The claim that Donald Trump transformed an otherwise respectable Republican Party into something uniquely destructive is politically convenient but historically incomplete. The party's record of racial backlash, economic privilege, executive misconduct and indifference to vulnerable people long pred...
When a language becomes a symbol of national survival, defending it can be legitimate. But when speaking another language becomes grounds for suspicion, humiliation, or accusations of betrayal, defending national identity risks becoming a system of social control. Ukraine's language debate exposes a...
Barack Obama described the failure to plan for Libya's future as his greatest presidential mistake. But when a government helps destroy a country, can the catastrophe that follows really be separated from the decision to use force in the first place?
A recurring feature of American presidential hi...
The United States did not have to choose war with Iran. It had diplomatic options, an established framework for nuclear negotiations and a long history of sanctions and international pressure. Yet on 28 February 2026, the United States and Israel launched major attacks on Iran, killing Supreme Leade...
There was a time when openly racist public commentary carried a greater social cost in many societies. That cost has not disappeared, and racist abuse has never been confined to the margins, but social media has created new opportunities for people to express racial hostility publicly, find like-min...
The Mediterranean is once again confronting a question that extends far beyond Greece, Turkey and Libya: when does a country's attempt to secure its maritime interests become a source of regional instability? Libya's eastern-based House of Representatives approved the controversial Turkey-Libya mari...
What has happened to the idea that an educated person should be guided by facts, reason and intellectual honesty? In debates about the war in Ukraine, it increasingly seems that the first question is no longer whether a claim is true, but whether it benefits the side one supports. A journalist is ac...
In 1991, the Warsaw Pact dissolved, ending the military alliance that had organised the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies against the West. The Soviet Union itself disappeared later that year. For a moment, Europe had a chance to build a security system in which former adversaries could c...
There is a dangerous habit in international politics: governments make decisions with consequences for millions of people, present them as matters of national security, and leave the public to discover the details after the risks have already been taken. The debate now circulating in Poland over all...
There is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the Western international order: the United States and European powers routinely invoke democracy, sovereignty and the rules-based international system, yet their own conduct raises a persistent question. Do these principles apply equally to every...
