A civil-military relations crisis in the U.S. is actually the latest in a recent series of similar crises affecting the world’s major powers, including Russia and China. That raises the question: Is this simply a random series of unconnected events that all just happen to center around defense ministers? Or is there a deeper cause?
At a far-right conference in Budapest this month, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni delivered a speech bashing a supposedly “woke” left. But the pro-European Meloni showed more caution in discussing the EU with the famously Euroskeptic Viktor Orban, hinting at divisions between right-wing movements often viewed as natural allies.
Robert Fico, the highly controversial three-time former prime minister who opposes military support to Ukraine, looks set to win Slovakia’s parliamentary elections on Sept. 30. He has pledged to reverse the EU and NATO member state’s political direction, after years of deep reforms designed to realign Slovakia with the EU mainstream.
Kyiv’s reaction to a recent report showing that an errant Ukrainian missile was likely responsible for a deadly strike on a Ukrainian town highlighted its defensiveness in response to human rights critiques of its war effort. While this is unsurprising and even understandable, it is not actually needed and may hurt more than it helps.
For Washington and Brussels, the IMEC trade corridor linking India, the Gulf and Europe is an effort to mold the resulting partnerships in line with Western interests. However, for India, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, their participation in the project does not reflect a desire to choose sides amid an era of great power competition.
Many observers have turned a critical eye to pre-invasion predictions about Russia’s war on Ukraine, given how wrong they turned out to be. But the reason they were wrong is inherent to the nature of warfare itself. Our ability to accurately predict the course of a war is compromised by the inherent uncertainty of war.
In the two decades before invading Ukraine, as Russia attempted to project power around the globe, Moscow quietly boosted its military ties and diplomatic engagement in Southeast Asia. Now, however, that influence seems to be dramatically fading, largely cutting Moscow out of a critical region in global politics.
For a political movement whose demise has been predicted so often, social democracy’s survival has at times seemed to defy logic. But recent electoral successes of center-left parties in Germany and Spain along with the Labour Party’s resurgence in the U.K. indicate that reports of social democracy’s death might be exaggerated.
Last week, Armenia held joint military exercises with U.S. troops for the first time. Remarkable in and of themselves, the exercises were even more noteworthy because they followed a series of other recent developments that have underscored the degree to which Armenia’s relations with Russia have deteriorated in recent years.
Soon after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Georgia applied for membership in the EU. But it’s becoming increasingly unclear whether the current government under the Georgia Dream party is genuinely interested in joining the bloc. Some argue that, to the contrary, the party is intent on putting Georgia fully in Russia’s orbit.
The vicious debate around claims that Hubert Aiwanger—the leader of the Freie Wahler party and deputy head of the Bavarian government—circulated antisemitic pamphlets as a high schooler almost 35 years ago illustrates how shallowly tensions over historical memory are buried in Germany and how quickly they can resurface.
In early June, Ukrainian forces launched a long-anticipated, large-scale counteroffensive into Russian-controlled territory in the eastern portions of Ukraine. From the beginning, the fog of war surrounding developments on the ground has been thick, raising understandable questions, perhaps most importantly: Is it succeeding?
The global spread of Italian food and wine as well as the popularity of Italy as a tourism destination—alongside the depiction of all three in popular culture—have helped establish the country as a “soft superpower.” Now a force largely outside of Rome’s control is threatening all three sectors: the climate crisis.
A group of five will soon be a concert of eleven. At last week’s summit of the BRICS nations, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa agreed to invite Ethiopia, Argentina, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to officially join the group on Jan. 1, 2024. The expanded BRICS shows its members’ dissatisfaction with the Western-led economic and political order.