Philippine History and Culture by Alfred McCoy
Tom Dispatch, 2025
In this stream-of-conscious essay, I argue that China is taking over the global auto industry, tu... more In this stream-of-conscious essay, I argue that China is taking over the global auto industry, turning U.S. and E.U. automotive companies into so much road kill. In his misguided attempt to save the Detroit auto industry by terminating all the recent electric vehicle initiatives, President Trump is unleashing global market forces that will likely send Detroit into a death spiral.
Tom Dispatch, 2024
This essay argues that the four legacy empires--those of China, France, Russia, and the United St... more This essay argues that the four legacy empires--those of China, France, Russia, and the United States--that have dominated the globe for the past 35 years are all fading, creating the opportunity, in the near future, for a new world order.
Tom Dispatch, 2024
While the world looks on with trepidation at regional wars in Israel and Ukraine, a far more dang... more While the world looks on with trepidation at regional wars in Israel and Ukraine, a far more dangerous global crisis is quietly building at the other end of Eurasia, along an island chain that has served as the front line for America's national defense for endless decades. Just as Russia's invasion of Ukraine has revitalized the NATO alliance, so China's increasingly aggressive behavior and a sustained U.S. military build-up in the region have strengthened Washington's position on the Pacific littoral, bringing several wavering allies back into the Western fold. Yet such seeming strength contains both a heightened risk of great power conflict and possible political pressures that could fracture America's Asia-Pacific alliance relatively soon.
Tom Dispatch, 2024
This article posted at TomDispatch argues that the simultaneity of three crises--in Ukraine, Gaza... more This article posted at TomDispatch argues that the simultaneity of three crises--in Ukraine, Gaza, and Taiwan--might well prove an epochal challenge to US global power. Each one individually would prove daunting, but their concatenation might well serve to turn a slow erosion into an all-too-rapid decline.
Tom Dispatch, 2023
The article explores Moscow's use of an imperial "man on the spot" to extend its geopolitical inf... more The article explores Moscow's use of an imperial "man on the spot" to extend its geopolitical influence across the Sahel region of northern Africa, displacing the French post-colonial empire called "FrancAfrique."
TomDispatch, 2023
Article explains how the rapid contraction of France's post-colonial empire called FrancAfrique, ... more Article explains how the rapid contraction of France's post-colonial empire called FrancAfrique, encompassing a quarter of Africa for the past 60 years, has contracted sharply and maybe even collapsed, throughout 2023, largely through the efforts of Russia's Wagner Group's mercenaries--a surrogate in Moscow's subtle geopolitical strategy of flanking Europe from the south.
Tom Dispatch, 2023
The essay discusses the geopolitical implications of possible success in China's efforts to broke... more The essay discusses the geopolitical implications of possible success in China's efforts to broker a peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine.
Tom Dispatch, 2023
Toward a More Perfect North American Union: An American New Deal for An Entire Continent? The Fad... more Toward a More Perfect North American Union: An American New Deal for An Entire Continent? The Fading of Washington's Global Dreams and the Coming of a New World By Alfred McCoy 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 restrictions could allow tens of thousands more migrants, now huddling in the cold of northern Mexico, to surge across the border, as some are already able to do. Most of those refugees are Central Americans, fleeing cities ravaged by gang warfare and farms devastated by climate change. The inept U.S. response to such a disturbing world ranges from the Biden administration's nervously biding its time without a plan in sight to Arizona Governor Doug Ducey's cutting an ugly scar through a pristine national forest by building a four-mile border wall out of rusted shipping containers (which he now has to dismantle). Meanwhile, miserable millions in Haiti's capital of Port-au-Prince are struggling to survive in the world's worst slums, ravaged by recent earthquakes and roiled by endemic gang violence. While the U.N. Security Council debated launching an international military intervention to address what its secretary-general called "an absolutely nightmarish situation," the U.S. expelled another 26,000 Haitian asylum seekers without hearings in 2022. The harshness of that was caught in September 2021 when Border Patrol horsemen used "unnecessary force" to herd Haitians back across the Rio Grande. Elsewhere in the Caribbean, Washington's recent economic sanctions on communist Cuba-imposed by Trump and maintained by Biden-have sparked the flight to the U.S. of 250,000 refugees last year, more than 2% of the island's population. Farther south, after years of U.S.-led economic blockades and at least one Washington-sponsored coup, Venezuela has hemorrhaged 6.8 million of its
Tom Dispatch, 2022
Throughout 2021, geopolitical hot spots were erupting across Eurasia, forming a veritable ring o... more Throughout 2021, geopolitical hot spots were erupting across Eurasia, forming a veritable ring of fire around that vast land mass, each one suffused with significance for the future of U.S. global power. By exploring the three key conditions for Washington's strategic dominance of Eurasia as the epicenter of its hegemony, the essay concludes that the Pacific rim is emerging as a flashpoint for China's challenge to Washington's global position.
