President Biden approved in March a highly classified nuclear posture document for the first time reorienting US deterrent strategy to focus on China's rapid expansion in its nuclear arsenal. The shift comes as the Pentagon believes China's stockpiles will rival the size and diversity of those of the United States and Russia over the next decade. The new "Nuclear Employment Guidance" is so highly classified that there are no electronic copies, and only a small number of hard copies distributed to top national security officials and Pentagon brass. But a copy was just obtained by the New York Times.

US-sponsored talks to halt the 16-month conflict in Sudan kicked off in Geneva Aug. 13, but there was a no-show from the army despite all the fanfare. There had been hope that the new venue and buy-in from regional powers supporting the warring factions—including Egypt and the United Arab Emirates—would give the process a better chance of succeeding than prior, disjointed mediation attempts. But the army's command remains internally divided on the issue of dialogue—especially while it is on the back foot militarily—and is wary of the US, which it sees as a perennial critic. The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the army's rival, is meanwhile being accused of attending talks only to launder its image and bolster its international legitimacy. Grassroots civilian groups also remain deeply wary of another potential power-sharing accord that strengthens the military generals at their expense.

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Aug. 16 upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit that challenged the constitutionality of protest curfews in New York City. The curfews, imposed in response to demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd by then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, were declared for a one-week period in June 2020. Lamel Jeffrey, Thaddeus Blake and Chayse Pena were each arrested and charged with violating the curfew. In a subsequent lawsuit, they alleged that the city's protest restrictions violated their First Amendment right to free assembly and their Fourth Amendment protection against unlawful arrest. In 2022, a federal district court dismissed the case, stating that the curfews constituted a valid public safety regulation that "left open ample alternative channels for expressive activity."

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko charges that Kyiv has stationed more than 120,000 soldiers along Ukraine's border with Belarus, and says that he is deploying military formations along his own country's entire border with Ukraine in response. In an interview with Rossiya TV Aug. 18, Lukashenko accused Ukraine of attempting to provoke a nuclear strike from Russia, which has warheads deployed in Belarus. "The worry is that escalation on Ukraine's part is an attempt to force Russia to take asymmetric actions," Lukasheno said. "Let's consider the usage of nuclear weapons. I am confident that Ukraine would be pleased if Russia or we utilized tactical nuclear weapons there. That would bring them joy." (Ukrainska Pravda, Radio Australia, Al Jazeera)

Dozens of Israeli settlers, many of them masked, attacked the Palestinian village of Jit, outside the West Bank town of Nablus, on the night of Aug. 15, hurling stones and Molotov cocktails. The group of over 100 assailants put at least four houses and six vehicles to the torch, and apparently killed one resident. The Palestinian Authority health ministry said Rashid Sedda, 22, was killed by gunfire from the settlers and another resident was seriously wounded in what it called an act of "organized state terrorism."

In Episode 239 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg provides an overview of the protest waves and popular uprisings going on across the planet—in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Bangladesh, India, China, Serbia, Venezuela, and in Israel. This as worldwide protests in solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza continue. Amid ongoing protests against Netanyahu in Israel, there have also been protests against Hamas in Gaza. Despite internal dangers and contradictions in all these upsurges, there is a sense that we could be approaching a revolutionary moment such as that seen in 2011—the year of the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street. And with the planet on an accelerating trajectory toward world war, the linking of these upsurges through conscious solidarity and the infusion of anti-war content to their demands is urgently mandated.

A fresh round of Gaza ceasefire negotiations got underway in Doha, Qatar, on Aug. 15. The aim is to reach a deal to bring an end to Israel’s more than 10-month-long war in the Gaza Strip and secure the release of the estimated 115 Israeli hostages still held by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups from their Oct. 7 attacks into Israel last year. Forty-one of the hostages are believed to be dead, and the recorded death toll from Israel's military campaign has now reached over 40,000, according to health authorities in Gaza. That's roughly 2% of Gaza’s population—or one out of every 50 residents—that has been killed.

One day into their unprecedented cross-border incursion into Russia's Kursk oblast launched Aug. 6, Ukrainian forces captured the Sudzha gas metering station—a key node of the last remaining Russian pipeline still sending gas to Europe through Ukraine. The Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod pipeline, built by the Soviets in the 1980s, sends natural gas from Siberian fields through Ukraine to Slovakia, the Czech Repubic, Hungary and Austria. Despite the capture of the Sudzha station, Gazprom hasn't halted the flow of gas through the station—nor has Ukraine shut the pipeline over the past two and a half years of war, apparently due to pressure from Europe. EU sanctions have only gradually started to affect Russia's massive hydrocarbons sector. (Meduza, Reuters)