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Some of the remnant socialist governments appear to be sliding toward subservience

“Respect for sovereignty is the most significant norm in international politics, and its purpose is to minimize war and facilitate peaceful relations among states.”

—John Mearsheimer

American political scientist and international relations scholar and professor

The U.S. war against Vietnam was driven by the imperialist assumption that Vietnam was one of many inevitable dominoes that would fall to communism. But the communist dominos did not fall. Instead, today, we face a dramatic, devastating loss of progressive governments throughout Latin America, with the domino game won by the reactionary forces.

We must learn from history, or we are doomed to repeat it. But today, there is little public discussion and analysis of what led to these Latin American losses, if not outright condemnation of such questions.

Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?

— John Milton
English poet, polemicist, and civil servant

During the Cold War, the U.S. had a long pattern of supporting right-wing coups, dictatorships and death-squad operations, driven by the imperatives of big business which wanted to exploit Latin American resources.

One of the most notorious cases was Chile, where the CIA backed a coup against democratically elected leader Salvador Allende that brought in fascist Augusto Pinochet.

Today, as Peoples Dispatch reported: “The far right in Latin America is shaped by an anti-left agenda that it inherits from the Cold War, which means that its political formations typically endorse the era of U.S.-backed military dictatorships. The ideas of the left, whether from the Cuban Revolution (1959) or from the era of the Pink Tide (after 1998), are anathema to these political forces; these ideas include agrarian reform, state-led finance for industrialization, state sovereignty, and the importance of trade unions for all workers and peasants.”

Glenn Greenwald agrees: “Other than Uruguay, Brazil is the last country in South America still governed by a left-wing or center-left government, with one country after another electing leaders on the right: Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, etc.”

Medea Benjamin also agrees: “Across the continent—from Colombia and Peru to Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Honduras, Bolivia and Panama—there has been a stark reversal of the region’s progressives that brought hope for a more independent and socially just Latin America. The only two major powers in Latin America still governed by the left are Mexico and Brazil—and Brazil faces a fiercely contested presidential election in October.” Unfortunately, the recent election requires a runoff, as neither Bolsonaro nor Lula received over 50% of the vote. What is particularly concerning, is that Lula did not come in as strong as most predicted.

Alan MacLeod reports in Mint Press that “The United States is interfering in the Brazilian presidential elections, pressuring the Brazilian electorate into voting for right-wing candidate Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of disgraced former president, Jair Bolsonaro. If that does not work and President Lula da Silva secures a fourth term in office, the groundwork is already being laid for a potential military intervention.”

Colombia’s domino fell when its left-wing presidential candidate Ivan Cepeda conceded defeat on June 24 to hard-right populist Abelardo de la Espriella following a tight run-off race.

“There had been doubts among the Cepeda camp about the legitimacy of the vote process, with President Gustavo Petro—who was closely involved in the leftist candidate’s campaign—openly alleging fraud and foreign interference before and after the election.”

As CovertAction Magazine has warned, “Colombia is Fast Becoming a Neo-Colonial Outpost Under Its New Right-Wing President.

Nicaragua faces electoral interference as well. As reported in The Grayzone, “In his national address on July 19, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega stated that, when the country’s next elections take place in 2027, none who promoted a violent anti-government insurrection in 2018 will be allowed to stand for office.” He declared that Nicaragua has the “sovereign right to fight foreign interference in its electoral process…Washington’s plans for regime change in Nicaragua are hardly a secret…The National Endowment for Democracy’s president, Damon Wilson, bragged to a House committee in February that his organization is funding media in Nicaragua with an eye to undermining its Sandinista government.”

Lest we forget, government control of media is essential for fascism to take hold. Benjamin outlines how “The market concentration of Latin American media conglomerates is among the highest in the world, with four transnational companies controlling 89 percent of the broadcast media across six major countries…The market power of these huge media conglomerates is a real obstacle to any movement for democracy or socialism.” Even darker, she reports that Allen Weinstein, a founder of the National Endowment for Democracy, told The Washington Post in 1991, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

After Venezuela was subject to a U.S. military invasion on January 3, which resulted in the kidnapping of sitting president Nicolás Maduro and his wife Celia Flores, then-Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil said “We found ourselves alone.”

In the article titled “The U.S. Tried to Decapitate Venezuela: The Revolution Survived,” those who question whether U.S.-installed interim President Delcy Rodríguez had a choice are told that is the context which needs to be understood.

It was certainly a devastating disappointment that Russia and China, or neighboring countries such as Colombia and Brazil, did not (though under the boot of the U.S.) more militantly advocate for Maduro and Flores’s return. The illegal murders on the open seas of the Caribbean—with impunity—was writing on the wall that Venezuela was the next domino to fall. Why did the efforts to prevent the fall fail?

Months before the kidnapping, Rodríguez told The New York Times: “The Pentagon always had a strategic objective of obtaining Venezuelan reserves.” Today she asserts: “There is something that must be made absolutely clear: Venezuela retains the ownership and sovereignty over its resources.” However, former Vice President and veteran Chavista figure Elías Jaua accused Washington of stripping the nation of its sovereignty and taking control of its natural resources. When is sovereignty lost?

Maduro and Flores still sit behind bars in New York. On September 3, Maduro urged the judge to dismiss the criminal drug-trafficking charges against him, arguing he should be immune from prosecution as the head of a sovereign country.

Is Venezuela still a sovereign country? Former Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said, “Everything is now negotiated” with Washington, requiring a daily give-and-take with Caracas. When does it become regime change if everything must be negotiated with Washington?

Peoples Dispatch reports that, “Despite every attempt to overthrow the government of Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro remains in charge and has mobilized large sections of the population to defend the Bolivarian Revolution against any threats.” But as is acknowledged, “…U.S. imperialism, by having a gun pointed to the government’s head, is in a position to exert substantial coercion leading to unpalatable decisions, such as Alex Saab’s deportation.”

