation of the UN from a forum of states into an ideological actor. The United Nations has become a bloated, self-reverential lair of left-wing, progressive activists. More often than not, UN agencies sound more like a permanent campus seminar than like the meeting place of the world’s nations and civilisations. The NGO-isation of the UN is a doubly unfortunate phenomenon: not only because it distracts resources and attention from what actually matters, but because it destroys the credibility such an organisation ought to enjoy.

Indeed, UN bodies routinely promote radical gender ideology entirely detached from the cultural, religious, and legal traditions of most of the world’s population. These are ideas that do not convince more than a minority even in the West, the only region in the world where they hold any clout—outside the Euro-American space, they are, and always have been, almost non-existent. Nevertheless, concepts such as ‘gender identity’ and ‘reproductive justice’ are aggressively exported by unaccountable UN bureaucrats as universal norms. They repeatedly get smuggled into development aid, humanitarian assistance, and peacekeeping mandates—an abuse of trust that nothing in the UN Charter appears to justify. Countries that dissent, whether they are non-Western or Western conservative governments, are often not treated as equal partners and as sovereign states with the right to independently determine their policies but as moral delinquents in need of bullying and re-education.

This is also the case with the UN’s approach to issues of climate and migration. Both are almost always infused with an unmistakably left-wing worldview: a visible, ardent hostility to national borders, a suspicion of national sovereignty, and a reflexive preference for technocratic regulation over democratic choice. The Global Compact for Migration, for instance, effectively reframed mass migration as an unquestionable moral good while demonising states that insist on border control. The world has no need for a UN that no longer acts as a forum of equal, sovereign nations and instead attempts to bully them into accepting Berkeley-style liberalism.

Today’s UN is increasingly made up of Western-educated bureaucrats, activist lawyers, and NGO professionals who share the same assumptions, use the same jargon, and police the same moral boundaries. Far from mediating between competing national interests, the UN now routinely takes sides—and, hélas, always the same. In this context, the idea of starting anew is not as mad as it sounds. Building a new institution from scratch may, in fact, be the only realistic way to recover the original promise of the United Nations: a great gathering where the peoples of the world can discuss, in equality and dignity, the issues that humanity faces.

Such an organisation would not pretend to transcend power politics; it would manage them. It would not seek to morally homogenise humanity but to provide a space where genuinely divergent civilisations, interests, and values can coexist without being forced into a single liberal mould. Trump’s other pet project, the creation of a new international forum that replaces the G7 and unites what Washington sees as the world’s foremost powers—the U.S., China, Russia, India, and Japan—could further modernise global governance and boost international stability. The concept would draw inspiration from Prince Klemens von Metternich’s 19th-century Concert of Europe, now effectively building a Global Concert, tasked with defining global zones of interest and preventing great power competition from leading to overt conflict. No human system is perfect, and neither would this be—but, whatever its flaws, they nevertheless seem milder than the real, palpable insufficiencies of today’s global institutions.

The merits of a new architecture of global governance that transcends the United Nations have, naturally, fallen victim to the Trump Derangement Syndrome that infects much of the Western world’s press and political classes. The White House’s convoluted presentation of the idea certainly made it easier to stain its reputation. But neither the Board of Peace nor Trump’s possible replacement for the G7 and the UN Security Council, possibly the ‘C-5’, should be rejected outright. We do need new institutions that are global without being globalist. We must, indeed, cleanse them from the consequences of decades of liberal ideological hegemony. In our new, tense era, we need organisations that are focused more on conflict resolution and less on ideological promotion. All that is true. And, if Trump’s proposal at least forces that important conversation to take place, it will already have been worth it.

Original article: The European Conservative

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From the beginning

Chinese historians define contemporary China as a “civilization-state,” that is, the result of a long historical process based on centuries of interaction between regions characterized by different ethnicities and cultural traditions. Each of these has contributed to the formation of a shared political, legal, and administrative culture, as well as to the development of a common spiritual and artistic dimension.

This historical path ultimately prevailed over the centrifugal forces that had generated conflicts and wars between different areas of the territory, finally leading them, in the 2nd century BC, to accept the existence of a single political and administrative center. This unification took place around a particularly advanced legal system, developed by the region that at that time imposed itself on the others: the kingdom of the Qin dynasty, which had already structured a highly centralized state model.

Under the Qin dynasty, the writing system was also standardized, making it possible to collect and systematize the main philosophical and religious currents that had developed in previous centuries, in particular Confucianism and Taoism. These traditions provided the ideal framework for imperial unity. Despite subsequent phases of political fragmentation, this conceptual framework made it possible to rebuild the state-civilization with which modern China still identifies today.

During the 20th century, under Maoism, the Chinese state underwent an evolution that was in some ways similar to that experienced by Russia under the Soviet regime. In both cases, the attempt to replace ancient spiritual roots with a materialistic vision, aimed at highlighting the contradictions and social inequalities inherited from feudal structures, led to the experience of socialism.

In hindsight, however, it is clear that this experience was also the product of an ideological grafting carried out in Russia by circles that, as early as the late 18th century, aimed to dismantle national sovereignties. The result was a system fraught with contradictions, largely serving the geopolitical interests of a West dominated by oligarchic elites, whose objectives had fueled the colonial expansion of the British Empire.

Subsequently, both in Russia and China, the crisis of this social organization, based essentially on the Marxist conception of historical materialism, became apparent. This crisis was due to the inability of this paradigm to prevent phenomena such as corruption and hyper-bureaucratization, which end up alienating citizens from the state and giving officials and administrative apparatuses disproportionate power, often exercised to the detriment of the collective interest.

Civilization, what else?

In the absence of a civilization understood as a shared ethical and philosophical heritage, without a spiritual background that recognizes the individual as a center endowed with a sovereign personality and capable of conceiving, in ethical terms, one’s own good and that of others, any political system is doomed to decline.

A social group that aims to reform the structure of society and the state in a positive sense, once it has achieved its objectives, cannot preserve the cohesion necessary to build a stable community if it does not have a solid ethical-philosophical foundation. It is for this reason that materialism, on an ontological level, is incapable of guaranteeing such cohesion.

The shift undertaken by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping is precisely an attempt to correct this distortion. Both have recognized the need to restore to their respective national communities the original spirit that shaped their civilization, the inspiring principle that made it a resource not only for themselves but for all of humanity.

It is in this context that the question of soft power emerges. Many Western analysts tend to interpret China’s traditionalist orientation as a tool for global projection aimed at competing with Anglo-American hegemony. From this perspective, the recovery of an ethical dimension to politics, including in international relations, would be motivated solely by calculations of convenience.

The same observers, however, recognize that Confucianism, being historically and anthropologically well defined, would be ineffective as a tool of global soft power, as it is unable to transcend the boundaries of identity that Anglo-Saxon soft power manages to overcome through cancel culture and woke ideology.

This apparent contradiction actually confirms the authenticity of the change undertaken, aimed primarily at resolving the internal tensions generated by the Chinese model of market socialism. At the same time, it reinforces the idea of a genuine desire for international cooperation, in which the concept of a “shared destiny” is not simply a propaganda slogan, but a concrete principle on which to build equal and mutually beneficial relationships based on a win-win logic.

Sooner or later, the West will have to recognize that the new multipolar order was not created to compete with the West, but to stop its race that risked dragging the world into the abyss.