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Alfred W. McCoy

Alfred W. McCoy is the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who specializes in Southeast Asia. He has written about, and testified before Congress on, Philippine political history, opium trafficking in the Golden Triangle, underworld crime syndicates, and international political surveillance. He is the author of In the Shadows of the American Century (Dispatch Books) and A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror (Metropolitan Books).

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China
Does the Rise of China in Eurasia mean the Fall of the United States as the Global Power?

Does the Rise of China in Eurasia mean the Fall of the United States as the Global Power?

Alfred W. McCoy

( Tomdispatch.com) – From the ashes of a world war that killed 80 million people and reduced great cities to smoking rubble, America rose like a Titan of Greek legend, unharmed and armed with extraordinary military and economic power, to govern the globe. During four years of combat against the Axis leaders in Berlin and […]

China
At the Brink of War in the Pacific?  The Nightmare of Great Power Rivalry Over Taiwan

At the Brink of War in the Pacific? The Nightmare of Great Power Rivalry Over Taiwan

Alfred W. McCoy

( Tomdispatch.com ) – While the world has been distracted, even amused, by the diplomatic tussle around China’s recent high-altitude balloon flights across North America, there are signs that Beijing and Washington are preparing for something so much more serious: armed conflict over Taiwan. Reviewing recent developments in the Asia-Pacific region raises a tried-and-true historical […]

Latin America
Could the United States return to a Good Neighbor Policy in the Americas?  Can it afford not to?

Could the United States return to a Good Neighbor Policy in the Americas? Can it afford not to?

Alfred W. McCoy

( Tomdispatch.com ) – A few recent headlines reveal the painfully inhumane, dangerously volatile state of U.S. relations with its own home region, the continent of North America. A record-breaking 2.76 million border crossings from Mexico filled homeless shelters to the bursting point in cities nationwide in 2022. This year, the possible cessation of Covid […]

China
The New Cold War Heats Up Asia:  China and the U.S. Face an Unprecedented Crisis

The New Cold War Heats Up Asia: China and the U.S. Face an Unprecedented Crisis

Alfred W. McCoy

( Tomdispatch.com ) – If the world is indeed entering a new Cold War, it bears little resemblance to the final years of that global conflict with its frequent summits between smiling leaders and its arms agreements aimed at de-escalating nuclear tensions. Instead, the world today seems more like the perilous first decade of that […]

China
What Difference Does a War Make?   The Geopolitics of the New Cold War

What Difference Does a War Make? The Geopolitics of the New Cold War

Alfred W. McCoy

( Tomdispatch.com ) – From his first days in office, Joe Biden and his national security advisers seemed determined to revive America’s fading global leadership via the strategy they knew best — challenging the “revisionist powers” Russia and China with a Cold War-style aggressiveness. When it came to Beijing, the president combined the policy initiatives […]

Peace
How to End the War in Ukraine:  A Solution Beyond Sanctions

How to End the War in Ukraine: A Solution Beyond Sanctions

Alfred W. McCoy

( Tomdispatch.com ) – As the war in Ukraine heads for its third month amid a rising toll of death and destruction, Washington and its European allies are scrambling, so far unsuccessfully, to end that devastating, globally disruptive conflict. Spurred by troubling images of executed Ukrainian civilians scattered in the streets of Bucha and ruined […]

China
The New Eurasian Wars on our Endangered Planet

The New Eurasian Wars on our Endangered Planet

Alfred W. McCoy

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Just as the relentless grinding of the earth’s tectonic plates produces earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, so the endless superpower struggle for dominance over Eurasia is fraught with tensions and armed conflict. Beneath the visible outbreak of war in Ukraine and the U.S.-Chinese naval standoff in the South China Sea, there is […]

China
China is Rising as a Superpower by vastly Expanding Planet-Wrecking Fossil Fuels

China is Rising as a Superpower by vastly Expanding Planet-Wrecking Fossil Fuels

Alfred W. McCoy

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Consider us at the edge of the sort of epochal change not seen for centuries, even millennia. By the middle of this century, we will be living under such radically altered circumstances that the present decade, the 2020s, will undoubtedly seem like another era entirely, akin perhaps to the Middle Ages. […]

Central Asia
Eurasia’s Ring of Fire:  The Epic Struggle over the Epicenter of U.S. Global Power

Eurasia’s Ring of Fire: The Epic Struggle over the Epicenter of U.S. Global Power

Alfred W. McCoy

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Throughout 2021, Americans were absorbed in arguments over mask mandates, school closings, and the meaning of the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Meanwhile, geopolitical hot spots were erupting across Eurasia, forming a veritable ring of fire around that vast land mass. Let’s circle that continent to visit just a few […]

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