World

Roger Kimball

Why the US should annex Greenland

What do you think: is it manifest destiny that the United States acquire or at least exercise control over Greenland? That’s pretty much how America got Texas, California, New Mexico, Hawaii, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam and American Samoa. Then there was the Louisiana purchase. In 1803, Thomas Jefferson doubled the size of the United States, paying France $15 million or a bit less than three cents per acre for a landmass that is about 26 per cent of the contiguous United States. And let’s not forget about Alaska. A few facts about Greenland. It is big: 836,000 square miles. It is home to about 50,000 people, mostly Inuits. Historically, it has

Patrick Gibbons

International statesman or 'never here Keir'?

18 min listen

From ‘regime change’ in Venezuela to Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Labour government is trying to navigate complicated situations across foreign affairs. Having appeared to weather the domestic reaction to the situation in Venezuela, Keir Starmer is in Paris today to discuss Ukraine alongside Chancellor Merz and Presidents Macron and Zelensky. This is undoubtably important – but to what extent will this fuel the criticism that the Prime Minister spends too much time abroad? And how can Starmer reconcile the demands of foreign affairs with his domestic priorities? James Heale and Tim Shipman join Patrick Gibbons to discuss. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Matthew Lynn

Venezuela could transform the global oil industry

No one really knows how the situation in Venezuela will unfold over the next few years following President Trump’s audacious kidnap of its former leader Nicolas Maduro. It may or may not be legal. It might restore democracy or it might just pave the way for another dictator. But one point is certain: America looks set to reinvent the country’s oil industry. It is hardly surprising that investors are already jumping on that bandwagon.  Oil shares have been soaring ever since the news broke over the weekend of America’s raid in Caracas, propelling the FTSE-100 – which is dominated by giants such as Shell and BP – to record highs.

James Gray

Why would anyone want to rule Greenland?

It was the Viking, Eric the Red who, in AD 986, first saw Greenland’s potential. He wanted to colonise his newly-discovered island, and in a blatant piece of tenth-century spin-doctoring hit on a wizard wheeze to encourage other Norse people to come to this bleak, icy and remote corner of the unknown world: ‘In the summer, Erik left to settle in the country he had found, which he called Greenland, as he said people would be attracted there if it had a favourable name.‘ More than a thousand years later, US president Donald Trump is proposing something similar. ‘It’s a large real estate deal. Owning Greenland is vital for US

Ukraine

Mark Galeotti

Do Putin's New Year platitudes suggest he is tiring of ruling Russia?

Russia is still known for a great deal of innovative programming, but one area where there is concern it is falling behind is in AI. Judging by Vladimir Putin’s New Year’s Eve address, there are no grounds to worry, as this year’s was of a such blandness that it could have been generated by a large language model. Everything felt much more low-energy in Putin’s address than previous years, from rhetoric to delivery In his 1999 New Year’s speech, former president Boris Yeltsin made the shock announcement that he was standing down, and his recently-appointed prime minister, the relatively unknown Vladimir Putin, would become acting head of state. We haven’t

Owen Matthews

Europe has left Ukraine living on borrowed time

Russia started the war on Ukraine, so Russia should pay for the damage it has wrought. Such was Volodymyr Zelensky’s forceful message to European leaders last night as he pleaded for a ‘reparations loan’ backed by the €190 billion (£167 billion) of Russian Central Bank capital frozen in a Belgian clearing bank since Putin’s full-scale invasion. ‘Just as authorities confiscate money from drug traffickers and seize weapons from terrorists, Russian assets must be used to defend against Russian aggression and rebuild what was destroyed by Russian attacks,’ Zelensky told his European allies. ‘It’s moral. It’s fair. It’s legal.’ But after negotiations that went late into the night, Europe ultimately shied

Lisa Haseldine

Keir Starmer's Russia problem is here to stay

Keir Starmer will travel to Berlin this afternoon to join European leaders for a ‘mini-summit’ in support of Ukraine following two days of talks between president Volodymyr Zelensky and American officials. Zelensky has been in the German capital since yesterday, locked in talks with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to hammer out the terms of a peace deal on the war in Ukraine that can then be presented to Russia. US representatives have also been invited to this afternoon’s mini-summit – due to kick off shortly after 5.30 p.m. UK time. Overnight, Witkoff declared that ‘significant progress’ had been made with Zelensky. There has

Israel

Brendan O’Neill

The hypocrisy of the Maduro fanclub

Finally, the left has found a ‘kidnap victim’ it cares about. Having spent more than two years making excuses for Hamas’s savage seizing of 251 Israelis, having violently torn down posters of those stolen Jews, now the activist class has suddenly decided that abduction is bad after all. Why? Because a dictator they admire, Nicolas Maduro, has been abducted by the United States. What do we even say about people who get more agitated by the seizing of a 63-year-old corrupt ruler than they do by the abduction of a nine-month-old Jew? That was Kfir Bibas, kidnapped along with his mother and his four-year-old brother during Hamas’s carnival of fascist

Yardena Schwartz

How the first Palestinian leader became a Nazi war criminal

If the founding leader of the Palestinian national movement had been wanted for Nazi war crimes, you might assume this would figure in every modern debate about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Yet one of the darkest, most inconvenient facts of twentieth-century history has remained strangely peripheral: the intimate alliance between the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, and the Nazi regime. The founding father of the Palestinian cause was an unapologetic Nazi collaborator who abetted an actual genocide Many have seen the image of Husseini meeting with Adolf Hitler in Berlin in 1941. Yet few know what they discussed and what Husseini went on to do for the Third Reich.

