COMMENTARY
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Mark Rutte’s Long View Is Giving NATO Strategic Confidence
Mark Rutte’s leadership shows NATO is as much political as it is military. There are two ways to understand NATO’s present moment. One is to see only the anxiety: a grinding war in Ukraine, a volatile Middle East, an increasingly…
The New Polar Front: Why Greenland Matters Again to Western Defence
In the long Arctic dusk, where the horizon blurs into a pale sheet of ice and the air itself seems to crystallise, modern air power is subjected to a test no laboratory can replicate. This winter the North American Aerospace…
India-EU Security and Defence Partnership Heralds A New Era Of Industrial Diplomacy
Europe’s defence relationship with India has long been discussed in the abstract, framed by polite communiqués and aspirational memoranda. Now, it is beginning to take on substance. The emerging India–EU defence partnership, with its emphasis on co-production rather than mere…
German war game shows Russia could seize Nato ground — and hold it unchallenged
A war game run in Germany has modelled a limited Russian incursion into Nato territory and found that Moscow could hold ground for several days without triggering an immediate military response from the alliance. The exercise was organised by Die…
From Treaties to Tensions: How the Nuclear Order Is Unravelling
When Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov says Moscow is ready for a world without nuclear limits, he is not threatening apocalypse. He is doing something more unsettling: calmly acknowledging that the era of negotiated restraint between great powers is…
Does Keir Starmer Not Understand Who Britain’s Enemies Are?
I watched Keir Starmer’s visit to China with a mixture of disbelief and weary recognition. Disbelief, because it is astonishing that a British Prime Minister in 2026 can still wander into Beijing wearing the benign expression of a man who…
If Russia Wins: A Scenario and the Logic of the West’s Managed Defeat
When Carlo Masala set out his hypothetical “Russian victory” in Ukraine, he defined it narrowly: not a march to Kyiv, but Moscow retaining the territories it already occupies. That premise matters because it aligns with the kind of “freeze” or…
South China Sea Tensions Surge as China Steps Up Patrols around Scarborough Shoal
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Southern Theatre Command has announced a fresh round of naval and air patrols around Scarborough Shoal, the coral outcrop that has become the unlikeliest flashpoint of the Indo-Pacific’s simmering strategic contest. The declaration, terse but…
Chagos Archipelago: Britain’s Self-Inflicted Strategic Retreat in the Indian Ocean
There are bad ideas in politics, and then there are ideas so recklessly self-defeating that one wonders whether national interest has been deliberately left out of the room. The UK’s current Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s proposed handover of the Chagos…
China-linked machine tools and chips: claims of a supply chain behind Russia’s Oreshnik missile
European governments have often treated dialogue with Beijing as a practical channel in foreign policy, including in managing risks linked to Russia’s war against Ukraine. A recent investigation by The Telegraph has prompted a different focus: whether Chinese-origin industrial equipment…