“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

Relations between the USA and Venezuela experienced one of the most shocking fractures in modern diplomatic history this January when President Maduro was captured by US special forces and taken to New York. His midnight Caracas kidnapping has transformed tensions between the two countries from a classic diplomatic crisis into a global sovereignty and legal crisis, rendering it a pivotal test of the nascent multipolar world order, rather than a mere feud between strongmen. An

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

Donald Trump’s unprecedented attack on the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, has been met with an equally unprecedented defence composed of Ex-Fed chairs, central bank governors, and titans  of global finance. Central to this alliance’s criticism of Trump is an ominous warning of disaster to come should the Fed’s independence be violated. For example, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde emphasised the role central bank independence played as a “corner

The New York Times published  one of the finest long-form features in recent memory last week. The piece was a thorough chronicling of the US-Ukraine relationship and its evolution over the past 12 action-filled months. Despite the US’s off-the-cuff approach to foreign policy, the brazen contempt it shows Ukraine and the rest of Europe is consistently striking. Pressure is barely exerted on Putin, with any attempt to end his barbarous actions feeling futile. Everything is stu

When asked about his thoughts  on JFK’s assassination, Malcolm X responded with the phrase “the chickens come home to roost.” Malcolm, writing during America’s imperialist scramble over the newly decolonized nations, criticized the belief that America could impart political violence abroad without expecting any consequences closer to home. American naivete, if not outright arrogance, has led to the perpetuation of Western imperialism to our day. Consistently, America undermin

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

A few weeks before Christmas, I quietly wrote a piece  for a student publication exploring Trump’s continuation of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine  through his rampant interventions in America’s so-called backyard. In light of recent kidnappings , I suppose I should have bought a lottery ticket too.  Trump had been pushing the limits in Venezuela for a while. On December 10 th , the US seized a crude oil tanker , which Trump claimed was being used to transport oil between Iran and V

The second half of the decade begins with a political map in Latin America radically different from the one that marked its early years. The region enters 2026 undergoing a clear shift to the right , with political forces that have not only consolidated their power but have done so with greater ideological discourse and ambition for power than in previous cycles. During 2025, the right wing won all four presidential elections held in the region - Ecuador , Bolivia , Chile , a

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

As more photos were released by House Democrats just a day before the 19 th  December deadline, the enigma that is Jeffrey Epstein still sends shockwaves around the world. With the stripping of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s princehood  to the October release of Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir ‘ Nobody’s Girl ’, there has been even further pressure aimed at political leaders to expose the full extent of the Epstein files. Last month, Trump signed the Epstein Files Transpar

Almost a year into his second term as President of the United States, and Donald Trump’s promise  to bring peace to an unstable world seems to have been almost completely forgotten by the administration. His progress on a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine has so far been mired with difficulties, with both nations refusing  to agree on what they feel are unjust compromises and the absence  of security guarantees. In the Middle East, the perceived success of Trump’s Gaza pe

Like Barbie, Trump has a great day every day. And who wouldn’t?! Waking up in his golden Dreamhouse (ballrooms sold separately), Trump gets to decide his truth, the truth, on any given matter at any given time! In Trump Land anything can happen!  The latest from Trump Land is that the American economy has never ever been better! Kicking off the battle for the 2026 midterm elections at a rally in north-east Pennsylvania – his first in five months – Trump united the crowd behin

This past September, the Trump Administration began conducting airstrikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea as part of the President’s agenda to fight the flow of drugs from Latin America into the U.S. The Washington Post first reported  that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave the verbal order to Seal Team Six to “leave no survivors” during a September 2 strike off the coast of Venezuela. As the two survivors were subsequently killed in a second strike, his order would be deem

Siniša Karan has been declared the winner of the recent snap elections  in Republika Srpska, after long-standing leader Milorad Dodik was removed from office back in August. Dodik attempted to seriously undermine the Dayton Accords by denying rulings  from the High Representative, Christian Schmidt, which is a direct violation of the negotiated peace. Under a dual agreement ,   Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has enjoyed its autonomy  alongside Republika Srpska, until recently t

Donald Trump has a complicated relationship with the media. That fact shouldn’t particularly shock anyone, as he seems to have a fairly complicated relationship with everything – Elon Musk and Jeffrey Epstein must certainly have thought so, at the very least. His relationship with the news media, however, has always stuck out. Beginning all the way back during his campaign for presidency in 2016, Trump has fought tooth and nail against what he designates as “fake news”, culmi

How many Ukrainian soldiers have died in the last three years of war? You probably haven’t heard because, newsworthy as the figure should be, western media outlets rarely report it. The latest authoritative calculation  suggests that both sides have lost roughly the same number of men: that is, approximately 200,000 to 220,000 dead. Staggeringly, this is more soldiers than the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa combined lost in the First World War. The sad tr

Erich Maria Remarque’s beautifully tragic novel, Flotsam (1939) , elaborates the immense hardship many Jews and immigrants faced in the collapse of an already convulsing Europe on the eve of war. His articulate storytelling conveys the brutality many refugees withstood, from the harshness of border officials to the absence of trust between refugees themselves. Like Remarque, Orwell described in Why I Write  the many problems glaring at European leaders during the chaos of the

It just can’t help itself; the BBC seems to want to see itself killed off. At a time when Britain’s precarious financial position means no household expense is left unscrutinised, a damning dossier  reported by The Telegraph  calls into question not only the way the corporation is run (as a public corporation), but whether it should even exist at all. Within said dossier were several damning breaches of impartiality, a crucial BBC principle, which included the splicing togeth