Facing the growing loss of its unquestioned hegemony in the world system — that unipolar world that took shape after the end of the Second World War and was consolidated with the collapse of the Soviet bloc — conservative sectors have been arguing for several decades that the window of opportunity to prevent China’s power from equaling or surpassing that of the United States is closing.
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This story originally appeared in In These Times on May 4, 2026.
It’s been more than two months since President Donald Trump dropped the first bombs in his illegal war with Iran, and U.S. consumers are increasingly footing the bill.
With traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remaining a tiny fraction of what it was before Trump began this latest regime-change campaign, oil prices reached a four-year high of more than $125 per barrel last week. Over the course of the same week, average gas prices surged more than 30 cents to reach $4.45 per gallon, roughly $1.50 higher than the pre-war average. With no sign of reversing course, economists continue to warn of recession.
In late April, Norwegian professor Glenn Dieson sat down with Richard Wolff, one of the world’s most prominent Marxist economists, to discuss how these impacts to the global economy will shape Trump’s war plans (or lack thereof), and why the last two months have signaled the “decline of the American empire.”
Glenn DiesenWelcome back. We are joined today by Professor Richard Wolff to discuss “Economic Fury,” the new arm of the U.S. war against Iran.
Richard WolffGlad to be here, Glenn.
Diesen[Treasury Secretary] Scott Bessent has now complemented [“Operation Epic Fury”] with “Economic Fury,” the sanctions policies against Iran. It’s been a bit confusing, because first there’s a sanction on all Iranian oil, then they open up the Iranian oil to help stabilize the markets. Then there’s a blockade on Iranian ports. How do you assess this new effort to strangle Iran?WolffWell, we have stopped following the kind of herky-jerky, on-again off-again statements, because they are so often inconsistent one with the other. Either you are going to take the steps that make oil supply more plentiful and drive down the price, or
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on May 11, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
US surveillance and reconnaissance flights off the coast of Cuba have surged in recent months as President Donald Trump has issued increasingly belligerent threats to seize the island nation by force.
CNN reported Sunday that the US Navy and Air Force have conducted more than two dozen surveillance flights—mostly of them near Havana and Santiago de Cuba, the country’s largest cities—since early February, after the Trump administration invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its president. The outlet noted that “similar patterns, in which ramped-up rhetoric by the Trump administration coincided with an uptick in publicly visible surveillance flights, occurred in the lead-up to US military operations in both Venezuela and Iran.”
“The flights are notable not only for their proximity to the coast, which puts them well within range of gathering intelligence, but for the suddenness of their appearance—prior to February, such publicly visible flights were exceedingly rare in this area—and for their timing,” CNN reported.
CNN published its story days after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced new sanctions targeting a conglomerate operated by Cuba’s military and a natural resources firm, intensifying the United States’ decades-long economic war against the island nation.
“Our people already know the cruelty behind the actions of the US government and the viciousness with which it is capable of attacking us,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said in response to the sanctions. “They understand, just as the rest of the world does, that this is a unilateral aggression against a nation and a population whose sole ambition is to live in peace, masters of their own destiny and free from the pernicious interference of US imperialism.”
In a New York Times op-ed on Monday, US Reps. Pramila
The Trump administration’s operations in Latin America over the past seven months have cost nearly $5 billion, finds a new analysis — enough to fund Medicaid for half a million Americans for a year. Thus far, the combination of the military costs for the deadly raid of Venezuela and abduction of then-President Nicolás Maduro as well as the U.S.’s boat strike and surveillance campaign in the…
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The US Justice Department announced Thursday that an American special forces soldier has been arrested and charged for pocketing over $400,000 by betting, on the basis of classified information, on the timing of the Trump administration’s illegal abduction of Nicolás Maduro earlier this year. Gannon Ken Van Dyke, an active-duty soldier in the US Army who was involved in planning and executing…
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U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein refused to dismiss drug trafficking charges against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores on March 26, even though the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is blocking funds for their legal defense, in violation of the Sixth Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
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