Doesn’t “substantial coercion” trespass upon sovereignty? When domestic peace occurs due to a gun to your head, is it the measure of success? Saab’s deportation is more grievous than unpalatable.

Although María Corina Machado is now hiring D.C. lobbyists for access to Venezuela’s future, those who question Rodriguez’s decisions are compared to Machado. “It was not so long ago that it was the likes of far-right María Corina Machado who highlighted ‘cracks and fissures within the Chavista ranks’ and anticipated ‘the beginning of a social explosion’ against the elected Venezuelan government. Now some solidarity activists are saying the same.”

Criticizing a government does not make one equivalent to a particular opposition figure. Asking questions is not counterrevolutionary, but essential. What insights have we gained during this period of U.S. imperialism?

CovertAction Magazine’s “Cuba Is Not Venezuela or Jamaica as It Refuses to Become a U.S. Neo-Colony” recounts how, when Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley refused Henry Kissinger’s demand to end support for the Angola liberation struggle, the U.S. made sure Manley would lose the next election. Jamaica has been a willing servant of the Empire ever since, recently ending an essential Cuban health care program that brought doctors to the country. A neo-colony is certainly not sovereign.

It is tragic that Venezuela is used as the current example of what other countries want to avoid. Maduro recently posted that “Venezuela will be reborn.” Venezuelan popular movements now call for ‘anti-imperialist resistance’ to the recent oil deal for its lack of transparency and implications for Venezuelan sovereignty. Organizer Orlando Vega argued that the Venezuelan government “stumbled” in its response to the January 3 U.S. attacks. He urged a demand for the release of Maduro and Flores and a review of legislation approved “under U.S. coercion.”

But a key political question is: “What remains of Bolivarian sovereignty if control over the country’s primary energy resources is gradually transferred to private actors linked to U.S. interests?…A process born in the name of sovereignty and independence risks resulting in the subordination of key strategic resources to the interests of a foreign power…Venezuela faces what appears to be the liquidation of sovereignty, self-determination, and the legacy of the Bolivarian Revolution.”

“History shows that, more often than not, loss of sovereignty leads to liberalization imposed in the interests of the powerful.”—Noam Chomsky

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) recently issued a memo which states that Cuba is not Venezuela. They predict that “The same people who keep ’57 Chevrolets on the road with a coat hanger will wreak havoc against a foreign-imposed regime.”

Cuba refuses to accept a dialogue based on subordination. It declares it will engage in dialogue with Washington, but will not negotiate under pressure or cede its sovereignty. “We have no alternative but to resist. We must resist,” said Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who explicitly linked the defense of socialism to the defense of national independence and sovereignty. Is Cuba’s refusal to kneel to Uncle Sam the reason the U.S. strategy for Cuba recently shifted from the military option to sanctions?

“Our position is that we do not accept conditions of any kind which may affect the independence and sovereignty of our country just with the view to solve economic problems existing between the United States and Cuba.”—Fidel Castro

The Soviet Union helped Cuba survive its illegal sanctions, begun in 1960, but since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Cuba suffered and struggled under increasing sanctions—mostly alone. In a promising new development, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov recently announced that Russia and Cuba will continue strengthening their strategic partnership despite attempts to undermine bilateral cooperation through intimidation and political pressure.

The Pillar of Sovereignty

The Peace of Westphalia, which established the nation-states in 1648, enshrined the concept of state sovereignty into international law, which was formalized centuries later by the United Nations Charter. The founding principle was that every State, regardless of size and economic importance, has an equal right to sovereignty. This cornerstone of modern international law establishes the concept that a nation-state has supreme, independent authority over its own territory and domestic affairs.

In tragic irony, sovereignty is used to justify the right to kill in defiance of international law. Carl Schmitt, a German philosopher and jurist who joined the Nazi Party in 1933, defined sovereignty as the “power to decide the state of exception.” William Blum’s Rogue State outlines in brutal detail how the U.S. has long been a lawless state, blind to others’ sovereignty, and the devastating danger that state of exception reflects.

Recently, Marco Rubio had the audacity to claim that “The ICC [International Criminal Court] poses an intolerable threat to U.S. sovereignty.” Then on October 9, the U.S. imposed new sanctions on the ICC, apparently because the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Navi Pillay, a former ICC judge who once criticized Israel.

However, “The ICC is not claiming jurisdiction over conduct in the United States,” said Kenneth Roth, of Human Rights Watch. “Rubio is dressing up his quest for impunity for American war crimes under the label of national sovereignty, which ignores the sovereign right of other nations to invoke the ICC for crimes committed on their territory.” Sovereignty does not imply immunity, but accountability to the rule of law.

Vijay Prashad outlines the struggle for sovereignty in the Global South: “Can the nations of the Global South act together with sovereignty and dignity? Can they build institutions that serve their peoples rather than global capital?…A political consciousness that favours sovereignty and strategic autonomy is rising in the Global South.”

When a country gives up strategic autonomy, has it compromised its sovereignty? Prashad concludes: “The peoples of the Global South demand sovereignty, equality, and peace.” Sovereignty is becoming a mantra, though its clear meaning remains elusive.

“How does any country give up any sovereignty and expect to survive as a government?…That would be political suicide.”—Benigno Aquino III

Geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar explored modern global sovereignty in “Eurasia, the Hegemon, and the Three Sovereigns,” asserting that true, uncompromised national sovereignty in contemporary geopolitics requires reconceptualizing the understanding of sovereignty. He addressed the need to “pierce far beyond sovereignty as interpreted in conventional political science and predominant international relations narratives.”

When does genocide of resident civilians cancel the right to sovereignty over them? Banning a native language is legally genocide. Ukraine banned the Russian language on the first day of the 2014 coup.

So did Russia violate Ukraine’s sovereignty when it began the SMO? The Donbas, after 12,000 civilian deaths in eight years, voted—overwhelmingly—to rejoin the Russian Federation. The Duma voted to accept their request for reunification.

