2026-07-11 ATS briefing¶

Developing countries spend more repaying foreign debt than on education, UN reveals¶

Here is the summary and analysis for Against the Stream.

The UN has confirmed what many have long suspected: the global south is not developing; it is being drained. In 113 developing countries, more was spent servicing foreign debt than on education in 2025. In sub-Saharan Africa, the ratio was 3.6 to one. Eighteen of the most indebted nations spent five times more on debt than on schooling; Sri Lanka managed a staggering 16-to-one ratio.

This is not a crisis of mismanagement. It is the normal functioning of a system where capital, having overaccumulated in the core, must find profitable outlets. The debt repayments hitting a 35-year high are the direct result of a series of shocks—Covid, energy price spikes, interest rate rises—that were themselves products of the system’s instability. The "solution" imposed on these countries is austerity: cut education, cut health, cut wages, to ensure the bondholders in London and New York get paid.

The contradiction is stark. The very act of servicing the debt destroys the conditions for future repayment. As Unesco notes, this "cycle of austerity" erodes domestic revenue and economic growth. You cannot build a productive economy when you are starving your schools and your teachers. The system is eating its own seed corn.

The call for "debt relief" from campaigners is a plea to manage the crisis humanely. But the mechanism of extraction is not a bug; it is the point. Private creditors, backed by the legal apparatus of the imperialist states, will block any relief that cuts into their profits. The real question is not how to restructure the debt, but how to break the power that enforces it.

Why This Energy Shock Is Different¶

Source: Project Syndicate

Confirms that the Iran war has shifted from supply rerouting to supply destruction — a qualitative escalation in the energy crisis that directly impacts the cost-price scissors and accelerates the general crisis of accumulation.

Are the US and Iran at war again?¶

Source: Al Jazeera

The headline asks whether the US and Iran are at war again, but the framing is misleading. The premise of a bilateral US-Iran conflict obscures the actual dynamic: the US acts as the logistical and political backbone for Israeli military operations against Iran. Trump’s declaration that the ceasefire is “over” is not a return to direct US-Iran hostilities, but a green light for Israel to resume its campaign with American cover.

Iranian leaders’ refusal to surrender is not posturing — it reflects a strategic reality. After months of strikes on its military infrastructure and nuclear sites, Iran’s deterrence has been degraded but not broken. The regime’s survival depends on projecting resilience, even as its economy buckles under renewed sanctions and war-related destruction.

What this reveals is the deepening entanglement of US and Israeli military command. Washington no longer merely arms Israel; it now coordinates ceasefire timelines and escalation thresholds. This is inter-imperialist rivalry in practice — not between equals, but between a declining hegemon and a regional proxy-state whose interests increasingly dictate American policy.

For the working class, the resumption of bombing means higher energy prices, disrupted supply chains, and the ever-present risk of a wider war drawing in Gulf states. The contradiction is sharp: the US state claims to want stability while its actions guarantee the opposite.

US wants Iran to pledge to stop shooting at ships in Strait of Hormuz¶

Source: BBC News

The US is demanding Iran issue a public statement guaranteeing safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz and acknowledging that recent attacks on commercial shipping were a mistake. This demand frames Saturday’s talks in Oman, which follow weeks of fighting that punctured the June ceasefire.

What’s striking is the asymmetry. Washington wants a performative submission — a public confession — not just a behavioural change. The White House official quoted by Reuters put it bluntly: “They’re either going to give us that statement or we’re not having a good outcome for them.” This is not negotiation; it is an ultimatum dressed as diplomacy.

Iran’s response reveals its own contradictions. Tehran blames the attacks on a “rogue internal group” of hardliners, claiming the state itself remains committed to the deal. Whether true or a convenient fiction, this signals that the Iranian regime cannot fully control the forces it has cultivated — a classic problem for states that mobilise nationalist militancy as a bargaining chip.

The Strait of Hormuz is not just a strategic chokepoint; it is the material hinge of global oil circulation. Any sustained disruption there would send energy prices soaring, hitting every major economy. The US demand for a “safe passage” guarantee is really a demand that Iran accept the strait as a neutral corridor of commerce, not a lever of sovereign power. Iran’s counter-proposal — that it manage the strait jointly with Oman and charge “service fees” — is an attempt to monetise control without fully conceding it.

Behind the theatre of talks lies a deeper instability. The killing of Khamenei, the open calls for Trump’s assassination, and the inability of either side to enforce its own ceasefire all point to a regional order fraying faster than diplomacy can patch it. For now, capital needs the oil to flow. Whether these talks deliver that — or simply postpone the next rupture — is the only question that matters.

Geopolitical fragmentation reshaping shipping¶

Source: Hellenic Shipping News

The Baltic Exchange panel at Posidonia offers a rare moment of clarity from inside the shipping industry: the era of hyper-optimised global supply chains is over, and no one expects it back.

What’s striking is how the speakers describe the shift not as a temporary disruption but as a structural transformation. Alex Haubert from Hong Glory Bulk frames it bluntly — the old world of cheap capital and zero risk is gone. Supply chains that were stretched to maximise efficiency “snapped” during the pandemic. Now resilience and security compete with cost, and the cost of financing commodity trades has risen sharply, making inventory management more expensive and complex.

