rl Friedrich Merz has been chancellor for just 16 months, and he’s already facing the kind of electoral test that could determine whether he serves out anything close to a full term. Voters in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania went to the polls Sunday in elections that, on paper, are regional […]
Month: September 2026
Russian Parliamentary Election Gives Overwhelming Majority To United Russia Amid Unprecedented Foreign Interference
Final results are still coming in, but one thing is already certain: United Russia, the party founded by incumbent Russian President Vladimir Putin, is set to gain an absolute majority of seats in the State Duma, the lower chamber of Russia’s parliament. After 97% of the votes had been counted, […]
General Returned Home
On the twenty-seventh of August, Trebinje buried one of its own. The column moved slowly, VRS veterans in formation, alongside them mothers and widows. At the memorial in Priedor by evening there was no room left for candles: people placed them directly on the stone. In Zvornik portraits and flags […]
Slovakia’s Glitch Diplomacy: Balancing Between Brussels And Moscow (I)
For much of the post-Cold War period, Slovakia occupied a relatively quiet place in European politics. Nestled between larger Central European powers and deeply integrated into the European Union and NATO, the country rarely shaped continental debates. Today, however, Prime Minister Robert Fico has transformed Slovakia into one of Europe’s […]
Counterfeit Righteousness: Anthropic, AI And The Pacing Fallacy
It’s bleak. “They are racing straight toward self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” So stated researcher Jacob Coxon on those artificial intelligence firms so keen on imposing their jaundiced visions upon humanity in the name of a utopia that is just another word for self-enrichment. In resigning from Anthropic, […]
China’s AI Ambitions Widen A Dangerous Economic Gap
China’s economy is pulling in two directions at once, and July’s data makes the split harder to ignore. On one side, household spending is barely growing and the property sector remains locked in a multi-year collapse. On the other, factories are running hotter than ever, with high-tech manufacturing surging at […]
Cambodia-Thailand Maritime Standoff
Twenty-five years of overlapping claims, a collapsed joint development agreement, and deadly border clashes have finally pushed Cambodia and Thailand into a formal UN arbitration process – one so rarely used that only a single prior case exists to serve as a model for how it might actually play out. […]
The Leverage Nobody Has Ever Held: Lagarde’s Warning About Europe’s AI Dependency
Christine Lagarde doesn’t typically frame central bank speeches around geopolitical vulnerability, but her address in Vienna this week did exactly that. The European Central Bank president argued that Europe’s growing reliance on American and Chinese artificial intelligence isn’t just a competitiveness gap – it’s a strategic exposure that could hand […]
A Standing Ovation For An Undefined Idea: Inside The EU’s Overture To Canada
Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal to make Canada the European Union’s first-ever “associate member” produced one of the more theatrical moments of this week’s State of the European Union address: lawmakers rising to their feet, the Commission president crossing the chamber to embrace Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in person. […]
Reading The Warning Signs Around Chancellor Merz
Political power in Germany rarely collapses overnight. It erodes first – in lost votes, in failed personnel reshuffles, in polling numbers that keep sliding without a clear floor – and only later does that erosion translate into an actual change of leadership. That’s the framework German political analysts are now […]






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