When international law fails, with total UN abdication, and agreements like Minsk I and Minsk II are used as a ruse, how is Ukraine’s alleged sovereignty legitimate while it commits genocide against its own people?

Cuba remains a sovereign socialist country which says it will not surrender. Venezuela reminds us how quickly a revolution can be compromised when sovereignty becomes a negotiable variable. What is the “difference between sovereignty and subordination, between resistance and surrender?”

When Castro won the Cuban Revolution, he immediately distributed guns to the peasants, because he knew that he needed the people to maintain the victory. And he certainly agreed with Frederick Douglass that “It’s better to die free, than live as a slave.”

Sovereignty requires that the people of each country are free to make their own choices, without coercion or a gun to their head.

Original article:  covertactionmagazine.com

Seventy years after Soviet forces crushed Hungary’s uprising, Budapest is commemorating the revolution under a new government following Viktor Orbán’s defeat.

Yet the anniversary raises questions extending far beyond Hungary: how Russia has repeatedly sought to determine the political future of European nations, why economic dependency can become an instrument of influence, and whether the sovereignty demanded in 1956 has finally acquired a more durable meaning.

Seventy years after Soviet tanks entered Budapest to suppress a rebellion against Moscow’s domination, Hungary is marking the anniversary of its 1956 revolution under circumstances that would have seemed improbable only a year ago. Viktor Orbán, whose political career began with a demand for the withdrawal of Soviet troops, has lost power. His successor, Péter Magyar, is welcoming European leaders to commemorate an uprising that remains among the defining events of Hungary’s modern history.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa are joining the commemorations on 23 October, six months after Magyar’s Tisza party ended Orbán’s 16 years in government. Budapest’s relationship with Brussels has improved, previously frozen European funding is being unlocked, and the new administration has begun reviewing aspects of the country’s longstanding economic relationship with Russia.

But the significance of the anniversary cannot be reduced to a change of government or Hungary’s renewed diplomatic engagement with the European Union. The revolution of 1956 exposed a fundamental conflict between national self-determination and the security interests of an imperial power. Seven decades later, the methods through which Moscow exercises influence have changed considerably, but the struggle over political autonomy, economic dependence and the right of European states to determine their own alliances has not disappeared.

Indeed, the central question raised by 1956 has acquired renewed relevance since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: where does legitimate national sovereignty end when a more powerful neighbour claims the authority to determine another country’s strategic choices?

Hungary’s longer history of Russian intervention

The events of October and November 1956 were not the first occasion on which Russian military power had intervened to suppress Hungarian aspirations to independence.

More than a century earlier, during the revolutions of 1848–1849, Hungary attempted to establish political autonomy from the Habsburg monarchy. Under Lajos Kossuth, the Hungarian revolutionary government pursued constitutional government and ultimately declared independence.

Austria proved unable to defeat the Hungarian forces without outside assistance. In 1849, Emperor Franz Joseph turned to Tsar Nicholas I, whose Russian army intervened on the Habsburg side. The military campaign ended with the defeat of the Hungarian struggle for independence.

As historian David Saunders examines in The Revolutions in Europe, 1848–1849: From Reform to Reaction, Russian intervention formed part of Nicholas I’s broader determination to defend the conservative European order against revolutionary movements.

Russia was not seeking to annex Hungary in 1849. Its objective was to preserve a political arrangement favourable to the established continental powers and prevent revolutionary movements from spreading into territories where they might threaten Russian imperial interests.

The distinction is important historically. Tsarist Russia, the Soviet Union and the contemporary Russian Federation represent different political systems and operated under different international circumstances. Nevertheless, all three have, at various points, treated the political orientation of neighbouring European countries as a matter in which Moscow possesses interests extending beyond its own borders.

The pattern reappeared in a substantially different form after the Second World War.

The Red Army’s advance into Hungary in 1944–1945 brought an end to Nazi German occupation and the country’s wartime alliance with Berlin. Yet liberation from Nazi rule was followed by Soviet military occupation and the progressive elimination of independent Hungarian political institutions.

By 1948, the communist leadership under Mátyás Rákosi had established a Stalinist dictatorship. Political opponents faced imprisonment, show trials and persecution, while the security apparatus operated with Soviet support.

Hungary’s political and economic structures were reorganised according to Soviet priorities. Heavy industry received preferential treatment, agricultural collectivisation disrupted rural communities, and Soviet influence reached into the country’s security services, administration and economic planning.

For many Hungarians, the experience reinforced a historical memory in which Russian intervention was associated not with national liberation but with the repeated denial of political independence.

1956 was more than an anti-communist revolt

The revolution that began on 23 October 1956 is frequently remembered as a straightforward confrontation between communism and democracy. That interpretation captures its principal political outcome, but obscures the complexity of the movement itself.

The uprising united students, industrial workers, intellectuals, nationalists, reform communists and citizens who had little interest in ideological disputes but resented political repression and Soviet control.

The sixteen demands adopted by Budapest students on 22 October reveal the breadth of their ambitions.

They called for the withdrawal of Soviet forces, multiparty elections, freedom of expression, independent courts and the restoration of national symbols. They also demanded better wages, the right to strike, changes to agricultural policy and the renegotiation of economic relations with Moscow.

One demand is particularly revealing in the context of present-day Hungary: the students wanted transparency over Soviet exploitation of Hungarian uranium deposits and the right to sell the country’s resources at international market prices.

Political freedom and economic sovereignty were already understood as interconnected.

The revolutionaries did not share a single economic programme. Some favoured democratic socialism and workers’ control of factories, while others wanted the restoration of parliamentary democracy and a market economy. Workers’ councils emerged as institutions of direct political participation, challenging the Communist Party’s claim to represent the working class.

The movement was therefore neither an exclusively conservative rebellion nor merely a liberal-democratic revolution. It was a national uprising against a system that had deprived Hungarian society of the ability to determine its own political arrangements.

