Friday 12 June 2026 One of the more striking features of modern Russia is the extent to which war has become not merely a geopolitical instrument but also an economic system. Throughout history wars have created winners as well as losers. While soldiers die, civilians suffer and states exhaust themselves in military campaigns, there are often individuals who accumulate extraordinary fortunes from the machinery of conflict. Contemporary Russia is no exception. The Russian inva

Friday 12 June 2026 One of the most striking political developments of the modern era has been the relentless growth of government. Whether measured by public expenditure, regulatory complexity, administrative personnel or the number of aspects of life subject to official supervision, the state has expanded dramatically across almost every developed society. Two thinkers from very different intellectual traditions sought to explain this phenomenon. Michel Foucault approached

Friday 12 June 2026 The resignation of Britain’s Defence Secretary, John Healey, over a dispute concerning military spending is more than a moment of Westminster drama. It is a reminder that, for the first time in decades, serious people in government are once again asking serious questions about war. Healey’s departure, accompanied by criticism that the government is failing adequately to prepare for a more dangerous world, has exposed a debate that extends far beyond budget

Thursday 11 June 2026 For most of the history of surveillance, there was a simple principle that ordinary people could rely upon: if one wished to avoid being tracked electronically, one merely left one’s electronic devices behind. A mobile telephone switched off and left at home could not report its owner’s location. A laptop computer disconnected from the internet could not reveal where its user was travelling. The physical world and the electronic world remained, to a subs

Thursday 11 June 2026 The recent violence in Belfast and elsewhere in Northern Ireland, following the charging of a Sudanese national with attempted murder after a shocking knife attack, has once again exposed a reality that many outside the province prefer to forget. Nearly three decades after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, Northern Ireland remains a society in which the structures, habits and instincts of paramilitarism have not entirely disappeared. They have ch

Thursday 11 June 2026 In an age when international affairs are often discussed in the language of governments, summits and military alliances, it is easy to overlook the extraordinary contribution of ordinary citizens. Yet throughout the war in Ukraine, countless volunteers across Europe have demonstrated that international solidarity is not merely a matter of state policy. It is also a matter of individual conscience. Amongst the most remarkable examples of this phenomenon i