


CAPE TOWN — Warships from China, Russia and Iran have begun a week of naval drills with South Africa in waters off Cape Town, in an exercise organised under the BRICS grouping as Washington escalates action against Venezuelan oil shipments.…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

For much of the post-war era, Japan defined itself by restraint. Its pacifist constitution, born of defeat and devastation, shaped a national identity rooted in economic strength rather than military power. Yet as we move into 2026, Japan is quietly…

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has declared that the Islamic Republic is in a “full-fledged” or “total” war with the United States, Israel and European powers, framing a complex pattern of military, economic and political pressures as an existential struggle for…

In the cloistered corridors of Switzerland’s defence circles, a blunt admission this weekend by the outgoing head of the armed forces should have echoed far beyond the country’s mountains and lakes. Lieutenant-General Thomas Süssli — a soldier accustomed to discretion…

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…

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…