It seems fitting that Keir Starmer’s international debut should be the Nato summit that kicks off in Washington, DC today. Ostensibly scheduled as a celebration of the alliance’s 75th anniversary, it will no doubt be remembered as the moment that …
How will the Ukraine war end?
How will the war in Ukraine end? In an election overshadowed by a grim climate of international instability, it is remarkable that the only candidate to seriously address this question so far has been Nigel Farage. Laying out Reform’s foreign …
Who will win a post-heroic war?
Neither the West not its enemies are prepared to fightSome 30 years ago, I coined the phrase “post-heroic warfare” to acknowledge a new phenomenon: the very sharp reduction in the tolerance of war casualties. My starting point was President Clinton’s …
The spectre of another Cuban missile crisis
When a four-ship Russian flotilla sailed into the port of Havana on Wednesday, US authorities were quick to downplay the event’s significance. We were reminded that Russia’s deployments were part of routine naval activity and that it’s not uncommon for …
Britain doesn’t want to go to war
The differences between the two main parties in the UK on most foreign policy questions are matters of almost imperceptible nuance. As we were reminded in the first election debate, both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are united in their …
Europe’s fate rests on Georgia
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the foreign policy of Georgia’s ruling party has been nothing short of schizophrenic. For years, Georgian Dream has been flirting with both the European Union and paradoxically with Moscow, Georgia’s age-old enemy which invaded the …
The betrayal of Ukraine’s occupied villages
Ukrainian villages hold a special place in the region’s collective imagination. Nikolai Gogol, one of Russian Empire’s foundational authors, established them as a favourite place of demons, witches and the undead. Today, they remain a haven for magical realism and …
Putin’s ruthless new plan to win
Over his 24 years in charge, Vladimir Putin has filled his cabinets with an array of mostly indistinguishable and eminently replaceable politicians. Some have lasted for just a few months in the upper echelons of the Kremlin machine, but the …
Poland’s honeymoon with Ukraine is over
“Enough hospitality, you ungrateful sons of bitches.” So read a banner flown by protesting Polish farmers in Warsaw in late February, which also showed a stick figure kicking another character draped in the colours of the Ukrainian flag out of …
Why the West will refuse to fight
Citizens won’t sacrifice themselvesCitiznsWestern politics is defined by a conflict that is always awkward and sometimes cringe. On the one hand, our leaders are full of loud-mouthed passion, warning that the days of peace are over and that we now …
The fatal flaw in David Lammy’s progressive realism
There is a fundamental problem with David Lammy’s concept of Progressive Realism, the mooted foreign policy doctrine according to which our coming Labour government will manage Britain’s most dangerous strategic environment since the Second World War. Reading through its mixed …
A war is brewing in the Pacific
The US may be losing ground to new global powers in many respects, but when it comes to the business of sowing conflict around the world, it remains unrivalled. As it slowly abandons Ukraine to its own fate, after playing …
Will David Cameron cause WW3?
It’s hard to imagine a better metaphor for the miserable state of UK politics than David Cameron flying across the Atlantic in the hope of convincing America to continue funding a bloody war on Europe’s doorstep — only to fail …
Europe faces death by decadence
The past week of Swedish politics has been a mysterious case of a dog that should have barked, but then simply didn’t. In a barely covered press release, the Riksbanken — Sweden’s central bank — announced that it had lost …
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 …