United Kingdom

Tony-Blair-Central-Asia

The Price Of ‘Expert Support’

Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Tony Blair have met three times now—most recently in April 2025. The first two were in Dubai and Baku, during COP summits. Sherzod Asadov, Uzbekistan’s presidential press secretary, says the cooperation with Blair’s institute is “systematic“. Tashkent frames it as a push for investors, digitalisation, and clean […]

Europe-AI-US-China-Lagarde

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 […]

France-Macron-Europe-nuclear-umbrella

Nuclear Umbrella At The Gates Of The Northern Fleet

Europe is looking for insurance. After 2022, American guarantees no longer look ironclad, and northern capitals began searching for a substitute closer to home. On 2 March 2026, at the Île Longue submarine base, Emmanuel Macron announced the most significant shift in French nuclear doctrine in three decades. For the […]

Australia-AUKU-US-UK-submarines

Skidding Pacts: An AUKUS Delusion Update

In the unpardonable ecosystem of graft, favours and corruption that is defence contracting, defence conferencing and all matters tanking over the thinking – in short, the world of defence – the convenient delusion will always have truck over the inconvenient empirical. Phantoms are elevated and celebrated; bogeymen are treasured by […]

Brexit-EU-withdrawal-agreement

The Cliff Edge Nobody Was Warned About

When the Brexit withdrawal agreement set up a residence scheme for British nationals already living across the EU, the design assumed a baseline of fairness: reasonable deadlines, flexibility for people who missed them, and proportionality when weighing an individual’s circumstances against procedural failure. Four years on, the country where that […]

CIA-Ratcliffe-Moscow-visit

Radcliffe’s Offer, Ukraine And NATO’s Future

Mystery continues about the strange Ratcliffe visit to Moscow, flying there in a massive C-17 Globemaster, a military airlifter. While the Globemaster has a specially designed secure roll off and roll on module for top officials, keeping them harnessed to Washington and the President, the choice of aircraft, instead of […]

Trump-Hormuz-Strait

Might US Losing Hormuz End The US Empire Like Britain’s Losing The Suez Canal Ended The British Empire?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sCGF7gbwBc “The Suez Crisis stopped the British Empire. Will Hormuz defeat the US? | Laleh Khalili | Deja Vu” interview of Laleh Khalili, author of (2020) Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula and the even better (2025) Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy […]