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

The presidential election in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) on October 19th, 2025, has introduced a potentially transformative figure into the island’s long-stalled peace process. Tufan Erhurman, the centre-left lawyer and leader of the Republican Turkish Party (CTP), defeated incumbent president Ersin Tatar with 62.76% of the vote,  signalling a decisive shift in the Turkish Cypriot political landscape. For the first time in five years, the Turkish Cypriot el

When a conflict is in its twilight hours, its final death throes often manifest as an exponentially rapid alteration in at least one of its combatant’s positions, be they military or diplomatic. In the case of the largest and bloodiest war continental Europe has seen since the Second World War, we can now see clear evidence of the latter - and not from the Ukrainian camp. The culminating peace proposals from a weekend of breakneck cross-Atlantic detente-by-press-communique wi

Two peace proposals now frame the future of Ukraine . Washington's draft plan focuses on concessions and neutrality, while Brussels has unveiled a new framework built around the principle that "borders cannot be changed by force" . At first glance, they seem to represent different strategies. In reality, they reflect two competing ways the world has thought about security for nearly a century. The first is universalism, the idea that every state, large or small, enjoys the sa

In most Western schools, children were often asked in Geography class: “Which is the largest ocean in the world?” To us, the Pacific looked like empty space — a vast stretch of blue that separates continents. But that cartographic illusion hides the truth: the Pacific is not empty at all. It is a constellation of nations, languages and histories, now standing at the fault line of global power. However, much like the game of chess that was the Cold-War, is the Pacific slipping

The USA’s modern food security policy can be traced to 1943 when President Roosevelt initiated the United Nations Conference on Food and...

As heightened tensions and security competition come to define international politics, there has been something of an increase in...

My family is based in a residential tower block in The Pearl – a small artificial oasis on the northern end of Doha. I had just sat down...

Trump's second term has seen a seismic shift in how western allies interact, negotiate and do business with the United States.  In...

Mid-August was filled with discussions on the Russia-Ukraine situation.  On the 15 th , Trump met Russian President Vladimir Putin  in...

Introduction The current negotiations between the Syrian Interim Government and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are not merely about...

In June 2025, on the wrong side of the Belarussian-Lithuanian border, a bus carrying fourteen hooded prisoners opened its doors to John...

Within a whirlwind of a few months, Donald Trump has achieved surprising diplomatic successes in countries plagued by conflicts, to the...

Some things have remained a constant in the second Trump term: his capricious and avaricious personality, which prioritises loyalty,...