Climate Crisis at the Top of the World Global Orders and Catastrophic Change By Alfred McCoy When... more Climate Crisis at the Top of the World Global Orders and Catastrophic Change By Alfred McCoy When midnight strikes on New Year's Day of 2050, there will be little cause for celebration. There will, of course, be the usual toasts with fine wines in the climatecontrolled compounds of the wealthy few. But for most of humanity, it'll just be another day of adversity bordering on misery-a desperate struggle to find food, water, shelter, and safety.
Tom Dispatch, 2021
Through comparative historical analysis, the essay argues that the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol... more Through comparative historical analysis, the essay argues that the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 was a failed coup attempt. Over the past century, amidst the economic and political pressures of fading global power, a number of nations have experience coup attempts, some successful--including, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and now the United States.
TomDispatch, 2021
The article explores the U.S. withdrawal to ask and answer the question: How did America lose its... more The article explores the U.S. withdrawal to ask and answer the question: How did America lose its longest war?
TomDispatch, 2021
China and the U.S. struggle over control of the vast Eurasia landmass and thus control over the w... more China and the U.S. struggle over control of the vast Eurasia landmass and thus control over the world beyond.
“What Does It Take to Destroy a World Order? How Climate Change Could End Washington’s Global Dominion,” TomDispatch (New York), 28 February 2019, <http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176533/>., 2019
Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, 2019
In a search for appropriate theory, this essay inserts drug trafficking, the world’s largest illi... more In a search for appropriate theory, this essay inserts drug trafficking, the world’s largest illicit economic activity, within a wider analytical frame called the “covert netherworld.” Through the convergence xof three factors—covert operations, illicit commerce, and social milieu—such netherworlds can form at regional, national, and international levels, thereby transforming social margins of crime and illicit commerce into potent sources of political change. By deftly playing upon this netherworld’s politics and illicit commerce along the Burma-Thai borderlands, a regional “drug lord” amassed sufficient local power to dominate the global heroin trade for over a decade and simultaneously sustain an ethnic revolt for nearly 15 years. In the Philippines, the illicit traffic in synthetic drugs developed a parallel power to influence the character of national politics, compromising three presidential administrations and shaping the moral economy of political life. For the past 40 years in Afghanistan, an illicit commodity, opium, has shaped the fate of military intervention by the world’s sole superpower, allowing it an initial success and later contributing to its ongoing failure. Through the sum of these cases, the essay concludes that the covert netherworld can serve as invisible incubator for a range of extralegal activities and has thereby attained sufficient autonomy to be treated as a significant factor in international politics.
Alfred W. McCoy, “Trump’s Trade Tsar, The Latest Architect of Imperial Disaster, Five Academics Who Unleashed the ‘Demon’ of Geopolitical Power” (December 2, 2018) http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176502/, 2018
Uploads
Philippine History and Culture by Alfred McCoy