World

Klaus Dodds

Trump’s costly armchair geography

In the 19th century, the geographer and explorer David Livingstone was scathing of what he described as “easy-chair geographers” – authors and mapmakers who produced maps and treatises about the non-European world without ever leaving their learned society or personal office. Donald Trump is a latter-day armchair geographer. Or judging by photographs repeatedly released by the White House, a president comfortable convening meetings in the Oval Office with large maps displayed by his desk. But whether it is a case of acquiring Greenland or blockading the Strait of Hormuz, maps can be poor substitutes for in-field knowledge and understanding. Blockading seven Iranian ports stretching over several hundred miles of coastline

armchair geographer
James Heale

Starmer squirms on Mandelson debacle

Keir Starmer is enduring perhaps his most uncomfortable afternoon in the House Commons since being elected Britain’s Prime Minister. He promised in his opening remarks that he would set out the full timeline of Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador, which ended in Olly Robbins’s dismissal last Thursday. Carefully worded and legally precise, his statement contained another revelation: Chris Wormald, the ex-cabinet secretary, was not told Mandelson had failed the UK Security Vetting interview (UKSV), despite leading an official review. Starmer’s tone was one of scorned hurt and anger. He remarked repeatedly how various facts of the case were “staggering.” “I do not accept,” he said, “that I could not

keir starmer
Matthew Fraser

What happened to Provence?

The best time to visit Provence, I always advise when asked, is in the spring before the scorching heat and summer crowds. I have been spending time in the south of France since the early 1990s. Provence was fashionable in those days. Peter Mayle’s massively successful book, A Year in Provence, inspired thousands to pull up stakes and move to southern France to emulate his idyllic life in the Luberon hills. Some settled farther west in the Dordogne, famously called “Dordogneshire” for its concentration of British expats. Mayle became a one-man publishing industry, following up with sequels including Toujours Provence and Encore Provence. Thirty years ago, I stayed with friends who owned a renovated farmhouse

Blake Neff

Populism curve: what is the supply side of Britain and Europe’s decline?

In his new book Why Populists Are Winning: and How to Beat Them, British MP Liam Byrne argues that it’s time to go after the “supply side” of populism – time, that is, to curb freedom of the press and the right of individuals to spend money on causes they believe in. For a decade, you see, the European and British establishments have focused on quashing the demand side of populism. They have employed police, prison, censorship and shame to stop people from voicing anti-establishment opinions, demanding populist policies or voting for populist parties. They have formed preposterously broad coalitions to exclude populist parties from power. They have had law

decline britain british

Ukraine

Alexander Kolyandr

Why Ukraine’s Russian oil strikes are backfiring

Every drone Ukraine fires at a Russian oil terminal is meant to defund Moscow’s war in Ukraine. Right now, each one may be doing the opposite. Ukraine’s strikes on Russian oil export infrastructure are intended to starve Moscow of the budget revenues that fund its war machine. The logic is straightforward: disrupt exports, reduce revenues, constrain the war effort. Kyiv has been explicit about this: Ukrainian officials consistently frame attacks on oil terminals as direct hits on Russia’s war chest, treating every barrel that cannot be shipped as a ruble that cannot be spent on missiles or mobilization. Reuters puts the scale of that disruption in stark terms – at least

ukraine oil drone
Owen Matthews

Ukraine’s allies are falling away

As Ukraine emerges battered but unbowed from the third and most terrible winter of the war against Russia, its people have proved that they can survive and fight on even as Vladimir Putin’s troops destroy swaths of their country’s heating, transport and electricity infrastructure. But one thing that Ukraine cannot survive without is money – and that, the European Union seems critically unable to provide.  On Thursday, a Council of Europe summit once again failed to remove a veto by Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, on a €90 billion ($104 billion) tranche of funding for Ukraine. That cash, in the form of a controversial loan raised collectively by the EU,

