On December 3, two traditions risk combining in foul if remarkable fashion. In the United States, an execution is set to take place with a ghoulish offering of livestreaming through the World Wide Web. This, at least, is the sprightly proposal from Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of Defense (or […]
Journal Issues
Back To The North Atlantic: Why Washington Is Courting Iceland Again
A visit by a US secretary of state to Reykjavik is rare. When it comes from an administration that spent much of this year threatening to seize Greenland, and in a month marking the 40th anniversary of the Cold War’s most famous summit, it deserves attention. On Tuesday Secretary of […]
In-depth Analysis: The ‘Upcoming’ Saudi-Israel Peace Deal: Seems Close, Yet So Far
For years, a normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel has been described as the ultimate prize in “Middle Eastern Diplomacy” — the keystone that would complete the Abraham Accords and reshape the region’s geopolitical architecture. Washington has pushed hard. Riyadh has signaled openness. Jerusalem has expressed eager anticipation. Yet […]
Death In The Lab, Panic In The Media, And The Old Demons Of Biothreats
In early October 2026, 28-year-old Darya Shipilova, an employee of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East, died in Russia’s Irkutsk Region. The official wording from Rospotrebnadzor was pneumonia of undetermined etiology. No microorganisms linked to her professional activities were found in the samples. Two commissions […]
What’s The Future Of Russian-Afghan Military Cooperation?
Russia might be reluctant to sell lethal equipment to the Taliban amidst its ongoing undeclared war with Pakistan despite the threat posed by ISIS-K to Afghanistan due to concern that they could be used in that conflict at the expense of the hard-earned Russian-Pakistani rapprochement in recent years. The Afghan […]
From Afghanistan To The Sahel: How Al-Qaeda’s Center Of Gravity Shifted, 25 Years After 9/11 (I)
Twenty-five years after al-Qaeda struck Washington and New York, the organization’s most active theater of operations isn’t in the Middle East or South Asia – it’s in a stretch of West Africa most Americans would struggle to locate on a map. New figures from the conflict monitor Acled show violence […]
Thaçi’s Conviction And What It Doesn’t Resolve
Hashim Thaçi went from commanding an armed independence movement to serving as Kosovo’s president, and that same trajectory has recently concluded with a 25-year prison sentence for war crimes committed during the very conflict that made his political career possible. The verdict from the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague […]
Lawless Lands: Trump Preaches At The United Nations
There was nothing new in the Reality Television President’s swill filled address to the United Nations General Assembly on September 22. Donald Trump had said much of it before, most of it with wearying derangement and detachment from reality. There were the bullying threats of annihilation and doomsday relish that […]
Lukashenko’s Trilateral Belarusian-Russian-US Fertilizer Plant Proposal Is A Genius Move
It could set into motion a fast-moving sequence of events that meaningfully de-escalates New Cold War tensions provided that Trump agrees to participate in this project as expected. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko just announced that “Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] and I agreed that Gazprom will join us in implementing the project […]
A Building That Was Already Dying: Why Gaza’s Collapse Deaths Keep Repeating
At least 20 people died Wednesday when a multi-story building in Gaza City collapsed onto tents housing displaced families sheltering beside it – among them at least five children. The building hadn’t failed without warning. It had already been struck by Israeli strikes earlier in the war, leaving its structure […]






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