2026-06-26 ATS briefing¶

Food shocks¶

Food Shocks¶

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has severed a critical artery of the global food system, exposing the structural fragility of an agricultural model built on synthetic fertilisers. Benjamin Selwyn's analysis in Le Monde Diplomatique traces this dependence back through imperial history — from 19th-century guano extraction to Chilean nitrates — and forward into the present, where nitrogen fertilisers, derived from natural gas, underpin roughly half of global food production.

What emerges is not a story of temporary disruption but of a system that reproduces its own vulnerabilities. When shortages hit, states scramble to secure supply rather than reduce dependence. The 1970s oil shock produced the same pattern: African governments established state-led fertiliser distribution systems, only to see them dismantled by structural adjustment a decade later. Today's response is no different — export controls, production subsidies, trade restrictions — all aimed at securing national access within a constrained global system, at others' expense.

The current crisis is more acute because geopolitical conflict, energy markets and agricultural inputs have converged into a single shock. Poorer countries face the additional burden of servicing foreign debt in hard currency, locking them into cash crop exports that deepen their subordination. Meanwhile, the biofuels push — accelerated under the guise of a "green transition" — diverts land and inputs from food production, intensifying the contradiction between energy security and food sovereignty.

The real lesson is not that supply chains need fixing, but that the entire agroindustrial model is a trap. Crisis management stabilises output in the short term while entrenching inequality and vulnerability. Agroecological production, which has shown genuine success in local food security, remains marginalised. That is not an accident — it is the logic of a system that treats food as a commodity and fertiliser as a weapon.

The US-Iran war may have ended but the death toll continues to mount¶

Source: The Telegraph

Reveals how inter-imperialist war in the Persian Gulf cascades into fuel and food shortages in the Global South, confirming the Marxist thesis that imperialist conflict immiserates the periphery.

Apple, Microsoft hike prices over surging chip costs¶

Source: Al Jazeera

The headline is misleading. Apple and Microsoft are not raising prices because chips cost more to make. They are raising prices because the AI boom has created a massive, artificial demand for memory and storage chips, diverting supply away from consumer electronics and into data centres. This is not a shortage of raw materials or production capacity. It is a shortage created by the frantic, speculative build-out of AI infrastructure.

Apple’s spokesperson admits as much: “We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly.” The price hikes are steep and sudden — 20 percent or more on core products. The Mac Studio M3 Ultra jumped from $3,999 to $5,299. That is not a cost pass-through. That is a company using a supply squeeze as cover to test pricing power.

The market punished Apple anyway. Its stock fell 6 percent. Investors understand that raising prices on consumer hardware during a cost-of-living crisis is a gamble. The analyst quoted in the article says the MacBook Neo was “outstanding because of price.” Now that advantage is gone.

Microsoft’s Xbox price hike is even more telling. Console margins are thin. Microsoft admits memory prices have risen 2.5 times and expects another doubling by 2027. The entire consumer electronics sector is being cannibalised by AI’s insatiable demand for chips.

This is a concrete example of how the AI bubble distorts the broader economy. Capital is being poured into data centres, not into productive capacity for everyday goods. The result is higher prices for working-class consumers and a tightening squeeze on household budgets — all to feed a speculative frenzy that may well collapse.

The upsurge in Bolivia¶

Source: Tempest

The Tempest piece frames Bolivia’s current rebellion as a direct response to Washington’s drive to secure resource extraction against Chinese competition. President Paz, presented as a Trump ally, faces a coalition of miners, indigenous communities, farmers, and organised labour using road blockades, strikes, and mass mobilisations to force him out.

This is useful shorthand, but the analysis risks flattening Bolivia’s internal dynamics into a simple proxy of US-China rivalry. The real material basis of the uprising is likely more mundane and more explosive: the social costs of extractivism — whether the copper, lithium, or gas goes to Beijing or Washington — fall on the same working and indigenous communities. The contradiction is not primarily inter-imperialist but between a state committed to rapid resource extraction and the populations whose land, water, and labour bear the cost.

