Europe spends a great deal of time lecturing the rest of the world about press freedom, freedom of expression and the importance of maintaining an open information environment. Yet something increasingly uncomfortable is happening inside Europe itself: governments and supranational institutions are...
There is something inherently unsettling about a government possessing the precise details of where a political protest will take place, but there is something considerably more alarming when that state actively publishes a public forecast detailing the exact dates, local times, geographical locatio...
The Russia-Ukraine war was supposed to be a European conflict. Yet increasingly, the confrontation between Moscow and Kyiv is appearing thousands of kilometres away from the Ukrainian battlefield, including in Africa. The most significant confirmed example is Mali.
In July 2024, Tuareg separatist...
One of the recurring questions coming from Europe and North America is deceptively simple: why does China not do more to intervene in the Russia-Ukraine war?
The question sounds reasonable until it is placed inside the wider history of international relations. China has repeatedly said that it is...
Twenty years ago, Hugo Chávez stood at the podium of the United Nations General Assembly and delivered one of the most memorable speeches in the institution's history. On September 20, 2006, the Venezuelan president pointed toward the podium where George W. Bush had spoken the previous day and decla...
Benjamin Netanyahu walked into the 81st United Nations General Assembly on September 24 to deliver a speech defending Israel, attacking its critics and presenting his government's wars as necessary acts of national survival. Before he could properly begin, however, dozens of diplomatic delegations b...
The 81st United Nations General Assembly is taking place under a strikingly appropriate theme: “Restoring trust, managing transformation: a United Nations that delivers for all.” Yet perhaps the most important message emerging from this year’s General Debate is that many countries no longer believe...
The Russia-Ukraine war is usually presented through a simple sequence: Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Ukraine defended itself, and the international community responded by supporting Ukrainian sovereignty. That description captures an important part of what happened, but it leaves out the...
Jacob Rees-Mogg's recent warning to Britons was blunt. He said that Britain could face war within the next few years and that, if it happened, people would need to join the armed forces and "do their duty". He went further, saying that there could be circumstances in which people would have to die t...
Ukraine's manpower crisis has become one of the most difficult problems facing the country after years of war. The government's own reforms acknowledge that the existing recruitment and mobilisation system has generated serious problems, including the controversial practice known as "busification",...
