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.
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Opinion
Latest reporting and analysis on opinion.
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…
Europe hopeless when it runs into a flamboyant Manhattan property developer
The unfolding of the Greenland controversy has already become one of the most extraordinary episodes in the entire 237-year history of the presidency of the United…
Neither alive, nor dead, but collateral damage of the Ukraine war: The seafarer
The crews on board the world’s merchant fleet are the ghosts of world trade: Unseen, largely unloved and inhabiting a homeless netherworld the rest of us will…
Western freedom is heading for the crocodile’s pantry shelf
The ailing English novelist Julian Barnes recently announced that he has written his last book.
Portugal’s Presidential election marks the death of the fake Right
It was a historic night in Portuguese politics. Yesterday, Sunday 18th, the Portuguese people were asked to elect a Head of State for the coming half a decade.
Lost causes: Losers carry on and voters be damned
Those of us who grew up in the American South are familiar with the Lost Cause, a profound nostalgia for the defeated Confederacy among our elders, many of whom…
Iran tortures women but Western feminists only reply with ‘context’ and ‘relativism’
The latest events in Iran have once again exposed a familiar and uncomfortable pattern in Western politics. Women are beaten, imprisoned, killed.
Embrace the chaos
It has generally been the tendency of every generation to think that its own times are somehow worse and/or more disruptive than those of the preceding age or even…
‘Civilisational erasure’, what it really means for Europeans
The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, released last December, was chock-full of terms and phrases which made waves across the world.
Trump’s death-blow to Iranian regime would be splendid and uplifting
As this is written, I continue to watch my preferred American news channel in hopes of hearing of the arrival in the Iranian airspace of the US Air Force and Naval…
The Danes protecting Greenland: They must learn from de Gaulle
“May you live in interesting times!” was a famous sentence a century ago.
Is Brussels weakness making Tusk turn Right?
Some of Donald Tusk's voters who are less familiar with the current behind-the-scenes goings-on may have had the impression that someone mixed up the texts during…
Fading, forgotten Europe has been dropped from the world order
Metaphors mislead. What is going on in the world in the first month of the second quarter of the 21st century is unlike anything that has occurred before.
Vanishing civilisation: A nation has its own children or a nation disappears
I see that the headlines are filled with reports from Iran, Venezuela, and Greenland.
Mercosur is the public humiliation of France
In the wake of the Trump tariffs, European leaders have loudly proclaimed the merits of free trade, often pointing to the stupendous increase in general prosperity…
Pakistan, Gaza and Europe’s strategic absence
Pakistan was never supposed to matter to Europe’s Middle East policy. Yet today, it suddenly does.
After Maduro’s arrest, Spain’s Sánchez breaks out in a cold sweat
By arresting Nicolás Maduro in a flawless military operation and taking control of the political transition in Venezuela, Trump has once again struck hard and caught…
The Berlin blackout eco-terrorists: The armed wing of the Green Deal
Berlin has just been treated to a glimpse of what “net zero” looks like when it stops pretending.
Why and how Trump wants Greenland
Based on recent statements from European leaders, you could be forgiven for forgetting that the United States just captured the incumbent leader of Venezuela.
Under Trump, America is fulfilling its Roman destiny
At long last, in its 250th year, the American Republic has caught up with its explicitly Roman founding model.
Europe treats its civilisation as an embarrassment to be dismantled
When Francis Fukuyama declared the "end of history" in 1989, he articulated what had become the West's unspoken creed: That liberal democracy and market capitalism…
Removal of Maduro reinforces anti-Left wave in Latin America
It has been disappointing but not entirely surprising to see the widespread hysteria in Europe in support of the illegitimate Maduro gangster regime in Venezuela,…
Brussels ‘Rule of Law’ is now just a punishment for ideological dissent
In a speech last year to the European Parliament, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen offered a candid justification for withholding billions in EU funds from…