The long-term effects of chemical weapons such as Agent Orange mean that the impact of war lasts well beyond a ceasefire
IN HIS RECENT ARTICLE “‘Is Russia an imperialist country?’ is not the right question” (Morning Star, March 29 2022) Zoltan Zigedy does well to point out that imperialism, as a new stage of capitalism, is a historically developing system and not a policy.
But somewhere along the line the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater: by effectively dismissing multipolarisation as a system of inter-imperialist rivalry, drawing an equation between now and 1914, he overlooks the crucial factor of the emergence of the developing world.
Despite subordination under neo-colonialism, that developing countries still have a certain counter-imperialist agency has been demonstrated by the abstentions to the US-initiated UN general assembly motion deploring Russia’s aggression on Ukraine.
JENNY CLEGG reports from a Chinese peace conference bringing together defence ministers, US think tanks and global South leaders, where speakers warned that the erosion of multilateralism risks regional hotspots exploding into wider war



