Russia has supplied its bombers in Syria with state-of-the-art air-to-air missiles. The arming comes after Turkey shot down a Russian bomber it said had violated Turkish territory. The move is a legitimate act of self-defense for the Russian pilots, but it makes the air space above Syria significantly more dangerous. In combination with Russia’s best anti-aircraft missile system, the S-400, the Russians now have tight control over Syria. The risk is that this control could also extend to objectives other than tracking down Daesh (ISIS), including activities conducted by Hezbollah in Syria against Israel.
The attacks on Paris and Beirut tend to be viewed in the context of the “global war on terror” which began for the West in 2001. But that perspective ignores the long history of interaction between Western and non-Western peoples. In particular, the Algerian war of independence in the 1950s and 1960s set the stage for how the French respond to acts of terror and why they became the objects of terror. One cannot divorce the history of imperialism from current events–indeed, an appreciation of that history is the only way to understand a way forward.
The Chinese yuan has become the fifth currency to be used to calculate the Special Drawing Rights of the IMF–the other currencies being the US dollar, the Japanese yen, sterling and the euro. The move signals the growing acceptance of the Chinese currency in international transactions and is a significant political victory for China. The move, however, also places a great deal of pressure on China not to manipulate its currency to stimulate its exports so it comes with significant economic costs to China.
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