The immediate confrontation escalated when demonstrators attempting to broadcast their demands encountered resistance from the state security apparatus. Violence spread, Stalin’s enormous statue in Budapest was pulled down, and armed groups began fighting government forces and Soviet troops.

For a brief period, the revolution appeared capable of succeeding.

Imre Nagy, a reform communist who had previously served as prime minister, returned to office and gradually accepted demands that went considerably beyond his original reform agenda. Political parties re-emerged, Soviet troops began withdrawing from Budapest, and on 1 November Nagy declared Hungary’s neutrality and its withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact.

The Soviet leadership initially appeared willing to consider a compromise. However, it ultimately concluded that Hungary’s departure from the communist bloc would undermine Moscow’s position throughout Eastern Europe.

On 4 November, Soviet forces launched a major offensive against Budapest.

In his final government broadcast, Nagy declared:

“Our troops are fighting. The government is at its post.”

The words, preserved in the historical record of the uprising, described a government confronting the military power of the state that had previously guaranteed its existence.

The resistance was defeated. Up to 3,000 people were killed, approximately 200,000 Hungarians fled the country, and thousands faced imprisonment. Nagy was subsequently arrested and executed in June 1958.

What 1956 revealed about Moscow — and the West

The suppression of the revolution was not simply the consequence of overwhelming Soviet military superiority. It was also the result of strategic calculations in Moscow, uncertainty within the Hungarian leadership and the reluctance of Western governments to challenge the division of Europe established after the Second World War.

In his book Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest, and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt, historian Charles Gati challenges the simplified account of a united revolution abandoned by an indifferent West.

Gati argues that Nagy struggled to reconcile two conflicting forces: the increasingly radical demands of the Hungarian population and the Soviet leadership’s determination to preserve its strategic position.

A more limited reform programme might conceivably have survived, although this remains a disputed historical possibility. Once Hungary moved towards neutrality and withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, the prospects of Soviet acceptance diminished dramatically.

Moscow’s calculations were also influenced by fears that political concessions in Hungary would encourage similar demands in Poland, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere in the Soviet bloc.

The United States, meanwhile, supported the principle of Eastern European liberation rhetorically but was unwilling to risk direct military confrontation with the Soviet Union.

The Hungarian crisis also coincided with the Suez intervention by Britain, France and Israel, which diverted international diplomatic attention and exposed divisions among Western powers.

Historian András Nagy explores these contradictions in Diplomacy and Disregard: The Hungarian Revolution and the United Nations 1956–1963, examining the gap between international declarations and the limited practical assistance available to Hungary.

The lesson of 1956 was consequently more complicated than the assertion that the West had abandoned Hungary. The uprising demonstrated that the international system recognised national sovereignty in principle while allowing the military division of Europe to determine how far that sovereignty could be exercised in practice.

For Moscow, the suppression of Hungary established a precedent: a neighbouring state could possess a government and national institutions while remaining subject to coercive intervention if its political direction threatened Soviet strategic interests.

That principle would reappear during the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

The paradox of Viktor Orbán

The political afterlife of 1956 is inseparable from the career of Viktor Orbán.

On 16 June 1989, at the ceremonial reburial of Imre Nagy, the 26-year-old Orbán delivered a speech demanding free elections and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary.

At a time when the communist system was approaching collapse, his appearance transformed him into one of the most recognisable representatives of Hungary’s emerging democratic opposition.

The symbolism was unmistakable. Nagy, executed as a traitor by the Soviet-backed regime, was being publicly rehabilitated, while a new political generation claimed the revolution as the foundation of a democratic future.

Hungary subsequently completed its transition away from communist rule. Soviet troops withdrew in 1991, the country joined NATO in 1999 and became a member of the European Union in 2004.

Yet Orbán’s later political development introduced a contradiction into the national interpretation of 1956.

After returning to power in 2010, he progressively concentrated political authority, weakened institutional checks and balances, and constructed a system in which government influence extended across significant sections of the media, public administration and economy.

At the same time, his foreign policy cultivated increasingly close relations with Vladimir Putin.

Hungary remained a member of NATO and the EU, but Orbán repeatedly challenged common European positions on Russia. Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, his government opposed or delayed sanctions measures, resisted financial assistance to Kyiv and secured exemptions allowing continued imports of Russian oil.

The contradiction was particularly striking because Ukraine’s defence against Russian invasion revived the same fundamental principle for which Hungarians had fought in 1956: the right of a European nation to exist independently of Moscow’s strategic demands.

Orbán presented his position as a defence of Hungarian national interests, arguing that continued energy supplies and avoidance of direct involvement in the war were essential to his country’s security.

His critics argued that this interpretation of sovereignty was selective: resisting political pressure from Brussels while preserving economic and diplomatic arrangements that strengthened Moscow’s influence.

The legacy of 1956 thus became an instrument of competing political narratives rather than a settled national consensus.

From military occupation to economic dependency

Russia no longer possesses the military infrastructure through which the Soviet Union controlled Hungary. It cannot station forces in Budapest under the Warsaw Pact or impose a government through the Communist Party.

Its contemporary methods of influence operate through a more complicated combination of commercial relationships, infrastructure dependencies, political networks, information operations and diplomatic pressure.

Energy remains particularly important.

According to the European Commission’s 2026 assessment of the Hungarian economy, more than 90 per cent of Hungary’s imported oil and 74 per cent of its imported gas came from Russia in 2025.

Such dependence creates vulnerabilities that cannot be eliminated by a parliamentary election.

Long-term contracts, refinery configurations, pipeline routes and nuclear infrastructure impose costs on governments attempting to diversify supplies. Russia’s ability to influence energy prices and contractual arrangements can consequently shape the policy choices available to individual European states.

Hungary’s Paks II nuclear project illustrates the problem.

Awarded to Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom in 2014 under Orbán, the project created a relationship extending across construction, financing, technology and potentially future operations.