The article’s main value is political rather than analytical. It announces an organising event and signals solidarity, positioning the rebellion as a model for US activists seeking independence from the corporate parties. That is a legitimate strategic point: if Bolivia’s movement succeeds in ousting Paz, it would demonstrate that mass direct action can break Washington’s preferred arrangements. But the piece does not examine the movement’s internal composition, its political direction, or whether it has a programme beyond removing a president. Without that, the “new era of struggle” remains an aspiration rather than a concrete assessment.

‘Constitutional coup’ claims as Zimbabwe senate approves extending presidential term¶

Source: The Guardian

Zimbabwe’s senate has voted overwhelmingly to extend the presidential term from five to seven years and, more significantly, to replace direct presidential elections with appointment by parliament. The bill’s opponents, including the Constitutional Defenders Forum, call it a “constitutional coup” that strips citizens of the right to choose their head of state. The government frames the change as a stability measure, reducing the frequency of “polarising elections.”

The material reality is simpler. President Emmerson Mnangagwa, now 83, won a contested second term in 2023 with 52.6% of the vote. His Zanu-PF party has held power uninterrupted since 1980. The amendment does not introduce a new authoritarianism; it formalises an existing one. The claim that parliamentary selection is more stable than direct elections is a thin justification for eliminating a mechanism that, however flawed, occasionally produced genuine opposition challenges — as in 2008, when Mugabe was forced into a coalition government after hyperinflation gutted the economy.

The opposition’s real weakness is not legal but structural. Zimbabwe’s economy remains devastated by the consequences of the 2000s land seizures and subsequent isolation. Mnangagwa’s rule is widely seen as a continuation of Mugabe’s. In such conditions, the ruling party does not need to steal elections so much as ensure no opposition can organise a credible challenge. The harassment of figures like Tendai Biti and Lovemore Madhuku — offices raided, lawyers beaten by men in unmarked vehicles — is the state’s way of making that point without needing a constitutional amendment.

For revolutionary politics, the lesson is not about Zimbabwe’s peculiarities. It is that the capitalist state, even in its most brittle form, will shed democratic procedures when they become inconvenient. The question is whether any force on the left can offer a genuine alternative to the Zanu-PF’s decay — or whether the opposition remains trapped in the same liberal framework the ruling party has just discarded.

UK prioritised ties with UAE over averting mass atrocities in Sudan, MPs to be told¶

Source: The Guardian

Here is the summary and analysis for the hosts of Against the Stream.

The Guardian reports that the UK government knowingly suppressed intelligence of an emerging genocide in Sudan to protect its relationship with the United Arab Emirates. Nathaniel Raymond of Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab will tell a parliamentary committee that in May 2024, FCDO officials admitted they were under “significant private pressure” from the UAE not to publicly link the Emirates and Ethiopia to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The RSF’s genocidal massacre in El Fasher, which killed at least 60,000 civilians, was therefore met with official silence.

This is not a case of bureaucratic incompetence. It is a clear hierarchy of interests. The UK’s “economic, security and diplomatic relationships” with the UAE were deemed more valuable than preventing mass slaughter. The FCDO even attempted to downplay the death toll, treating a genocide as a “political problem” for the government. The UK, as penholder on Sudan at the UN Security Council, was uniquely positioned to act. It chose not to.

The contradiction is stark. A liberal state that formally condemns atrocities actively facilitates them by prioritising access to Gulf capital and strategic alliances. The UAE is not a rogue actor; it is a key node in the global capitalist order, a buyer of British arms and a hub for fictitious capital flows. The UK’s subservience reveals the real content of its “humanitarian” foreign policy: it is a cover for managing the interests of allied capitalist states, even when those interests require complicity in genocide.

