In a sinister reversion to the very worst days of Mao’s rule, Communist Party officials across China are blindly obeying orders to rapidly increase the supply of arable land by any means possible. As with the “Great Leap Forward” that …
At Nato, America recaptured Europe
It is now clear that the Russian invasion of Ukraine marked the end of one era in world politics and the beginning of a new one. As with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the collapse of détente …
The Nato mindset leads to war
As Nato members and their Asia-Pacific allies convene today to discuss the bloc’s expansion and future strategy, the Ukrainians are destined to be disappointed — insofar as membership is concerned at least. In an interview on Sunday, Biden said it …
Has the West lost control of oil?
Oil might be a source of power, but trying to control its price is a politically hazardous business. Led by the odd pairing of the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS), and Vladimir Putin, the Opec Plus oil producers’ …
Jacinda Ardern still haunts New Zealand
New Zealand’s prime minister, Chris Hipkins, had a bumpy ride on his recent trip to China. Not only because of technical issues with his official plane — the defence aircraft used by the PM keeps breaking down, so the delegation …
The Prigozhin roadshow isn’t over
Waking up on Saturday morning, Putin must have wished he’d kept catering in-house. Only the day before, the Ukraine war seemed to be proceeding relatively well for Russia, at least by the lowered expectations of this stage in the conflict. …
Should Pakistan surrender?
Pakistan is in a mess. Controlled by an increasingly unpopular military, the nation is teetering on the brink of default. By July, the country’s foreign exchange reserves are set to fall below $3 billion, barely sufficient to cover a month’s …
How Putin and Xi resurrected America
Future historians will struggle to explain the recent dramatic rise of America’s global power. Faced with a long list of irreconcilable differences at home, and two consecutive presidents whose distinguishing characteristic is the intensity of the opposition they provoke, this …
Is Labour already out of ideas?
Last month, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves travelled to the United States to present Labour’s new economic policy strategy, dubbed “securonomics”. If you think it’s strange for a party to unveil its economic manifesto in front of a foreign audience rather …
South Africa’s infinite humiliation
Olive Schreiner, the South African author of The Story of an African Farm, surveyed her Edwardian society as an impoverished exile in London in a letter to a lifelong friend, John X Merriman. “A dead pall rests over the whole …
Why did USAID fund the Wuhan lab?
Dwight Eisenhower’s final public address as president is best-remembered for his warning about the rise of the military-industrial complex. But contained within his speech was another stark prophecy, one which has largely been forgotten yet remains just as significant. The …
The capitalists are revolting over China
After marshalling Europe in its proxy war against Russia, America is now determined to repeat this success against China. Here, the consequences for Europe could be even more significant than the economic shock of the past year. Yet, despite a …
What Xi can learn from Tsar Nicholas
As Europe was rocked by uprisings and revolutions during the 1830s and 1840s, one nation remained unaffected, secure in the grip of its authoritarian ruler. Russia’s Tsar Nicholas I watched while groups as disparate as English Chartists and Polish nobility …
Kissinger’s final warning
How one chooses to celebrate Kissinger’s Century depends on where you sit in the “Kissinger wars”. To his detractors, Henry Kissinger was an imperialist who pursued US global supremacy with unmatched ruthlessness and cynicism. To his supporters, he was a …
Germany’s car industry has a libido problem
Growing up as a German kid in Britain in the Seventies and Eighties, one of the things that left a lasting impression on me during our annual visit to my German grandparents was sitting in the back of their Mercedes …