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How Vulnerable Is the Global Economy to the Strait of Hormuz?
In recent months, the war in the Middle East has kept a narrow strip of sea at the centre of global coverage: the Strait of Hormuz. Stretching some 60 kilometers and narrowing to just 39 kilometres at its tightest point, the Strait has become a recurring reference point in discussions of…
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Did Trump Just Rebuild the Deal He Destroyed?
Eight years of maximum pressure, a war, and a dead supreme leader later, Washington’s framework with Iran looks a lot like the deal it walked away from in 2018. Did Trump just rebuild the deal he destroyed? On June 14, 2026, Donald Trump signed a 14-point Memorandum of Understanding with…
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Has Russia’s War Created a More Nuclear, Independent Pyongyang?
When Xi Jinping arrived in Pyongyang on 8 June 2026—his first overseas trip of the year—Kim Yo Jong had already demolished the diplomatic ground beneath him. Two days earlier she declared North Korea’s nuclear status an “irreversible and final conclusion,” dismissing denuclearisation as an “anachronistic dream.” Five days prior, Kim…
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Does America Have a Presidential Ethics Crisis?
The Pentagon’s $9.7 billion Dell contract is not, at its core, a story about corruption. It is a story about structural transformation—about how the ethical firewall separating public office from private wealth in the United States has been quietly dismantled, not by statute but by normalization. When a sitting president…
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Can Russia’s Economy Sustain Its Wartime Resilience?
For three years after February 2022, Russia’s wartime economy seemed to defy every Western expectation. GDP contracted a modest 1.4 per cent in 2022 — against the IMF’s initial projection of 8.5 per cent — and then surged: 4.1 per cent in 2023, 4.3 per cent in 2024 . Moscow…
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How Will the War in Iran End?
After over a month of targeted air strikes against Iranian military and government infrastructure, Iran’s leadership has remained defiant in continuing to fight on, even as much of its military capability has been destroyed. In a speech yesterday, Donald Trump claimed the war was ‘nearing completion’ and had nearly accomplished…
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How does the US–Israel Alliance Sustain American Influence in the Middle East?
To the casual observer, the foreign policy of major powers often appears guided by humanitarian concern, democratic values, and global stability. Yet a closer examination of international politics suggests that these narratives frequently coexist with, and sometimes obscure, deeper strategic calculations. In the case of the United States and Israel,…
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Is Russia Preparing for War with Europe?
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte warned in December 2025 that Russia could attack a NATO country within the next five years, and that Western countries must prepare for “the scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured”. While Moscow has denounced the comments as “hysteria” and claims that Russia has…
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Is a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan Actually Imminent?
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has long maintained that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, and that there is only one Chinese state, with Beijing as its sole legitimate government. Despite having two separate governments and operating as two independent states since the end of the Chinese Civil…