Given that US foreign policy is dominated by an obsession with countering Russian- and Chinese-led economic integration initiatives, it is difficult to read Washington’s increased engagement with Central Asia as anything but an effort to contain Moscow and Beijing, which have similarly upped their investments in the region in recent years.

The US is using what remains of its strength to try to restore its global position. This aggressive drive is fueled by its long history of wars which helped to recast American society into one managed by corporations and the state. What is paradoxical is that its imperial ideology happens to be not fascism but a form of liberalism refitted for rationalizing military and political expansion.

When it comes to critical minerals, Canada and the US are dead set on replacing China’s supply with reserves elsewhere, namely Latin America and Africa. And given the exploitative way that mining firms function, “decoupling” means more exploitation, more undermining of state sovereignty, and more conflict with those who oppose selling out their mining industries to foreign capital.

We must do all we can to counter the climate of war fervour being incited as rivalry intensifies, writes CD columnist John Clarke. The current anti-Chinese campaign has some very powerful backers and it is being pursued relentlessly. It is ugly, toxic and reactionary to the core and we need to build a united opposition to challenge and defeat it.

America’s goal has become to preserve its imperial hegemony no matter the cost to others. Whereas Xi insists on the necessity of a more open world in order to allow the further development of today’s immense global forces of production the United States has regressed toward the reestablishment of trade blocs, economic sanctions and war in order to maintain its dominance.

China’s recent pledge to send a peace delegation to Ukraine in the hope of resolving the country’s ongoing war with Russia is a hopeful sign the bloody conflict may soon come to an end. But the US’s general hostility to Chinese peace initiatives suggests there may be serious limitations to Ukrainian sovereignty. The choice between continuing the conflict, or suing for peace, may not be Kyiv’s to make.

When paired with the acute decline of Canadian capitalism and the slow decay of the US empire—the one-time imperial hegemon to which Canada has sutured itself—Ottawa’s anxieties about a power to the East are neuralgic, irrational, and grimly familiar. As CD columnist Owen Schalk explains, the Chinese interference fantasy is merely their latest manifestation.

The recent Australia, US, and UK $368 billion deal on buying nuclear submarines has been termed by Paul Keating, a former Australian prime minister, as the “worst deal in all history.” It commits Australia to buy conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines that will be delivered in the early 2040s. These will be based on new nuclear reactor designs yet to be developed by the UK.

Rather than putting the brakes on America’s bid to contain China’s rise, writes Yves Engler, the NDP has repeatedly pushed the Liberal government to take a more belligerent stance, jumping into bed with the neoconservatives in Washington whose main concern is US primacy in global affairs—even if it means full-scale war. Is this the NDP’s endgame as well?

It is impossible to say how far the crackpot realists in the West are prepared to go in defending their system. Hopefully they will bow to the force of circumstances which are not in their favour. But short of all out war we are looking at the emergence of new world system in which China has provided a key model of independent development for other states.