Magyar’s government is now examining whether Rosatom should remain the principal contractor. The review, also examined by EU Today, demonstrates how political change does not automatically dissolve inherited strategic dependencies.

Moscow’s objectives, however, extend beyond securing export revenues.

By maintaining influence over energy infrastructure and commercially significant relationships, Russia can acquire opportunities to affect political decisions within individual European countries. The effect can extend to the European Union as a whole where unanimity requirements allow one member state to delay collective decisions.

Economic interdependence is not itself evidence of corruption or improper influence. Nevertheless, opaque contracts, politically connected intermediaries and inadequate public scrutiny can create opportunities for the exercise of foreign influence.

The European Parliament has repeatedly raised concerns about Russian efforts to influence European political organisations, including through funding networks, cultivated relationships and the involvement of political intermediaries.

Moscow’s broader contest for influence in Europe

Russia’s contemporary European strategy is not a straightforward attempt to reconstruct Soviet rule over the entire continent. Its more immediate objectives include weakening European unity, limiting NATO’s freedom of action, obstructing support for Ukraine and establishing recognition of Russian security interests in neighbouring states.

These objectives do not always require governments openly aligned with Moscow. Political fragmentation, institutional distrust and disagreements between European capitals can themselves serve Russian interests.

Information manipulation has become one of the principal instruments available to the Kremlin.

The European External Action Service’s fourth report on foreign information manipulation documents Russian operations designed to exploit social divisions, discredit political leaders, manipulate electoral debates and weaken confidence in democratic institutions.

Rather than promoting one consistent political ideology, these campaigns adapt to local circumstances. In some countries they amplify nationalist rhetoric; elsewhere they exploit economic grievances, hostility towards migration, fears of military escalation or mistrust of European institutions.

Their effectiveness depends partly on the existence of domestic audiences willing to accept or circulate the narratives involved.

Hungary’s April 2026 election offered a direct example of the problem.

Research by Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub identified a coordinated Russian-linked influence operation targeting Magyar’s Tisza party through fabricated narratives, inauthentic social-media accounts and amplification networks.

Separate reporting alleged Kremlin efforts to assist Orbán’s electoral campaign. Moscow denied interference, and not every allegation has been independently established.

The international election observation mission also identified serious problems involving media imbalance, misuse of state resources and manipulative online content. The election nevertheless produced a decisive transfer of power.

That outcome demonstrates both the reach and the limitations of such methods. Foreign information operations can attempt to shape political perceptions, but they do not necessarily determine how voters ultimately behave.

Other mechanisms, including cyber operations, espionage, sabotage and the cultivation of political or business relationships, form part of the broader contest between Russia and European governments.

The strategic logic differs fundamentally from the Soviet intervention of November 1956. Rather than imposing control through tanks and occupation forces, Moscow can seek to reduce a country’s freedom of political action by exploiting economic vulnerabilities and divisions within its institutions.

Magyar’s government and the limits of a new beginning

The April 2026 election marked a significant change in Hungary’s political direction.

Magyar’s Tisza party won a two-thirds parliamentary majority, creating an opportunity to reform institutions that had been extensively reshaped during Orbán’s years in power.

His government has introduced anti-corruption and transparency measures, sought to strengthen judicial independence and restored more constructive relations with European institutions.

The European Commission has agreed to unlock approximately €16.4 billion in funding previously restricted over governance concerns, although access to individual funding streams and their disbursement remain subject to the relevant procedures.

Yet the new government should not be mistaken for an administration that has abandoned every element of its predecessor’s foreign policy.

Magyar remains a Hungarian conservative politician with his own interpretation of sovereignty and national interests. He has maintained reservations about accelerated Ukrainian accession to the EU and emphasised the rights of ethnic Hungarians living in Ukraine.

Indeed, recent disagreements over Ukraine’s EU accession negotiations demonstrate that improved relations with Brussels have not eliminated Budapest’s willingness to defend positions at odds with those of other member states.

The more consequential test may therefore concern the institutions through which Hungary makes political decisions.

Reducing dependence on Russian energy, establishing transparent public procurement, restoring independent media and ensuring that judicial oversight operates without political interference would reduce opportunities for both domestic patronage and external influence.

The government must also address the institutional legacy of decades of communist rule and subsequent political transformation, including questions about historical accountability and access to security-service records.

These are not simply questions of ideological alignment with Brussels. They concern whether Hungary possesses institutions capable of making and implementing decisions independently of concentrated political or economic interests.

The unfinished meaning of 1956

The presence of European leaders in Budapest on the 70th anniversary of the uprising provides an unmistakable contrast with November 1956.

At that time, Hungary’s government appealed to the international community as Soviet forces dismantled its authority. Today, Budapest participates in European institutions through which it can influence decisions affecting the continent’s political, economic and security arrangements.

Membership of the European Union is not equivalent to membership of the Warsaw Pact. EU membership rests on treaties voluntarily accepted by democratic states, with legal mechanisms for participation, disagreement and withdrawal. Soviet control of Hungary rested ultimately on military force.

Nevertheless, participation in European institutions does not remove the need for national governments to make independent strategic decisions or to account for them democratically.

The revolution of 1956 was, above all, a rejection of political dependency. Its participants did not agree on every aspect of Hungary’s future, but they rejected the proposition that decisions about their country’s government, economy and alliances belonged in Moscow.

Seventy years later, the comparison between Soviet military domination and contemporary Russian economic and political influence cannot be exact. The historical circumstances, instruments of power and international constraints are different.

What persists is the problem of external leverage over national choices.

Hungary’s political transformation in 2026 has altered the balance of power in Budapest, but the country’s inherited economic dependencies, institutional weaknesses and disputes over its strategic orientation remain.

The historical significance of the anniversary therefore extends beyond the rehabilitation of one political tradition or the defeat of another.