This is not just about geopolitics. It’s about the end of a particular phase of capital accumulation — one where low interest rates allowed capital to treat the globe as a frictionless surface. That surface has fractured. The result is a world where pricing future exposure becomes nearly impossible, because the risks are no longer market risks but political ones. Trading houses are hoarding risk internally, unwilling to sell it forward.

George Mangos from SOKANA goes further, describing “two entirely separated fuel distribution systems” — a concrete material expression of inter-imperialist rivalry. The world economy is literally splitting into distinct logistical spheres. Eva Tzima’s observation that China is a “big winner” from recent disruptions is telling: the fragmentation is not symmetrical. Some capitals and states are better positioned to navigate it than others.

The panel’s conclusion — that trade volumes will keep growing — is probably correct, but it misses the deeper point. Growth under conditions of fragmentation is not the same as growth under globalisation. It is more volatile, more expensive, and more prone to sudden ruptures. For shipping, this means higher profits for those who can adapt, but also greater exposure to forces beyond market control. For the rest of us, it means a world where the movement of goods — and therefore the movement of value — is increasingly shaped by strategic rivalry, not efficiency. That is a recipe for instability, not resilience.

Tanker Market: West Africa Crude Oil Exports Nosediving in 2026¶

Source: Hellenic Shipping News

The headline is a bit misleading. West African crude exports aren't nosediving in isolation — they are being squeezed by a dramatic reconfiguration of global oil flows, driven by war and shifting demand.

The key figure is the 30.7% collapse in Arabian Gulf exports, a direct consequence of the ongoing Persian Gulf war. That hole is being filled by South America (up 31.5%) and the US (up 20.5%). West Africa is losing out not because its oil is suddenly unwanted, but because it is being outcompeted by these alternative suppliers in its traditional markets.

The data on destinations confirms this. Exports from West Africa to China fell 30.9% year-on-year, and to the EU by 16.1%. China’s total seaborne crude imports dropped 14.2%, reflecting a broader economic slowdown. The EU, meanwhile, is taking more crude overall (up 1.7%), but it is sourcing it from elsewhere — likely the US and South America, which are closer and politically safer than the war-adjacent Gulf or the increasingly unreliable West African producers.

What this reveals is not a simple story of declining production, but of a market fragmenting under geopolitical pressure. The old trade routes are breaking up. Capital is seeking secure, short-haul supply chains, even at higher costs. For West Africa, this means a structural loss of market share, not a temporary dip. The region’s oil, once a staple for Asian refiners, is being priced out by American and Brazilian crude in a world where security of supply now trumps marginal cost advantages.

Primary deficits: a short history¶

Source: FRED Blog

The FRED Blog offers a tidy primer on the distinction between the total US federal deficit and the primary deficit — the latter stripping out interest payments on existing debt. The piece presents this as a technical refinement, a way to assess "today's budgetary choices" without the dead weight of past borrowing.

This framing is revealing precisely for what it omits. The primary deficit is presented as a measure of fiscal discipline, but it is equally a measure of how much the state must borrow simply to reproduce the conditions of its own creditworthiness. Interest payments are not a neutral "burden of past decisions." They are the price exacted by the bond markets for the privilege of sovereign borrowing — a transfer from taxpayers to holders of government debt, overwhelmingly the financial sector and the wealthy.

The historical patterns the article notes — the WWII spike, the 1990s surplus, the narrowing gap during low interest rates — are presented as matters of policy choice and economic growth. What is absent is any account of why the US state borrows at all. It does so not because of profligacy, but because the capitalist state must spend to manage crises, subsidise accumulation, and maintain social order, while the tax base is constrained by the need to avoid choking off private profit. The deficit is not a failure of budgeting; it is a structural feature of a system where the state is both the guarantor of capital and subordinate to its logic.

The real story here is not the difference between two accounting measures. It is the way the state's fiscal position — primary or total — reveals the contradiction between the needs of capital accumulation and the political forms that manage it.

Venezuela quake death toll passes 4,000 as scale of recovery effort looms large¶

Source: The Guardian

The scale of Venezuela’s earthquake disaster is now starkly quantified: over 4,000 dead, nearly 17,000 injured, and an estimated $37bn in physical damage. But the article’s real weight lies in the contradiction it exposes between the country’s degraded state capacity and the political conditions imposed from abroad.

Venezuela’s economy has been hollowed out by years of sanctions and the collapse of oil revenues. State services were already crippled before the ground shook. Now, the government must coordinate a relief operation for 1.3 million people while its own infrastructure is in ruins. The UN has issued a $300m appeal, but the interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, is forced to ask King Charles III to release 30 tons of Venezuelan gold frozen under UK sanctions. This is the material reality of inter-imperialist pressure: assets that could fund emergency housing and medical supplies are locked away in London, not because of any humanitarian logic, but as leverage in a political dispute.

Meanwhile, popular anger is directed at the government’s inadequate initial response. The regime’s legitimacy rests partly on its claim to defend national sovereignty, but when the state cannot deliver basic rescue and relief, that claim rings hollow. The disaster has laid bare the gap between political rhetoric and material capacity. For the left, the question is not whether to support or condemn the government, but how to build autonomous working-class organisations that can demand the release of frozen assets, hold the state accountable, and organise relief independently of both imperial powers and a weakened bureaucracy.