One of Donald Trump’s many pledges to the American electorate was to end United States involvement in what he coined ‘forever wars’. And yet, weeks past have seen further strikes on Iran by the US – a response to attacks on vessels in the Straits of Hormuz, despite a 60 day interim agreement between the two countries being signed in June. Does this conflict reflect the waning geo-political power of America, rather than the tyranny of the regime in Iran? The relationship betwe

The NATO Ankara Summit, which took place over 7-8 July, returned the future of Europe again to the forefront of discussion. When considering the possibility of a reduced US presence in NATO, one trend that has arisen is a turn towards ‘minilateralism.’ Indeed, Galip Dalay of Chatham House wrote that “minilateral models point toward the architecture of a post-American European security order.” Minilateralism consists of small coalitions of states which possess shared threat pe

In Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice, the film’s titular subject, Donald Trump, has his political mythology, by turns, dissected and distilled into a brutal education in winning; attack first, concede nothing, and, above all, declare victory even when facts may indicate the opposite. The film’s dramatisation of Trump’s rise under the impervious tutelage of McCarthy-allied lawyer Roy Cohn presents deal brokering as more a matter of domination than negotiation. Cohn’s lessons are in

May 28 marked the passing of the Iran war from its third into its fourth, and possibly final, month. From early April to June a fragile ceasefire had remained, somewhat improbably, intact, before a flurry of missiles exchanged between Israel and Iran, Tehran’s downing of a US Apache helicopter, and a swift series of US retaliatory strikes against Iran marked an end to this period of relative quiet. Yet days later, on June 14, US President Trump announced that Washington and T

‘The only thing stopping Trump from monetising Greenland is that you can’t put it on a mug. Yet’ Donald Trump has never been a man who does things quietly, or particularly logically. Chaos is the policy. Disruption is the strategy. By the time he had set his sights on Greenland, most of the world had long stopped being surprised by what came out of his mouth; and yet, for the 56,000 people who live there, this particular fixation landed differently. At some point in 2019, Nuu

France held its first Africa-France summit in an anglophone African capital on 11 and 12 May, gathering more than thirty heads of state at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre in Nairobi. Emmanuel Macron and William Ruto co-chaired the Africa Forward Summit, which closed with the eleven-point Nairobi Declaration and €23 billion in pledged investment across energy, agriculture, artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure. Paris presented the venue and the figure

Recently, I wrote about the modern fad for politicians in the West to proclaim new variants of realist thought, some of which were a sham. But recent weeks have revealed Spain’s PM Pedro Sánchez is operating according to a fundamentally realist perspective on international politics, though he makes no direct reference to realist thinking. In the pages of Le Monde Diplomatique, Sánchez recently appealed to defend multilateralism against the products of “what passes for realis

The panda in your Zoo is not a gift. Although they look like harmless, black-and-white fur balls with sleepy eyes, giant pandas are not just lovable zoo attractions; they are among the most influential instruments in China’s diplomatic toolkit. For decades, Beijing has used pandas to reward friendly governments, deepen trade ties, and signal political approval. Just as importantly, it has used them to punish countries that fall out of favour. This strategy has a name: panda d

Since its posthumous publication in 1532, Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince has served as an incisive articulation of realism – the idea that power is gained through self-interest and competition. Written against the backdrop of the Italian Wars (1494 – 1559), The Prince was intended for the eyes of Lorenzo de Medici, the ruler of the Florentine Republic. Yet, Machiavelli’s insights remain robust, and, to this day, his magnum opus continues to provide a helpful framework for m

In international politics today, the epithet ‘realism’ has become common currency. It carries with it a rhetorical confidence – a name which suggests prophecy of truth amongst alternatives which are deceptions. But as proclaiming a realist position has become something of a fashion nowadays, we must beware the fashion victims; those who don ill-fitting articles because they bear the right label, and wear its most ridiculous accessories without any sense of the motifs and subs

September of last year marked Zack Polanski’s irruption into the highest echelon of British politics. The Green’s new leader, imbued with the gifts of personality, pitch and popularity, bestowed upon the party an attribute they had yet to enjoy – a brand. Polanski has swiftly turned himself into the Greens’ main asset; sharper than his predecessors, more media-savvy, more combative and far less embarrassed by the prospect of harnessing populism for his party’s good. Polanski,

International law was created to act as a check on unrestrained power, yet in practice is only effective at controlling states who are willing to conform, leaving those states whom international law was intended to control practically untouched by it. Out of the ruins of the Second World War came the concept of enforceable international law, followed by the creation of the United Nations and the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . International law promise

The beginning of 2026 marked a historic turning point in relations between the transitional government led by Ahmed Shara and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria. The military defeat of the SDF on the ground has meant the re-establishment of state authority for the Damascus government. However, in the subsequent process during which realities on the ground have evolved into a political agreement, the ‘ Integration and Ceasefire Agreement ’ between the Damascus gover

It seems that the era of repetitive politics is over in Japan. Since her inauguration as the first female Prime Minister of Japan, Sanae Takaichi has set a new path for Japan’s foreign policy. Her first order of action? A diplomatic firestorm with China. In her parliamentary declaration of last November, Takaichi underlined that any attempt of a Chinese blockade against Taiwan will signal an existential threat for Japan, precipitating the need for a collective self-defence st

“When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you” is a line from Nietzsche , who warned that “whoever fights with monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster.” I recall this Nietzschean fragment as apposite to today’s Venezuela, and how tempting it is for those who struggle against domination to justify using the dominator’s tools. Venezuela is not only a tragedy for Venezuelans; it is a test of whether democracies can resist becoming what they

Only a select few would claim agricultural surpluses are a sexy topic. But in this arena the seeds have been sown for a potential backlash against the current US administration, as recently decimated international food aid policies were once a pressure release valve for tensions with the agriculture lobby over slumping crop prices – a problem faced by the US government again today. Trump’s vision is of America as a producer, an export powerhouse, maker and grower of things t

Churchill may or may not have said – it’s an aphorism with cloudy provenance – that “Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.” NATO’s Secretary-General Mark Rutte may or may not believe it. After all, as American threats to obtain Greenland, a member of NATO via the Danish commonwealth, grow increasingly bellicose, the “Trump-whisperer” is all but silent. Adopting a ‘nothing to see here’ attitude with almost mon

This Trump administration’s recent Latin American chevauchées are old school. But the world has moved on since Monroe, and regional actors may well respond in more modern manners to the egregious treatment of Venezuela. ‘Gunboat diplomacy’ was the name awarded, perhaps most famously, to the actions of US Commodore Perry in the 1850s. The USA gained access to the closed-off Japanese economy by pounding Japanese infrastructure from the sea until it got its way. Though this infa

The Republic of Moldova, a small country situated between the EU and Russia, has long been vulnerable because of its heavy reliance on Russian-controlled energy infrastructure. The war in Ukraine and the 2025 Russian gas cutoff exposed this serious vulnerability. Responding to these challenges, the pro-EU Moldovan government has taken strong measures towards energy diversification and integration into the EU energy system. This article examines how Moldova is reducing its rel

On the 5th of December Donald Trump’s second National Security strategy was released to little fanfare, nevertheless precipitating great global alarm, not least in Europe, as it appears to promote an archaic vision of a world once again carved up for consumption by superpowers. This National Security Strategy is very streamlined, at only 29 pages, compared to Trump’s 55-page 2017 equivalent. It even describes these old strategies as ‘ bloated and unfocused.’ This reflects