For revolutionary politics, the lesson is brutal. Appeals to the British state to “do something” are futile. The state is not a neutral arbiter that can be shamed into action; it is an instrument of class rule that will always sacrifice Sudanese lives to preserve the profitability of its relationship with the Emirates. The only meaningful solidarity is material, not diplomatic.

Who Is Winning Africa’s Drone Wars?¶

Source: Foreign Affairs

Who Is Winning Africa’s Drone Wars?¶

The democratisation of drone technology has inverted the military logic that shaped African conflicts a decade ago. When the US launched its first drone strike on the continent in 2011, it held a near-monopoly on a $20 million capability. Today, 37 African militaries operate drones, and non-state actors in over a dozen countries are assembling them from off-the-shelf components.

The article's central observation is sharp: the gap between resource-rich and resource-poor adversaries has narrowed, but not in the way states anticipated. In Libya and Ethiopia, drones decisively shifted outcomes — Turkey's Bayraktar TB2s turned the battle for Tripoli, and Iranian-UAE-Turkish drones saved Addis Ababa from Tigrayan forces. These victories seduced other governments into believing drones offered a cheap substitute for ground forces, intelligence networks, and state-building.

The Sahel tells a different story. Juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, having expelled French and UN forces, turned to Turkish drones to compensate for lost Western arsenals. Initial gains against Tuareg rebels gave way to a deeper crisis: al-Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates are advancing across the region, and state control is eroding. The reason is material, not technological. Drones can strike, but they cannot hold territory, build local intelligence, or provide public services. Mass civilian casualties from strikes generate resentment that insurgents exploit.

The contradiction is plain. African states acquired drones to project power cheaply, but the technology has exposed the limits of airpower without ground capacity. Meanwhile, non-state actors — like the Azawad Liberation Front, which used fibre-optic drones to destroy Russian Africa Corps vehicles — are innovating faster than states reliant on foreign suppliers.

The implication for revolutionary politics: the state's monopoly on violence is fragmenting, but not in a way that favours popular forces. The fragmentation benefits well-organised insurgents and foreign powers competing for influence. The drone race is not levelling the playing field — it is creating new hierarchies of those who can manufacture, those who can only buy, and those who can improvise.

New Prime Minister, Same Problem¶

Source: Foreign Affairs

Here is a summary and analysis of the article.

The article argues that Keir Starmer’s political demise is not a story of tactical blunders but of a bill finally coming due. Brexit, the defining event of modern British politics, was managed for a decade through deferral. Starmer’s strategy was to neutralise it as an issue, ruling out a customs union or single market return and hoping the economy would limp along. It did, until the external environment changed.

The return of Trump’s tariff regime and the breakdown of the rules-based trading order have stripped away the UK’s remaining shock absorbers. The EU, for all its faults, retains a massive internal market and the scale to negotiate as a power. The UK does not. The article correctly identifies the core contradiction: the British economy needs European market access, while Europe needs British military heft. A grand bargain is theoretically available, but the missing ingredient is political will.

What is revealing is the article’s implicit admission that the “sovereignty” won by Brexit is hollow. The UK left the EU to escape supranational constraint, only to find itself more exposed to the raw power politics of a US-led trade war. The loss is not just economic—4% of long-run GDP—but strategic. The City of London’s passporting rights are gone; foreign investment has fled to Amsterdam and Frankfurt. The UK is now a supplicant, not a shaper, of the rules that govern its trade.

For a Marxist analysis, the key takeaway is not the policy failure of one party or another. It is the demonstration that national sovereignty, in an era of globalised capital, is a poor shield against the logic of accumulation. The British bourgeoisie chose a political path based on nationalist illusion, and the working class is now paying the price in stagnant living standards and a permanently weakened economy. The “loveless landslide” of 2024 was always a holding operation. The crisis is now forcing a choice: a humiliating return to Europe’s orbit, or a deeper slide into irrelevance. Neither option offers a way out for the class that actually produces the country’s wealth.