“I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.” These were the words of Donald Trump, the self-described “President of Peace”, as he railed against America’s interventions in foreign lands  instead of “fixing the roads in this country…fixing our highways, our tunnels, our bridges, our hospitals.” America First! He promised his voters, vowing to improve the lives of ordinary Americans above all else. And yet, barely a year into his second presidency, a combination of T

Lying recumbent and wrecked, roughly 130 kilometres to the North of the glittering Saudi city of Medina, rests the rusted hull of a century-old Ottoman locomotive. Targeted by British Intelligence Officer T. E. Lawrence and future King Faisal I of Iraq’s small cadre of Arab fighters, the sun-baked cadaver exists as a relic of the First World War guerrilla campaign that buckled the formidable Ottoman Empire’s control over the Hejaz, turning the tide of the theatre’s conflict,

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

‘For any government official or despot, power over his own people takes precedence over everything else’- Jean Baudrillard   In Terry Gilliam’s Kafkaesque black comedy Brazil (1985), Sam Lowry, a low-ranking bureaucrat, joins his affluent, ostentatious mother, Ida, in a restaurant. Their meal is served - at which point - sudden explosions blast shrapnel across the room, saturating the air with shouting, screams, and smoke. The restaurant has been subject to a terrorist attack

As this article goes to press, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has reportedly  been killed in a joint U.S.–Israeli airstrike. His death marks the most dramatic escalation in U.S.–Iran tensions since the 1979 revolution and introduces a new variable: succession instability at the apex of the Islamic Republic. Yet even this unprecedented development does not make a war with Tehran comparable to Iraq in 2003 or Afghanistan in 2001, both of which share borders with Iran.  Ge

With a grim expression and a somber tone of voice Canadian PM Mark Carney spoke at Davos . He spoke not just to the room of elites in front of him but to civilian populations across the world. The conversations that have undoubtedly been taking place behind closed doors for years were now made public: “Let me be clear. We are in a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extr

International sanctions often hurl target states into a form of survival mode. Since invading Ukraine, Russia has faced increasing isolation from Western nations . This isolation has extended beyond politics and economics into the world of international sport. Russian teams and officials have been expelled or suspended from numerous international sporting federations, significantly reducing the country’s presence on the global sporting stage. The 2024 Paris Olympic Games saw

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

On 24 October 2025, the pro-reunification, Turkish Cypriot candidate Tufan Erhurman won the elections in Northern Cyprus. He won convincingly, with a whopping 62.8% of the vote. For the past 51 years, the island has been divided between the Republic of Cyprus in the south and a Turkish-occupied zone in the north - the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). Many attempts to reunite Cyprus have failed due to disagreements between regional actors, primarily

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

Finland and Lithuania are about to send a young man to his death. The 21-year-old in question is Daniil Mukhametov , who has fled Russia to avoid forced military service. Pursued by Russian police, he bought a ticket on the Kaliningrad train that transits Lithuania, used keys purchased online to open a carriage, and jumped from a moving train. He then travelled via Tallinn to Finland, where he sought asylum. Now he is at risk of deportation.  It is almost impossible to believ

In Northern Ireland, Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly turned down an invitation  to attend the inauguration of Irish President-elect Catherine Connolly. She had cited her attendance at a number of Remembrance Day events. Some nationalists and unionists claimed this rejection was political , rather than anything to do with Remembrance Day taking priority in a scheduling conflict.  It cannot be said definitively one way or the other if they are correct in this asserti

In the shadows, Putin’s intelligence services have been leaving civilian casualties, sabotaged infrastructure, burnt out buildings and downed planes in their wake for over three years. A ravaged Europe lies almost completely unresponsive. For sixty heartstopping minutes, a full-to-capacity Falcon 900LX jet circles above Bulgaria in a state of panic. The pilots and security detail are frantically scrambling over paper maps and charts, desperate to plot a safe route to the grou

Articles four and five  of the North Atlantic Treaty have been on every European leader’s lips this past week, as Russian drones were...

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...

A peaceful sky is worth fighting for, and while Ukrainian air defence has been duelling Russian and Iranian drones since the beginning of...

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

The shift in international perception of the United Arab Emirates that has occurred in the last two decades is a result of perhaps one of...

The persistence of the West’s continuing gluttony for Russian hydrocarbons doesn’t just counteract our aid but is utterly shameful. Why...