Mild feelings of panic were induced across the European Union last week, as citizens were urged to prepare for impending disaster. Stock your cupboards! Draft emergency plans! No, it’s not the opening of a mediocre dystopian novel — it’s the …
Who is preventing peace in Ukraine?
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 …
Is Poland’s far-Right unstoppable?
In February 2022, I witnessed something remarkable. As Ukraine fell into war, and millions of refugees fled the fighting, Poland banded together to come to their aid. Warsaw’s Central Station became a refugee shelter overnight, with throngs of aid workers …
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 …
Europe isn’t planning for peace
In a surprising reversal from the Oval Office standoff between Zelensky and Trump and the suspension of US military aid to Ukraine, Kyiv, late on Tuesday, announced its willingness to implement an immediate 30-day ceasefire — provided Moscow agrees to …
Germany’s soft spot for Russia
Mounted atop a former warehouse in Hamburg’s industrial-era docklands, the billowing form of the Elbphilharmonie concert hall rises above Germany’s second-largest city like an ocean wave. The glass-panelled building crowns a new, forward-looking section of the city, a modern and …
Why JD Vance offends us
James David Vance is the epitome of what so many Europeans loathe about America: brash, insular, moralising and imperious. And yet — even more annoyingly — like America itself, he combines this with intelligence, education, wealth and, ultimately, power. Vance …
The method in Trump’s mad messaging
Ensuring that lawmakers are “on-message” — dutifully singing from the same hymn-sheet in the daily round of briefings and interviews — has long been key to political communications. In the Nineties, when New Labour began its rise to power, MPs …
Can Keir Starmer trust his generals?
On 31 March 1982 Henry Leach, the First Sea Lord and the professional head of the Royal Navy, walked into a meeting in the House of Commons in an admiral’s full uniform. Tension was rising over the Falkland Islands, and …
Trump’s reverse-Nixon manoeuvre
As the world reels from the scenes of the televised boxing match between Zelensky and Trump, with Vance egging the fight on, we are in danger of losing sight of what the encounter reveals about Trump’s priorities. Though it was …
The roots of Trump’s realpolitik
President Trump’s attempt to end the war in Ukraine has enraged liberal internationalists on both sides of the Atlantic. Dealing directly with the Kremlin and going over the heads of America’s European allies, publicly belittling Ukraine and its leader, and …
Europe’s reckless bid for victory
Donald Trump wants peace, now. Volodymyr Zelensky and his European supporters want victory, later. This is what the very public disagreement in the Oval Office on Friday was all about. Peace through victory — essentially the Second World War model …
Trump’s angry imperialism
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” observed Joan Didion. Yet politicians are different. They tell stories not so much to live, but to survive. Stories give leaders an aura of purpose and control, imbuing their decisions with great …
Pete Hegseth and the defence revolution
“It was just a fucking mess.” That’s how Pete Hegseth, President Trump’s new Defense Secretary, describes America’s post-9/11 wars. We are aboard his plane, flying home to Washington from Guantanamo Bay, where he had spent the day overseeing migrant-removal operations. …
The fantasy of British defence
British party politics has in recent decades become an exercise in evading reality, only dealing with the world — and our country’s material conditions — as our leaders would wish them to be. Westminster’s chaotic reaction to Washington’s abrupt, if …
