Tuesday 10 March 2026 For much of its history the European Union has advanced less through grand constitutional leaps than through steady territorial expansion. Each enlargement round has carried political risk, economic uncertainty and cultural anxiety; yet, taken as a whole, enlargement has proved to be the Union’s most reliable instrument for exporting stability, prosperity and democratic norms. As the European Union contemplates the accession of Ukraine alongside the rema

Tuesday 10 March 2026 The sudden outbreak of large-scale hostilities between the United States, Israel and Iran has sent shockwaves through the global strategic system. While the immediate consequences are unfolding in the Middle East, the effects of this new war are already visible far beyond the region. One of the most immediate, if less widely remarked, consequences is the emergence of an unexpected strategic pause in Russia’s war against Ukraine. For more than four years

Tuesday 10 March 2026 The collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917 was not merely a battlefield failure. It was the implosion of a political order that had mistaken mass for strength, coercion for loyalty and imperial ambition for strategy. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, she did so under strikingly similar illusions. A century separated the two wars — yet the structural weaknesses that undid her in the First World War reappeared with uncomfortable familiarity. To

Tuesday 10 March 2026 The Group of Seven convened an emergency meeting yesterday to discuss the possible release of strategic petroleum reserves in response to the sudden escalation of war in the Middle East and the resulting surge in global oil prices. Brent crude briefly approached $120 per barrel in recent days as military action around Iran and disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz unsettled global energy markets.  The issue before the G7 is straightforward

Monday 9 March 2026 The Strait of Hormuz has long been one of the most precarious arteries of the global economy. Barely fifty kilometres wide at its narrowest point, the channel linking the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman carries roughly one fifth of the world’s oil exports together with vast volumes of liquefied natural gas and refined petroleum products. When conflict interrupts this passage the consequences reverberate immediately through global commodity markets, shippi

Monday 9 March 2026 Throughout history imperial powers have flattered themselves that their reach exceeds their grasp. In the final decades of the Soviet Union, this assumption became ruinous. The Kremlin’s vast commitments from Eastern Europe to Afghanistan strained her economy, military and legitimacy until, in 1991, the edifice collapsed under its own weight. Today a similar dynamic is visible in the Russian Federation’s strategic conduct towards her allies in Venezuela, I