In assessing Israel’s post-October 7 military campaign in Gaza, it helps to recall Clausewitz’s dictum that war, though horrific, isn’t ultimately about killing and destruction for the sake of it but a means for states to achieve their political goals. …
More anarchy awaits in Africa
“God Loves You.” An accusing finger looms out of the billboard, pointing directly at passers-by. Lord Kitchener has been press-ganged into a different kind of national service.
Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, is a tundra of low-roofed buildings and patchy roads lined …
The Israel-Gaza war has changed everything
Analysts, journalists and strategists are all required to ignore the near-impossibility of truly understanding a war as it unfolds. Failing to do so would send us into a morass of self-doubt, and our work would become a useless succession of …
Iran needs another revolution
Iran’s attack on Israel last week was not a surprise, nor did it inflict significant damage. It was nonetheless a paradigm shift. This was the first long-distance, large-scale drone strike in history — and the first time Iran attacked Israel …
Is this the end of Israel?
So have we reached the end of the line? Do the latest failures and miscalculations — the relentless assault on the al-Shifa Hospital, the fatal airstrike on aid-workers, the targeting of an Iranian General in Damascus, while Hamas’s hostages languish …
Iran is winning the Gaza war
Amid the continuing destruction in Gaza and the surrounding global fallout, one thing becomes ever clearer. Even as Israel’s war stutters, Iran’s broader campaign against it, and by extension what we might call the American-led order, is growing in strength.…
Israel is braced for a second war
The loud “baa” of a curious sheep feels ridiculously, laughably incongruous; the only other sounds are the bone-shaking booms of the IDF and Hezbollah exchanging artillery in the near distance. Before you join the road to Kibbutz Metzuba, just over …
It’s time to send Nato troops to Ukraine
In 1944, Leslie Groves, the US army general who managed the Manhattan Project, asked its chief scientist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, just how powerful their new bomb might be. Would it be 10 times as powerful as the largest bomb of …
Netanyahu’s regime is built on censorship
In the city of Haifa, in northwest Israel, the sounds of Arabic, Hebrew and Russian chatter fill the streets. In the Arab-Christian neighbourhood of Wadi Nisnas lies Beit Hagefen, an Arab-Jewish cultural centre set in gleaming white stone. For 60 …
Inside India’s Potemkin election
Always a rather grubby affair, as if put together by minimally competent quiet quitters, Indian democracy is now in serious trouble. To be sure, its formalistic trappings remain in place. Nearly a billion Indians will file into polling stations starting …
The problem with the Palestinian Church
Tourists almost never find their way to Levanda Street in southern Tel Aviv. Round the corner from the monstrous concrete central bus station, it looks dirty and feels dangerous. Drug addicts, most of them immigrants from east Africa, many stripped …
The return of the Irish Right
“The transformation of Ireland over the last 60 years has sometimes felt as if a new world had landed from outer space on top of an old one,” wrote Fintan O’Toole, a commentator who is generally approving of this new …
Should you watch footage of terrorist attacks?
On Friday evening, an X personality called Ian Miles Cheong posted a video of Isis terrorists marauding through the entrance of a concert hall in Moscow, calmly shooting to death scores of civilians in their path. I don’t follow Cheong, …
The first lesson of diplomacy: karma’s a bitch
International diplomacy requires countless decisions: the large, small, mundane and monumental. Some turn out to have been wise and some not; some can be corrected, while others bring consequences that must be survived. A few are so pivotal that they …
Israel’s victory will be Netanyahu’s downfall
Weeks ago, the Israeli army came up with a perfectly serviceable plan to finish the war in Gaza. Their strategy was to simultaneously push their ground forces into the remaining Rafah segment of the strip to destroy the last of …