In 1956, Hungarians demonstrated that Soviet military supremacy had not secured their political consent. In 1989, the memory of that resistance helped undermine the legitimacy of communist rule. In 2026, another political transition has reopened the question of how national independence should be understood within a deeply interconnected Europe.

The measure of Hungary’s political sovereignty will not be the number of foreign dignitaries attending its commemorations, nor the frequency with which its leaders invoke the language of independence.

It will be the extent to which Hungary can make democratic choices without those choices being constrained by dependence on an external power — or by domestic institutions incapable of resisting its influence.

By  Jacob G. HORNBERGER

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Right-wing and left-wing interventionists and interventionist mainstream-press commentators are up in arms over President Trump’s decision to ease economic sanctions against Russia in connection with the Russian government’s agreement to supply diesel fuel to the United States.

The notion is that nothing — not even the midterms — must be permitted to interfere with the Cold War II racket that holds that Russia is an aggressor nation that is hell-bent on conquering the world and, therefore, that it is necessary to target the Russian populace with severe impoverishment and even death by starvation or illness with ever-more economic sanctions.

Central to this racket, of course, is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The notion was that Russia was on the march. As soon as it conquered Ukraine, U.S. officials maintained, it would re-conquer Eastern Europe, and then Western Europe and England, and then make its way to South America, Central America, Mexico, and finally the United States, all of which Russia would reconstitute into a new Soviet Union of the world. In other words, Russia is coming to get us again.

The Cold War I racket was used to justify the conversion of the federal government to a national-security state, a type of governmental structure that came with omnipotent powers, including the power of orchestrating and committing state-sponsored assassinations. The racket enabled the national-security branch of the government to quickly become the most powerful branch of the federal government, one to which the president, Congress, and the Supreme Court decided to defer.

The Cold War I racket was also used to justify an anti-communist crusade, during which the U.S. national-security establishment targeted suspected communists, both here and in foreign countries, with destruction of reputation or even with assassination.

Beginning in 1989, the Cold War racket came to a sudden and unexpected end. The Berlin Wall was torn down, Germany was reunified, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, the Soviet Union disintegrated, and Russian troops withdrew from Eastern Europe.

Officials in the U.S. national-security branch — i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA — naturally were extremely concerned. Suddenly, they had lost the justification for their existence and for the racket that they were certain would go on forever. People were talking about a “peace dividend,” which would involve a deep reduction in national-security-state spending and maybe even a restoration of America’s founding governmental system of a limited-government republic.

To replace the old racket with a new racket, new official enemies were developed, such as “the terrorists,” “the Muslims,” “the drug dealers,” and “the illegals.” They were all coming to get us, or so they said. Everyone remained deathly afraid.

But the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA were not about to let go of their old Cold War racket so easily. After providing Soviet officials with assurances during the negotiations over German reunification that NATO would not expand eastward, U.S. officials proceeded to do precisely that. NATO began marching eastward, absorbing former members of the Warsaw Pact and moving inexorably toward Russia’s borders, knowing full well what Russia’s reaction would be.

That was what the threat to absorb Ukraine into NATO ultimately accomplished — provoking Russia into invading Ukraine in an effort to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. U.S. officials had been warned for years that NATO expansion, especially into Ukraine, could produce precisely such a confrontation. Yet they proceeded anyway.

Voila! The national-security branch had its old Cold War racket back, albeit in a revised format. The Russians are coming to get us … again (along with the terrorists, the Muslims, the drug dealers, and the illegals). The big fly in the ointment, however, is that Russia has been unable to conquer Ukraine. That’s, of course, a problem. If Russia can’t even conquer Ukraine, how is it going to be able to conquer Eastern Europe, Western Europe, England, South America, Central America, Mexico, and then the United States? Whoops!

Never mind that inconvenient problem. In the eyes of national-security statists, it is imperative that we continue hewing to the official narrative. Russia is coming to get us, just like before. We need ever-increasing budgets for the national-security establishment and its ever-growing army of voracious fat-cat “defense” contractors. Who cares if the United States goes bankrupt in the process? We need to again be kept “safe” from the Reds — I mean, the Russians (and from the terrorists, Muslims, drug dealers, and illegals.)

Oh, and don’t forget the Cuban Reds! They are coming to get us too. No doubt the right-wing and left-wing interventionists and the interventionist mainstream press, all of whom remain steadfast acolytes of the national-security establishment, are scared to death that President Trump might lift the old Cold War embargo and the new Cold War blockade against the Cuban people as well. Of course, fat chance of that happening given Trump’s own interventionist mindset.

Original article:  www.fff.org

In November 1983, the Soviet Union came to believe that NATO might be preparing a nuclear attack. The trigger was a war game. The alliance’s annual exercise, Able Archer 83, ran from 7 to 11 November and rehearsed what would happen if a conflict in Europe escalated until nuclear weapons were released. It even simulated […]

By Patrick LAWRENCE

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In her revelatory work The Cultural Cold War, the late British author was the first to shine so unblinking a light on the sprawl of the C.I.A.’s cultural interventions.

Frances Stonor Saunders was fond of epigraphs (as am I). At the front of The Cultural Cold War: The C.I.A. and the World of Arts and Letters (The New Press, 1999), the British journalist, documentarian and author quotes some lines from Dante’s Inferno, the last of which is, “Before my age was full, I went astray.”

I had not lived half my life when I succumbed to complacency and moral blindness: This is my reading of the line from Canto XV. And how fitting it is at the start of Saunders’ exhaustively researched account of how the Central Intelligence Agency, its tentacles reaching into every corner of American culture, did so much to lead our republic into what the Italian poet would call its selva oscura, its dark wood —the state of lostness America has never since escaped.

Frances Stonor Saunders died on the last day of August, having suffered from a virulent strain of brain cancer. She was a mere 60. We had a few acquaintances in common, but I never met her. It was nonetheless something like losing a friend when, just this past week, I heard of her death. And so this brief appreciation.

