Analyses
Yassin al-Haj Saleh: After Assad, Syria Must Free Itself from Sectarianism
Riccardo Cristiano 12 December 2024
Yassin al-Haj Saleh, born in 1961, is one of Syria’s foremost intellectuals and a long-standing dissident against the Assad regime. He spent sixteen years in prison for “political reasons,” including time in the maximum-security facility of Tadmur, also known as Palmyra. With the onset of the Syrian Spring, he immediately emerged as an opponent of the regime.
  • Tectonic Shifts, Not Total Decoupling: Shaun Breslin
    on U.S.-China Trade War
    Alessandra Tommasi 17 April 2025
    Tit-for-tat tariff hikes have paused (for now) at 145% on Chinese imports into the U.S., countered by 125% levies on American goods heading to China. But the trade war shows no signs of ending: the White House is already threatening to raise tariffs again – this time to a staggering 245% – “as a result of China’s retaliatory actions,” and is not ruling out that countries – from neighboring Latin America to Europe – may soon have to choose between Beijing and Washington. Xi Jinping has vowed that China would “fight to the end.” For a Chinese perspective on this trade war, Reset DOC has reached out to Professor Shaun Breslin, Director of the European Hub for Contemporary China.
  • Obama: Core Principles of Democracy Are Eroding
    Under Trump’s Agenda
    Editorial Board 10 April 2025
    “It is up to all of us to fix this.” In his first public speech since Donald Trump’s return to the presidency, Barack Obama urged Americans to defend democratic values and called on institutions—particularly universities and law firms—to resist the administration’s attacks. “I have deep differences of opinion with my most immediate successor—who’s now president once again,” Obama told students of Hamilton College, without naming Trump directly, “but at least for most of my time, I’d say the post-World War II era, there was a broad consensus between Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, liberals around a certain set of rules where we settle our differences—[…] bonds that transcend party, region, or ideology.”
  • Slobodian: Beyond Neoliberalism, Techno-Feudal Dystopias Riding the Far Right’s Wave
    Fulvia Giachetti 9 April 2025
    Are we witnessing the rise of a new world order—one ruled not by governments, but by private armies, tech tycoons, and corporate fiefdoms? What sounds like dystopian fiction may, in fact, reflect the dream of a fringe of anarcho-capitalists, now alarmingly close to real power, especially within the ascendant far right. But is it really a “Techno-Feudal” turn or something more fragmented and chaotic? To make sense of the forces at play—their ambitions, strategies, and contradictions—Reset DOC spoke with historian Quinn Slobodian, author of Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World without Democracy.
  • Habermas: Europe Must Go Ahead with its Integration
    and Self-Defense
    Jürgen Habermas 3 April 2025
    Clearly there has never been seamless agreement among the leading national politicians of the West – and, more broadly, of the G7 countries – on their political perspectives; but they have always shared a background understanding of their affiliation to “the” West under the leadership of the United States. This political constellation has disintegrated with the most recent return to power of Donald Trump and the systemic change in the United States that this has set in motion, even if, formally speaking, the fate of NATO remains an open question for the time being. From a European perspective, this epochal break has far-reaching consequences – both for the further course and possible end of the war in Ukraine and for the need, willingness and ability of the European Union to find a redemptive response to the new situation. Otherwise, Europe will also be drawn into the maelstrom of the declining superpower.
  • Tulsa Confronts Its History: Reparations, 100 Years After the Massacre
    Matteo Muzio 20 March 2025
    Tulsa was the site of the 1921 massacre, the largest racially motivated mass killing in U.S. history. The attack led to the destruction of Greenwood, one of the very few affluent, majority-Black neighborhoods in the entire country at the time. Out of its 11,000 residents, some had accumulated wealth equivalent to a million dollars; six families even owned private planes. Greenwood was known as “Black Wall Street.” Today, under the leadership of Tulsa’s Democratic mayor Monroe Nichols – elected in 2024 – there are plans to rebuild the neighborhood and restore its legacy.
  • In the Polish Presidential Elections, Ukraine Will Tilt the Balance
    Fabio Turco 17 March 2025
    On May 18, Polish voters will head to the polls for the first round of the presidential elections. A ballot, which is highly likely, is scheduled for June 1. After a year and a half in power, the center-liberal-progressive coalition—comprising the Civic Coalition, Third Way, and Lewica parties, and led by Donald Tusk—faces a true validation test. Depending on the outcome, this election could have significant repercussions for the legislature.
  • With the PKK’s Demise, Erdogan Courts the Kurdish Vote
    Mariano Giustino 12 March 2025
    The fact that one of the longest conflicts in contemporary history, which has resulted in over 40,000 deaths, could soon come to an end is undoubtedly an event worth celebrating. Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan has ordered the armed wing of the party he founded in 1978 to end the armed struggle and dissolve the organization. Is this the end of an era? It’s still too early to say.
  • Is “International Law” Dead?
    Gaetano Pentassuglia 6 March 2025
    However exceptionally dramatic and complex current (new and old) conflicts like Ukraine and Palestine are, it is hard to believe that the vast and long-established network of legal relationships between states, and between the latter and non-state actors alike—the almost unlimited number of areas governed by over 250,000 international treaties, customary rules, and over 2,000 sectoral global regimes—will fall to pieces as a result of contingent geopolitical considerations (even though, admittedly, the new geopolitical context may stay with us for some time to come).
  • Trump’s Old-World Vision Clashes with China’s 21st-Century Rise (p. II)
    Seán Golden 3 March 2025
    It is extremely difficult to accurately predict what will unfold in Trump’s relations with China or their effects on the rest of the world, but it may be possible to identify and analyze some of the major scenarios in which they will unfold, including the emerging post-Bretton Woods world order, world trade, the role of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in a global setting, and security issues.
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