EDITORIALS
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Europe’s gunpowder bottleneck: how cotton supply chains became a defence issue
Europe’s drive to expand artillery production has exposed a constraint that sits well upstream of the factory floor: access to nitrocellulose, the key chemical used in modern propellants. Nitrocellulose is produced by nitrating cellulose, and in the defence sector it…
Atlantic Tensions and Presidential Audacity: Trump’s Greenland Gambit
In the pantheon of modern Western leaders, few have been as polarising — or as theatrically audacious — as President Donald J. Trump. His latest salvo, the suggestion that the United States might assert control over Greenland, has sent ripples…
Europe’s Defence Illusion: “Readiness 2030” Will Not Deter Anyone
On paper, Readiness 2030 is the European Union’s bold answer to a deteriorating global security landscape. The initiative, quietly rebranded from its bluntly honest predecessor, ReArm Europe, promises to channel as much as €800 billion into defence spending through loans,…
After the raid: Washington has seized Maduro, but not Venezuela
The United States has removed Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro in a single night of air strikes and a Special Forces raid. The harder question is what, precisely, Washington thinks it has taken control of. Mr Maduro and his wife, Cilia…
Europe’s Streets Are No Longer Safe – Internal Security Must Come First Again
Across the Continent, Europe’s once-placid boulevards, civic squares and national capitals are no longer the preserve of political deliberation alone. They have become theatres of escalating civil unrest — and the scale and frequency of these confrontations should trouble every…
China’s Sanctions on America Are Loud, Symbolic – and Strategically Empty
Beijing insists that Taiwan is the immovable core of its national interest, the issue on which there can be no compromise and no retreat. Yet when confronted with the largest American arms package ever approved for the island, China’s response…
Let Ukraine Strike Back — Deeper Into Russia If Necessary
In a conflict now stretching into its fourth year, Ukraine has steadily refined not only its will to resist but its strategic acumen on the battlefield. The most recent milestone — a successful strike on Russia’s Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery using…
Australia’s Bondi Beach carnage should force a reckoning not just with antisemitism, but its sources
On Sunday evening, an Australian summer celebration on Bondi Beach was transformed into a scene of unspeakable horror. As families gathered at Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach for the first night of Hanukkah — a Jewish festival of light, hope and…
Delayed, Underfunded and Unprepared: Whitehall’s Failure to Protect Britain’s Lifelines at Sea
For all the heat generated by the unveiling of Atlantic Bastion this month, one can’t escape the uncomfortable question: why has it taken so long — and why did Whitehall allow the UK’s under-sea vulnerability to fester so dangerously before…
What the President of Finland keeps silent about and what Ukraine must shout about
Western faith in multilateralism and “value-based realism” conceals a deeper strategic crisis, Hanna Hopko argues, as Ukraine and other “in-between” states become the decisive battleground in an emerging global confrontation. Finnish President Alexander Stubb wrote an article for Foreign Affairs…