The Cultural Cold War made Stonor Saunders’ reputation. It took a prominent place on my shelf of Cold War books as soon as it was published. At last the curtain parted on the insidious use the C.I.A. made, or attempted to make, of painters, poets, playwrights, novelists, editors, jazz musicians, singers, dancers, actors, scholars and other cultural figures in its long-running operation to promote the appeal of American life as against the Soviet Union and altogether the postwar socialist alternative.

This was an immense “soft power” operation avant la lettre — before we had the term. One could also call it an early variant of the “cognitive warfare” to which we are now incessantly subjected, the primary object of which was to keep postwar Europe from swinging leftward, as the French, the Italians and others were poised to do.

From Saunders’s Introduction:

“Drawing on an extensive, highly influential network of intelligence personnel, political strategists, the corporate establishment, and the old school Ivy League universities, the incipient CIA started, from 1947, to build a ‘consortium’ whose double task was to inoculate the world against the contagion of Communism and to ease the passage of American foreign policy abroad. The result was a remarkably tight network of people who worked alongside the Agency… Whether they liked it or not, whether they knew it or not, there were few writers, poets, artists, historians, scientists, or critics in postwar Europe whose names were not in some way linked to this covert enterprise.”

Who Was Who & Who Stood Where

Jackson Pollock and others among the Abstract Expressionists, Leonard Bernstein and others among the American composers then prominent, Robert Lowell, James Baldwin, Mary McCarthy and other writers of their generation, Duke Ellington and other jazz stars — if they weren’t sent abroad on the C.I.A.’s nickel, their work was.

There were the hundreds of books the Agency took a role in promoting, It paid for translations of Eliot’s Four Quartets, Luigi Barzini’s The Italians, Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. It covertly supported magazines — Encounter and The Paris Review famous among them — along with radio stations and, of course, newspapers — and those who wrote and edited for them. As of 1956 the Agency owned a considerable piece of the Rome Daily American.

Saunders, who did years of interviewing and archival research for this book, lays out her findings over 427 well-written pages and was the first to shine so unblinking a light on the sprawl of the C.I.A.’s cultural interventions.

One of the things I like about Saunders’s book, among many, is her exposure of those artists and writers who knew of the Agency’s interventions and wanted nothing to do with them, those who knew and cooperated and those who served its purposes unwittingly.

Pollock had no idea of the use to which the Agency put his work, Baldwin wanted nothing to do with the Congress for Cultural Freedom (C.C.F.), infamous as a C.I.A. front. Ever true to her tough-minded politics, neither did Lillian Hellman.

Mary McCarthy knew all about the Agency’s funding of the C.C.F. and its other projects and was fine with all of it. I’ve never liked McCarthy’s novels, and Saunders gave me a good reason to distrust her. She was prominent among that group of Americans known as Cold War liberals, for whom I have long nursed an abiding contempt.

I wish Saunders had given more attention to the profligate corruptions of generations of American journalists and newspaper editors, but her definition of culture is narrower than mine; I speculate that journalism’s service to the Agency was a room so large she chose not to enter it.

The surrender of many American journalists to the Cold War cause is well-enough documented in any case. See, for example, Carl Bernstein’s celebrated “The C.I.A. and the Media,” which Rolling Stone published in October 1977, and the House hearings that Bernstein’s piece prompted a couple of months later — the Church Committee, whose hearings ran from January 1975 to April 1976, having flinched from this responsibility.

Chronicler of Secrecy

The who-was-who and the who-stood-where and the who-did-what of The Cultural Cold War give Saunders’s book an historical specificity I do not think anyone has matched, with the exception of Joel Whitney’s Finks (OR Books, 2016), which draws heavily on Saunders’s work. She did not leave those of whom she wrote any place to hide.

As I reflect back on her accomplishment now, it seems to me to lie in something she never mentions. Saunders gave us a chronicle of the U.S. culture of secrecy in its earliest days, the first decades after the 1945 victories, when America set about making itself a global imperium.

What comes through in The Cultural Cold War is how little those alive at the time were able to know about their time. Too many events, too many decisions, too many reasons for things happening as they did were hidden, rendered inaccessible.

The C.I.A.’s Cold War interventions have had many enduring consequences. The Agency systematically discredited the principle of nonalignment, which was held high among then-emergent non–Western nations. America brings the same with-us-or-against-us fallacy to the 11 members and 10 partners comprising the BRICS  — a complete failure to grasp one of the 21st century’s significant realities.

It is the same with the out-of-hand dismissal of all suggestions of moral equivalence in global affairs with those it deems adversaries: The United States is always righteous and never acts but in defense of itself or its always-democratic allies and/or clients. It is never to be accused of aggression. This is what I mean by moral blindness.

The Agency’s most disturbing legacy, at least to me, is how little of our world we are able actually to see. Daniel Patrick Monihan warned us of this just before the U.S. century turned in Secrecy: The American Experience (Yale, 1998). So, in her way, did Saunders a year later. Foolish it would be, naïve in the extreme, to think the time she described so piercingly is not the time in which we live.

It is the historians now who tell us who we are — this by telling us who we were.  This is why I honor Frances Stonor Saunders as I do. She told Americans of their past, and, so, of their present.

Original article:  consortiumnews.com

President Xi Jinping is set to visit to the United States from September 23-25. His visit must be understood as more than an encounter between two heads of state, but it must be seen as an encounter between two possible futures.

In one future, the United States imposes a spiral of confrontation against China. Trade disputes harden into economic warfare, then economic warfare intensifies into technological blockades, technological blockades produce military encirclement, and finally military encirclement creates incidents, and incidents the danger of becoming an unimaginable war.

In the other future, the two countries accept that neither can destroy the other without destroying much of humanity. They recognize that coexistence is not an act of charity and collaboration is not a concession. Both are necessities.