ukraine
Maria Botcharova

Wartime love is not for the faint-hearted in Kyiv

People say love develops more quickly in war – because in a world where anything can happen, what is there to lose? Single and in Kyiv for a while, I decide to swallow my distaste for dating apps and start swiping. The first thing I notice is how many men are from Turkey and based a thousand miles away. How would this work? I decide to focus on the local ones and start chatting to a couple of guys. One seems reasonable if a little forward. He suggests meeting pretty quickly, then calls to chat. I don’t really know Ukrainian norms but frankly, hearing someone’s voice gives me faith that

ukraine love

Israel

Jonathan Spyer

Israel won’t stop in Lebanon until Hezbollah is crushed

Direct US-brokered talks between Israeli and Lebanese representatives are set to take place in Washington this week. The Israeli delegation will be headed by Yehiel Leiter, Jerusalem’s ambassador to the US. Lebanon will be represented by Nada Hamadeh, the Lebanese ambassador to Washington. The State Department will host the negotiations. In his statement on Thursday announcing the talks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu framed their purpose as “disarming Hezbollah and establishing peaceful ‌relations between ⁠Israel and ⁠Lebanon.” Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, for his part, expressed his hope that Beirut should become a “demilitarized city.” Even as the talks were announced, Lebanese Hezbollah’s attacks on Israeli population centers and Israel’s

lebanon
Jonathan Spyer

Will Iran give Benjamin Netanyahu a wartime boost?

Israel’s current war on two fronts shows few signs of wrapping up soon. In Lebanon, the indications are that the IDF is looking to establish an expanded buffer zone north of the border, with the intention of holding it for as long as the government in Beirut fails to fulfill its pledge to disarm Hezbollah. In Iran, Israeli air attacks continue daily, even as Tehran’s missiles and drones target Israel’s centers of civilian population. This year is an election year in Israel, with polls required by law to take place by October. So what impact, if any, are the conflicts having on the political debate inside Israel? Are they likely

netanyahu
Jonathan Spyer

Why Israel is pushing further into Lebanon

Israel launched a limited ground operation in southern Lebanon this week, intended to expand the de facto buffer zone which it has maintained along the border since the ceasefire of November 2024. At that time, Israel held control of five positions on the Lebanese side of the border. In response to Hezbollah’s decision to re-engage with Israel in the context of the current conflict between Jerusalem and Tehran, the IDF is pushing further into Lebanon.   Israel is now bombing Hezbollah targets throughout the country. Ground forces, meanwhile, are cautiously pushing forward. According to Israeli media reports, the IDF’s goal is to establish 13 additional positions north of the border. Eight-hundred and eighty-six

Lebanon

America

Europe

John Keiger

How France is bending the knee to Iran

What is Emmanuel Macron playing at? In the space of just a few days, three apparently unconnected incidents have the French president’s fingerprints all over them. They indicate that, while Macron is a spent force at home, he is willing to deploy his powers to help France navigate the Iran war crisis and try to salvage his reputation – even if it means making his allies, including the United States, look utterly foolish. While Macron is a spent force at home, he is willing to deploy his powers to help France navigate the Iran war crisis On April 2, a French container ship, the Kribi, became the first western vessel to

Alexander Kolyandr

With Orbán’s loss, Russia has lost its European foothold

Péter Magyar’s landslide victory over Viktor Orbán is not just political earthquake for Hungary. It is Moscow’s worst result in the European Union since the war began. Orbán served Russia in a way no overt ally could. He was never Putin’s puppet – he was something far more useful: a democratically elected, Brussels-based veto-wielder who could slow sanctions, obstruct aid to Ukraine, and dress it all up as principled neutrality. A leaked call recorded him telling Putin that Hungary was like a mouse to Russia’s lion. Leaked tapes of his foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, conversing with Sergey Lavrov revealed the same cringing loyalty. Yet Orbán always extracted payment for his

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump has already checked out of NATO

Donald Trump, who will deliver an address from the Oval Office tonight, isn’t giving up on his aims for his war in the Middle East. This time his target isn’t Iran but NATO. “You don’t even have a navy,” he declared about Britain before going on to denounce the North Atlantic alliance. “I was never swayed by NATO. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that ​too, by the way,” Trump told Britain’s Daily Telegraph. There hasn’t been such a loony interview since Kaiser Wilhelm II created an international furor in 1908 in the same paper by denouncing the English as “mad, mad, mad as March

