Last week’s Brics summit was supposed to herald the dawn of a new world order. It would announce the end of the American era and the rise of another, this time belonging to developing nations. It would even, according to …
How Putin is weaponising Prigozhin
Even in Russia, where the line between fact and fiction is often impossibly blurred, the life and death of Yevgeny Prigozhin is a fantastic tale. Two months ago, having been pilloried as a traitor who had threatened to bring down …
Imagine a future without children
Of all the grim futures on offer today, climate change is unquestionably the doomsday scenario that weighs most heavily on the minds of the most people. Despite the raging hype that AI might one day turn against its creator, no …
The new front in the war against HIV
When the head of the UK’s largest and longest-running HIV charity, the Terrence Higgins Trust, told this year’s Pride London parade that Britain could soon be the first country in the world to eradicate HIV, the cheer that went up …
The Age of the Museum is over
A decade ago, I spent more months than originally desired living in the bush of Sudan’s remote and war-torn Blue Nile state with SPLA-N rebels from the Uduk tribe, whose 20,000 odd members had found themselves stranded, by an accident …
Liberalism’s sin was born in the Cold War
If the contemporary political scene is strewn with wreckage, it is clearer than ever that “neoconservatism” and “neoliberalism” did much of the damage. More than any other, these two ideologies have afflicted both the centre-right and centre-left, fostering the sense …
The trouble with conversion therapy
Group belonging is important for human beings. We are tribal mammals and evolution has left some of us as terrified of social exclusion as we are of physical death. But as always, you can have too much of a good …
The hypocrisy of Australia’s Net Zero policy
An unbroken canopy of ancient eucalypts rides over the ridges of the Atherton Tablelands and disappears into the horizon. Queensland’s wet, tropical ecosystem is like nowhere else on Earth, the sacred remnants of the ancient Gondwanan forest that covered Australia …
Foucault foresaw our identity crisis
A common experience these days is being told that people don’t talk about things that people are constantly talking about. “Let’s Face It” — declared a recent headline on the website of McLean Hospital, the famous psychiatric facility in Boston …
Why you should let your teen read smut
You can read anything at the beach. I live in a seaside university town, and it’s not uncommon to see bikini-clad students devouring Crime and Punishment or Principles of Political Economics through sunglasses. Of course, this works the other way, …
Will Georgia survive Storm Trump?
Coffee County, Georgia
Coffee County, Georgia, seems an unlikely setting for espionage. It sits far from the intrigues of Washington, far from the coming politico-criminal trials in Atlanta. Far, in a sense, from anywhere.
As they jetted in in January …
Lessons from an old-school mercenary
The death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, master mercenary, readily evokes a host of analogies: Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives, King Phillip IV’s immolation of the Knights Templar, the Biblical injunction that he who takes up the sword shall.
I have …
Wolfgang Münchau: the end of the German era
For decades, Germany was a beacon of centrist political stability. During her 16-year leadership, Angela Merkel led a succession of grand coalitions which neutralised the political extremes, and piloted her country through an era of steady economic growth.
Today, that …
Why incels should read Michel Houellebecq
When I was younger and going through some particularly unhappy break-up or other, I’d relieve my tumultuous feelings by rewatching The World At War on telly. Sometimes it feels good to have confirmation that things really are as bad as …
Vivek Ramaswamy and the rise of Indian America
Crammed together on a crowded stage during the first Republican debate of 2023, two figures stood out: 38-year-old Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy, a biotech millionaire with a Harvard pedigree, and 51-year-old Nimrata Haley (née Randhawa), an accountant, former governor of South …