That is the significance of President Xi’s decision to travel to the United States. China’s foreign ministry has described head-of-state diplomacy as having an “irreplaceable” role in guiding relations between the two countries. The visit follows President Donald Trump’s trip to China in May and continuing negotiations over tariffs, trade, and investment. There are indications that President Xi will travel with a substantial delegation of Chinese business leaders. These facts suggest that Beijing wants to move the relationship away from the permanent crisis and towards practical engagement.

But diplomacy between China and the United States cannot merely be a photo opportunity. Nor should it be understood as a negotiation in which one side must surrender to the other. It must be based on a sober recognition of reality. Or to be precise, four realities.

The first reality is that China cannot be contained. China is not a minor country whose development can be suffocated by sanctions. It has a population of more than 1.4 billion people, a vast industrial system, an increasingly sophisticated scientific community, and deep commercial relationships across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. Whatever one thinks of China, it is absurd to imagine that it can simply be excluded from the world economy. The attempt to contain China has already produced an extraordinary catalogue of restrictions: tariffs, semiconductor controls, investment prohibitions, sanctions on Chinese companies, naval patrols along China’s coastline, and the construction of new military arrangements from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean. Each of these measures is presented as defensive. Taken together, however, they form an architecture of confrontation. There is a dangerous illusion in Washington that pressure will force China to abandon its development. No Chinese government could accept such a demand. After the century of humiliation (from the Opium Wars to the Japanese invasion) the restoration of national sovereignty and the improvement of living standards are not negotiable matters for the Chinese people. The United States may slow certain aspects of China’s development, but it cannot persuade China to return to poverty.

The second reality is that economic separation is neither simple nor painless. The United States and China remain deeply connected through trade, investment, supply chains, scientific knowledge, and consumer markets. US farmers depend upon Chinese buyers. US companies depend upon Chinese manufacturing and upon Chinese consumers. China, meanwhile, benefits from access to US technology, agricultural products, and capital. Negotiators are now discussing reciprocal tariff reductions and new mechanisms for trade and investment. These are modest measures, but they acknowledge an important truth: economic warfare injures both countries. Tariffs are announced with nationalist speeches, but their costs appear quietly in grocery bills, factory closures, disrupted supply chains, and lost employment. Working people in the United States do not benefit when China is weakened. Their difficulties are rooted principally in decisions made by their own ruling class: decades of deindustrialization, the power of finance, attacks on trade unions, the privatization of public services, and the refusal to undertake serious social investment. China did not close the factories of the US Midwest. US corporations closed them in search of higher profits. The answer to inequality in either country is not economic nationalism by the United States.

The third reality is that humanity faces problems that cannot be solved by either country acting alone. The climate catastrophe does not carry a passport. Carbon emitted in one country heats the atmosphere everywhere. The United States possesses immense scientific and financial resources, while China has developed enormous productive capacity in solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles, public transport, and renewable-energy infrastructure. Collaboration between them could accelerate a worldwide energy transition. Confrontation will delay it precisely when delay has become intolerable. The same is true of public health. The COVID-19 pandemic showed us the human cost of secrecy, competition, and vaccine nationalism. Artificial intelligence creates another urgent area for cooperation. These technologies cannot be governed adequately by rival military doctrines or private corporations seeking maximum profit. The two countries must develop common safeguards against autonomous weapons, destabilizing cyberattacks, mass surveillance, and the use of artificial intelligence to intensify social inequality.

Finally, the fourth reality is the question of war. China and the United States are nuclear-armed powers. Any direct military conflict between them would have consequences beyond calculation. This is why Taiwan must not be transformed into the trigger for a catastrophic confrontation. The one-China framework and the existing diplomatic understandings must not be hollowed out by provocations, arms sales, or gestures designed for domestic political theater.

Peace requires restraint from both sides, but restraint cannot mean that the United States surrounds China with military bases and warships and then demands that China alone remain calm. Security cannot be achieved through the permanent insecurity of another country. There will, of course, be disagreements. Collaboration does not require agreement on every political question. Nor does coexistence require silence about differences. But disagreement must be conducted through diplomacy, international law, and the institutions of the United Nations, not through sanctions, threats, and military exercises.

The countries of the Global South have a particular interest in the success of this visit. They do not want to be instructed to choose between China and the United States. They do not want their ports, minerals, telecommunications systems, and political institutions turned into battlefields in a new cold war. They want access to finance, technology, medicine, and markets without political subordination. They want development, not recruitment into rival military camps. Xi Jinping’s visit therefore carries a responsibility that extends far beyond Washington and Beijing. The world does not need an agreement merely to divide markets between Chinese and US corporations. It needs a commitment to reduce the danger of war, dismantle unilateral coercive measures, restore normal economic relations, cooperate on climate and public health, and strengthen the principles of the United Nations Charter.

The importance of the visit lies not in ceremony but in possibility. It offers both countries an opportunity to step back from the cliff. The United States must abandon the fantasy that it can preserve its primacy by preventing China’s development. China, for its part, has repeatedly said that it does not seek to replace the United States as a hegemonic power. That principle must become the basis of a durable relationship: no containment, no domination, no war.

There is an old habit among powerful states of treating compromise as weakness. In the nuclear age, the opposite is true. It takes no courage to order another warship into contested waters. It takes political courage to recognize that one’s adversary also has legitimate interests, that coexistence requires reciprocity, and that the survival of humanity is more important than the vanity of supremacy.

This visit should therefore carry a simple message from Washington to the world: collaboration is not surrender, diplomacy is not weakness, and peace is not an abstraction.

Confrontation offers neither country a future.

Collaboration offers the world a chance.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. He is the author of forty books, including Washington Bullets, Red Star Over the Third World, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, and How the International Monetary Fund Suffocates Africa, written with Grieve Chelwa. He is the executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, the chief correspondent for Globetrotter, and the chief editor of LeftWord Books(New Delhi). He also appeared in the films Shadow World (2016) and Two Meetings (2017).

This article was produced by Globetrotter.