On July 14th 2026, under the scorching Parisian sun, French military troops marched down the historical Champs Elysées. Unusually, this year the military parade was opened by the thirty five countries making up the Coalition of the Willing, flying over and marching down the avenue in front of their respective leaders. What followed was one the biggest parades ever witnessed on Bastille Day, with 6.700 troops, 98 aircrafts, 31 helicopters and 315 vehicles mobilised, simultaneo

Ninety miles separates Key West from Havana; across this strait, these two nations could not be more different. On one side, a superpower that throws away 40% of its food. On the other, a country that has spent thirty years perfecting how to grow food on scraps. Not the Cuba of cable news blackouts and empty shelves, but rather the Cuba that has been here before and knows exactly what to do about it. Three decades on, this same reflex is being asked to ignite again, for a dif

It seems an energy crisis is once again being manufactured, not only by war but by deliberate policy. The Strait of Hormuz, the passageway for a fifth of the world’s traded oil, is shut once again. The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at its lowest level since 1983. Russia, the world’s second-largest diesel exporter, has banned all diesel exports. And Europe heads into the winter with the lowest gas reserves in 15 years, while paradoxically purchasing record volumes of gas f

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

The Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) so-called 2024 Presidential Campaign "autopsy" analyses the decisions and actions that led to Kamala Harris's defeat. It is far from a serious analysis of what went wrong in 2024, and who was truly responsible for that defeat. The report discloses five key points demonstrating the disconnect between the Democratic leadership and the political reality they faced. The first consists of blaming then-President Joe Biden (2021-2025) for no

“FRONT TOWARDS ENEMY”, a marking found on the M18AI Claymore, a Vietnam era mine, reads the shirt of team USA star catcher Cal Raleigh. Robert O’Neil, the Seal Team leader who claims to have killed Osama Bin Laden, was called in to give a motivational speech. This was the United States at the 2026 World Baseball Classic – a sporting event recast as a military operation. Team USA was now exporting the same hard power at the WBC that had led to the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro

Shortly after October 7, New York Governor Kathy Hochul visited Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. On her trip the Governor stated, “The community feels, in Israel and in New York, that my going during these times will be the most significant symbol of their importance to us than anything else we could do.” However, the Governor’s office maintains no jurisdiction over foreign policy. New York State is home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, with approximately one in fiv

Global security alliances have enjoyed a resurgence in relevance as regions the world over come under ever-increasing geopolitical strain. In the shadow of this global uncertainty, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) will convene its 2026 summit in Türkiye on 7-8 July 2026. Originally confined to the Euro-Atlantic domain, catering to traditional security, the alliance’s footprint has assumed a global dimension. India, though outside its formal structure, remains a p

‘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

Artificial intelligence has ushered in a new age of geopolitics. The unveiling of Anthropic's Mythos AI model in April may one day be remembered as a historic turning point. But this is not a technology story. It is a geopolitical one. How the technology is being distributed, and how Washington has responded to its unveiling, tells us a great deal about the world that is emerging. New geopolitical lines are being drawn, and Mythos may prove to be the ink. What is it exactly?

“Oh no, we shouldn’t talk about politics. It’s not worth getting involved”. That is the reply of an Ama (Granny) to a question about the “Nine-in-One” local elections taking place in November later this year. You can understand where Ama is coming from – she has lived through a prolonged “White Terror” period of martial law, where talking politics could cost one their life. For the young people in the modern, democratic Taiwan, the opposite is now true. “If we allow the KMT

Donald Trump did not engineer the decline of American soft power, though he would probably trademark it if he could. Instead, he is one of its clearest consequences and biggest brands. Long before he entered the White House, faith in the American model was already eroding at home and abroad. Trump emerged from this decline and has spent his presidency accelerating it. After failing to secure a Nobel Peace Prize last year, Trump petulantly wrote to Norwegian Prime Minister Jon

Boards of Canada, a Scottish electronic music duo, are soon to release their first LP in 13 years. ‘Inferno’, will be available through Warp Records and conventional streaming from the 29th of May. The duo released their first full length LP, ‘Music Has the Right to Children’, in 1997, an album which has since been described by Simon Reynolds as ‘the greatest psychedelic album of the ‘90s’. ‘Music Has the Right to Children’ represented a crystallisation of what is now recogn

It feels like only a short while ago that everyone watched Kamala Harris attempt what many saw as an impossible balancing act: to defend an increasingly unpopular president while somehow preparing to inherit the party. Now, JD Vance may be realising his vice presidency comes with the same trap; the parallels have become difficult to ignore as we approach 2028. Both Harris and Vance have served under unpopular presidents. Both are expected to publicly defend every administrati

A Quick Refresher Before November We are all expecting the GOP to hemorrhage congressional seats this November. Great. This is a de facto requirement of American politics, actually. That is, for the president’s party to lose seats in their first midterms – it’s happened in 20 of the last 22 cycles. And given Trump’s bonkers first year in office and the plummeting approval rating that has ensued, this is all but guaranteed. But will a few more blue seats genuinely transform w

President Donald Trump’s ambition to acquire Greenland is indicative of a historic shift not only in American foreign policy, but in global perceptions of the High North: the Arctic is no longer an innocuous area of scientific exploration, but a political-military nexus of global power competition. This article problematises three loci of NATO, Russian and Chinese power projection in the Arctic. With the onset of climate change, temperatures in the Arctic are rising rapidly b

America’s authoritarian tilt is visible just about anywhere you look. You can see it in the institutions Trump has bent to his will, and the way he has pushed his presidential powers well beyond the limits of his office. Yet, I think if you really want to understand the unique authoritarian turn developing in America, you should look no further than Washington DC. Today, the beating heart of America’s federal government is a vision of the country Trump wants to build, and the

"Let us suppose that foreigners came from another country, and brought opium into England, and seduced the people of your country to smoke it, would not you, the sovereign of the said country, look upon such a procedure with anger, and in your just indignation endeavor to get rid of it?" This is an excerpt from the famous 1839 letter, penned by Lin Zexu, addressed to Queen Victoria. Supposedly, this letter was never received by the monarch; no halt in the export of the goods

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