Europe’s web of alliances has always been almost incomprehensibly tangled. This is one of the reasons we still disagree so vehemently about the causes of the First World War: the assassination of Franz Ferdinand lit a fuse woven from a …
Ukraine’s path to victory
In “continental warfare”, each side strives to retain and, if possible, increase its “operational reserve” — the sum total of trained and equipped combat units that are not in combat. It is only with an operational reserve that strategic choices …
Turkey is the year’s most important election
This year hasn’t quite gone to plan for Turkey’s most powerful man. After two decades as Prime Minister and now President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan could be about to lose his job. In a country of huge strategic and economic importance, …
Who is winning the scramble for Africa?
Reports of violence breaking out in Africa rarely raise eyebrows in the West these days. Perhaps we feel it has little to do with us, whatever the West’s historical responsibilities for the continent’s problems. But as the recent events in …
Is Serbia a pro-Putin outpost?
A recent BBC documentary promises to take the British viewer “inside” Serbia, exposing the country’s support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The language is heightened, evoking Cold War ghosts. “There’s something strange happening in Serbia,” the presenter mutters in …
How Europe can defend itself
Consider a very British scenario. A beloved monarch has just died, and the stability they embodied is starting to fade. At home, there is growing industrial conflict between capital and labour, and growing constitutional conflict between secessionism and Unionism. Externally, …
The Wagner Files
The Wagner Group might be a gang of hired murderers, but it is also a well-oiled machine: peel back its layers of barbarity and you’ll find a slick private military company with plans to expand its influence throughout the world. …
Will America win from de-dollarisation?
The most important element in the debate over the utility of Western sanctions against Russia, is also the most ignored. The sanctions regime mostly comprises of restrictions that have been deployed before, such as export bans and the freezing of …
Britain’s oligarchs are stuck in limbo
When British politicians boast of their support for Ukraine, they reach for statistics: 1,550 individuals sanctioned, including 130 oligarchs; 180 companies targeted; £18 billion frozen. Those are big numbers, packing an impressive rhetorical punch, but they disguise a big problem: …
The football hooligans fighting for Ukraine
“Tottenham were hard. They fought well.” Vitalii Ovcharenko pauses and sips his tea, having earlier refused my offer of a beer. “I remember it clearly. There weren’t many of them and they were heavily watched by the police. But, still, …
How Wagner plundered Sudan’s gold
Aircraft are bombing Sudan’s capital Khartoum; soldiers are occupying civilian houses; most of the country’s hospitals have run out of basic supplies. On the surface, this might appear in the West to be just another African war — the culmination …
Russia’s Youth Army is recruiting
Last June, a trio of uniformed Russian teens clutching a Soviet-era banner goose-stepped past a memorial to victims of Nazi fascism. Next to them, a dozen younger children stood awkwardly to attention as they watched soldiers and local politicians coat …
Does Europe need to split?
Emmanuel Macron’s call for Europe to reduce its dependency on the United States and develop its own “strategic autonomy” caused a transatlantic tantrum. The Atlanticist establishment, in the US as much as in Europe, responded in a typically unrestrained fashion …
Private armies are making a killing
Last week, Russia claimed to have seized control of the city of Bakhmut after an eight-month battle with Ukrainian forces — the longest and bloodiest fight of the war so far. The assault, however, wasn’t led by the Russian Armed …
Why China’s peace plan for Ukraine will fail
After Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last year, Beijing’s faithful lieges in Europe were quick to declare that China, perhaps even Xi Jinping himself, was “the key” to ending the war. The truth could not be more different: in …