Trump NATO

Saturday

Mark Galeotti

Russia’s nationalists are falling out of love with Putin

Moscow’s Manezh exhibition hall is playing host to a celebration of the life and politics of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the outspoken, unfiltered and unrepentantly toxic founder of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), who died in 2022. What is meant to memorialize Zhirinovsky’s career, though, also highlights the degree to which the Kremlin is losing control of the nationalist right. The neatly-choreographed simulation of party politics that has worked for so long is getting harder to sustain The LDPR – which was neither liberal nor democratic – was established in 1992 and from the first was a populist force that was more a vehicle for the bombastic Zhirinovsky than

Friday

Charles Moore

The only ‘civilization’ Trump will destroy is his own

If, as Donald Trump had threatened, “a whole civilization” had died earlier this month, the whole civilization concerned would have been that of the United States, not of Iran. If an American president had deliberately ordered the death of a civilization – whether or not such a thing is achievable – America’s claim to world leadership would have collapsed. Like, I suspect, many, however, I did not go to bed that night thinking that Trump would carry out his threat. I remember my parents telling me that, during the Cuban missile crisis, people truly believed there might be nuclear conflagration at any moment. It did not feel like that this

civilization
Starmer Mandelson
Freddy Gray

Will Keir Starmer be a casualty of the Epstein fallout?

In America, important men don’t seem to suffer too much over their links to the late Jeffrey Epstein. Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Howard Lutnick and Paolo Zampolli, among others, might regret their past friendships with the world’s most famous sex criminal. Certainly, they resent having to face pesky questions about it. But the story just rumbles on, darkly, a source of endless intrigue and gossip and conspiracy theories – sustained as it is by the occasional publicity jolt, such as last week when First Lady Melania Trump, apparently without the knowledge of her husband, decided to give a big public statement denying that she, er, something something Jeffrey

Thursday

Cockburn

Watch: Meghan says she was ‘the most trolled person in the entire world’

They say that the clue is in the name, but with Meghan the first two letters give the game away: me. The Duchess of Sussex is staying true to form by making it all about herself on her and her husband Harry’s tour of Australia. Meghan told a group of students that for a decade she was the “most trolled person in the entire world’ online. Speaking at Melbourne’s Swinburne University of Technology earlier today, Meghan said that she was “bullied” every day for ten years – and took a pop at the social media giants for not cracking down: When I think of all of you and what you’re experiencing,

meghan
Douglas Murray

Trump’s goals in Iran have always been clear

The bombing of the Revolutionary government in Iran is drawing comparisons with the war in Iraq. But the comparisons are with the wrong war. In 1981 there was an attack on Iraq which much more closely resembles what Donald Trump is trying to achieve in Iran. The story goes back to 1976, when the government of Jacques Chirac in France sold a nuclear reactor to the Iraqis – a deal for which the French have always managed to avoid much criticism. The French charged the Iraqi government twice the going rate. But as one of the Iraqi nuclear team later recalled: “We were happy to pay. After all, who else

Wednesday

Jane Stannus

Does Mark Carney believe in democracy?

Mark Carney is swaggering about Canada with his new majority government, acting as if he’d just received a landslide mandate from the electorate. The truth is he acquired his precious majority not by climbing up on his soapbox and convincing voters, but by whispering sweet nothings to five MPs from other parties, upon which they mysteriously lost their political principles and crossed the floor. Does Carney believe in democracy? It’s hard to be sure. Yes, his party did just win three special elections. But only one of those counted (the other two were held by Liberals already and in safe Liberal ridings, so made no difference to the number of

mark Carney
Iran negotiations
Roger Kimball

Sorry, but America still holds all the cards

“Negotiations.” Are you heartened or dismayed by that word? Those who remember or who have read up on the seemingly interminable Paris Peace Talks designed to bring an end to the Vietnam War have reason to be dubious. A negotiation, if it is to be successful, requires that both sides be candid and in earnest. The Vietnamese were not candid participants. They stalled. They prevaricated. They acted out. It seems that the Iranians are hoping to reprise that melodrama. They will be profoundly disappointed. On the second weekend in April, Vice President J.D. Vance, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met some 70 Iranian representatives in Islamabad to hammer out a

