Odesa’s historic city centre remains under daily Russian bombardment. Each night, we wake to news of yet another drone or missile attack. But so far the air defences, like Ukraine, hold out. And the yellow and blue flags fly defiantly …
Why Trump can’t beat the Houthis
Donald Trump took to Truth Social last week to give Iran a violent warning: “Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN. …
How Trump broke the Canadian Right
Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, used to be the future, once. In October 2023, he posted a YouTube video of his interview in an orchard in British Columbia with the unworldly editor of a local …
How Musk is crashing Tesla
In hindsight, the farts were a giveaway. A few years ago, I was getting a lift in a Tesla Model Y, when the driver (a friend of a friend) offered to show me some of the car’s innovative features. Tesla …
Japan and South Korea are the ultimate frenemies
On paper, Japan and South Korea should be the best of friends. The two neighbours are free, democratic societies. Both were devastated by massive wars, but rebuilt themselves as wealthy, high-tech economies. Both have a mutual enemy in North Korea, …
The great American exodus
According to the Declaration of Independence, Americans possess “certain unalienable Rights… among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. Life and liberty are self-explanatory, but “pursuit of happiness” often confuses people. According to the eminent historian Arthur Schlesinger, …
The danger of Starmer’s conservatism
The challenge of political leadership, Henry Kissinger observed, is that all the easy decisions have been taken by someone else, leaving only the most difficult and agonising choices for those at the very top. The most difficult issues of all, …
Will Trump trigger a global meltdown?
Amid all the talk of tariffs, something far bigger is happening in the United States. Donald Trump’s current trade war is just one part of his team’s radical plan to realign the entire global economy and the dollar’s relationship in …
The Right is coming for free speech
Last week, the Trump administration sent a letter to Columbia University demanding, among other things, that its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department be placed under federal receivership for five years. It’s unclear what exactly this means, but …
Rearmament is a noble lie
In Oracles, Magic and Witchcraft Among the Azande, one of the seminal texts of British social anthropology, E.E. Evans-Pritchard used the example of a granary which suddenly collapses, killing an unfortunate Zande tribesman, to elucidate the difference between magical and …
We’re running out of eggs
I was lying with my mouth open, staring up at a poster of a palm tree, when my dentist started complaining about the price of eggs. She’d just spent £37 on a small bag of basic groceries. But it was …
China isn’t afraid of Trump
When Donald Trump increased the tariffs on Chinese goods to 20% last week, China’s Foreign Ministry blasted back that it was ready for a tariff war, a trade war, or “any other kind of war”. “China will fight to the …
Europe’s great delusion
Wars, it is said, make people conservative, since they are fought for an idea of home under threat. And yet their innate tragedy is that, even in victory, they usher in a world transformed. We are seeing this revolutionary fable …
Is Trump engineering a crash?
Will a trade war make America great again? Not if you listen to most economists. Conventional theory argues that tariffs raise prices and therefore reduce consumption. In addition to raising prices, tariffs slow economic growth — thus risking stagflation. And, …
The three tribes of MAGA men
In 1989 David Duke, former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, was elected to Louisiana’s house of representatives. At college, he had marched around campus in a Nazi uniform; by the time he was running the Klan in the …
