Is there any hope Europe can learn the Art of the Deal against China?
The horror with which foreign ministries across Europe greeted President Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland shows us how far European diplomats are from understanding,…
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Opinion
Latest reporting and analysis on opinion.
Europe’s unbreakable dependency on American AI
The global AI race has become the defining feature of our times. It is now taking place on an unfathomable scale and speed, and cutting across all domains.
Exclusive: Gerard Baker on Rubio in Munich asks, will Europeans finally get the message?
If JD Vance sent Europeans to their fainting couches at last year’s Munich Security Conference, this year Marco Rubio will be on hand to supply the smelling salts.
Japan election proves Trump pumps up the populist-right vote
The Liberal Democratic Party of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi had a resounding victory in her country’s elections over the past weekend.
Begrudging critics need to admit Trump is delivering a US boom
European incomprehension of President Trump has now been stretched to reluctant acknowledgement of the success of his economic policies with dire warnings of the…
The fragile ‘We’: What is at stake is the symbolic boundary of membership
The crisis in liberal democracies is not just about inflation, migration, or polarisation.
Mandelson’s serpentine charm bewitched halfwit Starmer
The small picture is of an ailing British government heading for existential meltdown.
Pakistanis tell Greece to allow cousin marriage: The consanguineous invasion
Just when you thought the West had exhausted its pool of civilisational surrenders, a new frontier of absurdity opens.
New START is dead — good riddance
Since 1972, the United States has always had some sort of ongoing bilateral nuclear treaty with the Soviet Union and its successor state, the Russian Federation.
The endpoint of history, or why Epstein shows what happens when belief dies
The world did not end in a mushroom cloud or a clash of grand ideologies.
How might a functional ‘M12’ grouping of middle powers look like?
As world order frays and old alliances falter, the search is on for new solutions to stabilise the international system while preserving at least some of the principles…
Half of Britain’s Jews think their future is not in the UK
The rampant state of anti-Semitism in Britain has raised the question, long completely implausible, of the legitimacy of the United Kingdom’s claim to be a civilised…
Despite populist push, Portuguese elites persist in hanging together
In Charles Dickens’ classic, A Christmas Carol, a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come so frightens the miser Ebenezer Scrooge that he changes his ways.
The Odyssey of identity: Why we must fight for the face of Helen of Troy
As Helen of Troy is about to be portrayed as black in Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey, the latest episode in the war for the soul of the West questions our very fundamentals.
Blair to Starmer, the UK’s serial decay led by despicable PMs
The Chinese certainly know how to turn the screw.
Twisting history to dishonour history’s victims and democracy’s principles
Across the Western world, a troubling pattern has emerged: Historical memory is being weaponised against democratic preferences.
Forget EU Greens: Chinese tech and Polish coal could power Europe’s industry
When Emmanuel Macron called in Davos for greater inflows of Chinese foreign direct investment into Europe, including technology transfer and tangible contributions…
Every great collapse begins with a crack
At first glance, a headline about the University of Mainz removing french fries from its cafeteria menu seems trivial.
Seizing Greenland: So, Europe, how does it feel to be Greece?
For decades, the capitals of Northern Europe have lived in a comfortable, self-righteous state.
History tells us: Ukraine into the EU will be Europe’s self-destruction
In her seminal work, The March of Folly, American historian Barbara Tuchman provided four historical examples, from the Trojan War to the Vietnam War, of absurd…
Four scenarios for the post-rules world
The Greenland psychodrama together with some of the startling opinions aired in Davos last week – especially Mark Carney’s definitive language on the end of…
Tusk’s Polish courts ‘are tearing down justice’
In Poland governed by Donald Tusk’s coalition, the justice system no longer operates independently in political cases.
No more disruption, NATO must evolve the alliance with dignity
In this space last week I recounted with a mixture of sadness and amusement the farce of Greenland that had already almost reached Monty Python proportions.
Powerful India now ‘indispensable’ to fading Europe
The images from New Delhi this week offer a master class in geopolitical theatre.
Europe forgets real genocide and cuts loose from all historical knowledge
“Performative” surely is the political cliché of our times. Yet nonetheless it is the only word that describes the vapid behaviour of so many western societies.
Europe is not re-arming: It’s a fraud, a fake and a lie
Europe is back. At least, that’s the message Europeans brought to Davos.
Trump in Davos: Inflammatory rhetoric, strategic policy signals
When President Donald Trump took the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 20th, he delivered a speech that was characteristically bombastic, tangential,…
Unity? Bulgaria doesn’t care about Greenland, Spain doesn’t care about Estonia
Europe’s leadership, particularly western and north-central Europeans, made two arguments when faced with President Donald Trump’s move to annex Greenland: That,…
Germany can no longer afford purity: Berlin reroutes to Russia
When Friedrich Merz speaks twice of reconciliation with Russia shortly after a strategically important visit to India, it is not a slip of the tongue. It is a signal.
Trump’s Greenland gambit is not funny anymore
The inscrutable workings of Donald Trump’s mind seem to be fixated on the “acquisition” of Greenland to a degree and in a manner that is by now unusual even…