Tuesday

Terry Barnes

The sadness at the heart of Harry and Meghan’s Australia trip

Before dawn today, a Qantas jet touched down in Melbourne from the United States. Aboard, flying commercial first class but hardly incognito, were world-famous philanthropists and former working royals, Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. The couple are in Australia for a week of “engagements” in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra. Even Australian monarchists who, according to opinion polls, still outnumber confirmed republicans, are unimpressed by the Sussexes’ pseudo-royal progress Unfortunately, there was none of the famously fine weather that preternaturally followed the late Queen Elizabeth in her travels. In Melbourne today the weather gods ensured the city was cold, squally and miserable. The Sussex

wall street journal
Tom Switzer

If Trump hates the Wall Street Journal, why is its editorial board dictating Iran policy?

For the better part of a decade, Donald Trump has been an avid, if irascible, reader of the Wall Street Journal – particularly the columns overseen by its long-time editor Paul Gigot. Because the Journal is among the few American conservative outlets willing to criticize Trump – on everything from tariffs to temperament – he has developed a habit of denouncing it in public while devouring it in private. The Journal, Trump recently declared on Truth Social, is “one of the worst and most inaccurate editorial boards in the world.” The ritual extends to annotated hard copies – margins filled with indignant scrawl – before the offending pages are FedExed

Doug Stokes

The Hormuz blockade won’t hurt China

As I argued last month, the Iran war was really about America’s great power competition with China. Not by design, perhaps, but these kinds of conflicts are not easily confined by those who start them. Any disruption to the world’s principal energy chokepoint becomes, whether Washington planned for it or not, a test of the Sino-American balance of power. China is the country around which the whole episode turns, and the one best positioned to come through it Trump’s announcement on Sunday of a naval blockade targeting all vessels entering or leaving Iranian ports, after peace talks collapsed in Islamabad, sharpens that test considerably. Hours before CENTCOM confirmed the blockade

Monday

Francis Pike

The truth about Pakistan’s role in the US-Iran conflict

Pakistan was always an unlikely mediator for peace negotiations between the United States, Iran and sotto voce, China. It would not be an exaggeration to describe Pakistan as a failed state. Having outperformed India economically in the aftermath of partition, Pakistan went into steep decline after the arrival on the political scene of a corrupt chancer, socialist and demagogue, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Today, bankrupt Pakistan is kept afloat by loans from the IMF, China, and the Gulf States. Trump can be in no doubt that, with regards to political power in Pakistan, it is Munir who wears the pants Bhutto’s political dynasty continued under the aegis of his daughter Benazir and

pakistan
Travis Aaroe

Orbán’s defeat is a warning to MAGA

Hungary’s Viktor Orbán was the first populist of the 21st century. The problems his country faced, he said, were immigration – both legal and illegal – and the entrenched class of bureaucrats, judges and NGOs. By the end of 2015, he had built a fence on the southern border, and an attempt to replace the country’s establishment with new people was underway. His project had, for the most part, succeeded on its own terms. And so, what to do then? Once the initial crisis had subsided, Orbán and his theorists’ thoughts turned, perhaps inevitably, to the moral character of society and the quest for meaning in the modern world. What

Stephen Daisley

The best response to Trump is to pray for him

Imagine that Martin Luther had scrawled his 95 Theses on the back of a Denny’s menu and nailed it to the doors of the nearest church and you get the picture of Donald Trump’s polemic against Pope Leo XIV. The faithful should be careful not to overreact to the President’s provocation, which is objectively hilarious The President’s TruthSocial rant against the Holy Father is highly offensive, of course. Show some respect for the Vicar of Christ. That’s not to mention the follow-up post in which he shared an AI-generated image of himself mocked up as Jesus Christ healing the sick. Given the condition of his second term in office, Trump

Sunday

Jawad Iqbal

What will happen to Iran now?

What now after the collapse in peace talks between America and Iran in Pakistan? The gap between the two sides on the two critical issues – Iran’s nuclear program and the Strait of Hormuz – proved too big in the end. Is it back to war? What does the failure to reach a deal mean for the fragile, two-week ceasefire the two sides agreed? Whose fault is it that the discussions, which lasted for a marathon 21 hours, broke down? So far, there is little in the way of concrete facts about what exactly happened in Islamabad but the blame game is already under way. First out of the blocks

Irwin Stelzer

Of course these peace talks would fail

The US and Iran have failed to reach an agreement after 21 hours of peace talks in Pakistan. I can’t say I’m surprised. After all, we didn’t have to wait for the negotiations to finish to make an informed guess of the outcome. America and Iran agreed a ceasefire conditional on the Islamic Republic’s complete opening of the Strait of Hormuz. It has so far refused to honor that condition. Earlier this week, President Trump responded with fulminations: Iran “better stop now” if it’s charging tankers to pass through. But, in practice, all he has done is apply more pressure on NATO allies and send Vice President J.D. Vance to

Saturday

Jawad Iqbal

What can we expect from the Iran negotiations?

The eyes of the world are on Pakistan’s capital Islamabad as it plays host to this weekend’s make or break negotiations between the United States and Iran. The Pakistanis, whose mediation efforts pushed the two warring countries to agree a fragile two-week ceasefire, are taking no chances. Security has been stepped up, with thousands of police officers and security forces patrolling the streets of the capital. Hope and trepidation are the order of the day when it comes to ending a Middle East war that has already cost thousands of lives and plunged the world into economic crisis. Any peace agreement will require a degree of conciliation and compromise –

Friday

Brendan O’Neill

The lies about Israel’s attack on Hezbollah

Imagine there was a virulently Francophobic militia on the doorstep of the French Republic. Imagine it had fired nearly a hundred thousand missiles into France these past three years. Imagine if the France-loathing maniacs had caused the deaths of hundreds of French people and forced almost half a million to flee their towns in terror. France would respond, right? It would take action, no? Why, then, does President Macron not extend the same right to fight to his supposed ally of Israel? Hezbollah has inflicted every one of those bloody horrors on Israel since October 7, 2023. I’ve scaled up the numbers to account for France’s population of 70 million,

Thursday

Doug Stokes

What Trump gets wrong about NATO

The idea that the United States has been swindled by its NATO allies is not new. Robert Gates, in his valedictory address as secretary of defense in June 2011, warned bluntly that future American leaders might not consider the return on defense investment in Europe worthwhile. He spoke of a “two-tiered alliance… Between those willing and able to pay the price and bear the burdens of alliance commitments, and those who enjoy the benefits of NATO membership… but don’t want to share the risks and the costs.” Gates was no populist. He was a career intelligence officer and establishment Republican, and his warning carried real weight precisely because it came

NATO
Travis Aaroe

Hungary has become a tired gerontocracy

Hungary in 2026 is what most developed countries were probably on their way to becoming in the 1980s and early Nineties, had mass migration not intervened: a sleazy gerontocracy with occasional bouts of moral-majority politics and ethnic nationalism. With socialism dead, the opposition is made up of liberal parties led by equally sleazy modernizers. Crime has ceased to be an issue, partly because the population is aging. The people, like pandas, do not breed. There is boredom and ennui. There is nothing analogous to, say, the killing of Iryna Zarutska. Hungary has had a dreadful century and is now a tired sort of place Such has been the work of Viktor Orbán,

Wednesday

Matthew Lynn

We’re stuck at the worst possible oil price

A ceasefire has been agreed with Iran. The Straits of Hormuz will reopen. And the oil market will get back to normal very quickly. By Wednesday morning, it looked as if the energy crisis was over. Finance ministers will be breathing a sigh of relief as the crisis abates. But hold on. In reality, the truce is fragile, and huge amounts of supply have been taken out of the market. So long as that remains true, the price of oil, and with it the global economy, will remain stuck. The average price of $90 to $100 a barrel is not what anyone really thinks a barrel of oil is worth

oil