Brendan O’Neill

What the word ‘intifada’ really means

Finally the left is showing an interest in freedom of speech. And all it took was a police clampdown on cries for violence against Jews. They turned a blind eye when cancel culture ran riot on campuses. And when gender-critical women were gagged for telling the truth about biology. And when people lost their jobs after dissing Islam. But stifling Jewphobic speech? That’s a step too far. They’re up in arms now. Let’s be clear: ‘Globalise the intifada’ is a call for anti-Jewish violence This is the news that the Metropolitan Police and Greater Manchester Police have promised firmer action against chants like ‘Globalise the intifada’. In the aftermath of

America

Europe

Patrick Gibbons

International statesman or 'never here Keir'?

18 min listen

From ‘regime change’ in Venezuela to Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Labour government is trying to navigate complicated situations across foreign affairs. Having appeared to weather the domestic reaction to the situation in Venezuela, Keir Starmer is in Paris today to discuss Ukraine alongside Chancellor Merz and Presidents Macron and Zelensky. This is undoubtably important – but to what extent will this fuel the criticism that the Prime Minister spends too much time abroad? And how can Starmer reconcile the demands of foreign affairs with his domestic priorities? James Heale and Tim Shipman join Patrick Gibbons to discuss. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

James Tidmarsh

The New Year's Eve fire shattered the myth of Swiss invulnerability

This was not supposed to happen in Switzerland. In a country where disasters are meant to be engineered out, risk neutralised and failure anticipated, the idea of a crowded bar turning into a death trap feels almost unthinkable. Around 40 people died inside the Constellation bar in Crans Montana on New Year’s Eve, and up to 119 were injured, many suffering serious burns. Switzerland has become more open and more exposed. It’s also become more complacent Witnesses describe flames racing across the ceiling within seconds. Systems that were assumed to hold clearly did not and panic set in. The inquiry will take time, but the outline is already visible. The

Gavin Mortimer

Britain has lost faith in Labour's ability to 'smash the gangs'

More than 41,000 migrants crossed the Channel in small boats in 2025, a number surpassed only by the 45,000 who made the voyage in 2022. In total, 41,472 people reached England from France, a 13 per cent increase on 2024. The weather was a factor: according to the Met Office, last year provided Britain with the most hours of sunshine – 1,622 – since records began in 1910. But of greater significance is the ineptitude of the British government in stopping the small boats. A spokesperson for the Home Office described the 2025 figures as ‘shameful’, adding that ‘the British people deserve better’. They would say that, wouldn’t they? It

Yesterday

Jake Wallis Simons

How to stop Venezuela from becoming Iraq

Will the Venezuela adventure end up like Afghanistan, or will it be another Iraq? In the eyes of most commentators, those seem to be the only options, both of which cost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives while achieving little, especially in the case of Afghanistan. It is clear that if Venezuela is to be the success story that the White House would like to see, there can be no alternative to the Panama model Some have also thrown in the example of the 2011 overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, after which the rule of law collapsed, human trafficking thrived and instability spread across the region. One analyst

Stephen Daisley

Trump is winning the Maduro meme war

The Vietnam war was the first Americans watched on their nightly TV news, the Gulf War the first that could be followed live on CNN, and the Global War on Terror the first documented online through the work of bloggers, citizen journalists and video-sharing sites like LiveLeak. Meme warfare is being used not only to humiliate the Venezuela regime but also domestic critics of the president’s actions The US invasion of Venezuela, Operation Absolute Resolve, marks another innovation: it is the first armed conflict in which the victor has simultaneously won a conventional military victory and a meme war. Seeing as US forces managed to violate Venezuelan sovereignty, seize and

Yuan Yi Zhu

The Chagos deal could spell environmental catastrophe

This week, the government will try to push its draft deal to surrender the Chagos Islands through Parliament. There are many, many reasons why the deal is bad – from security, to the legitimate rights of the Chagossians, to the fact that the legal basis on which it is constructed is bunk. But there is another reason why the Chagos deal should be canned: it will be a catastrophe for the world’s environment. Currently, the Chagos are protected by one of the world’s largest and strictest marine protected areas, in which all fishing is forbidden. An initiative of the last Labour government, the Marine Protected Area (MPA) has safeguarded one of

Nigel Jones

What are Trump’s post-Maduro plans for Venezuela?

Donald Trump likes to keep both his friends and enemies guessing. It’s no surprise then that his plans for Venezuela’s future after his typically bold and reckless abduction of dictator Nicolas Maduro are a mystery. Trump has awarded the plum of power in Caracas not to Machado but to Maduro’s vice-president and oil minister Delcy Rodriguez In his Mar-a-Largo news conference after the bombing and special forces raid on Caracas that caught the mustachioed Marxist napping, and delivered him to US custody, the US president begged as many questions as he answered. Looking and sounding understandably exhausted after watching the nighttime Operation Absolute Resolve unfold on a live feed in real

Doug Stokes

Maduro’s capture wasn't about oil

The image of Nicolás Maduro in US custody has inevitably resurrected the ghosts of foreign policy past. For the reflexively cynical observer, the narrative writes itself: a Republican White House, a Latin American strongman, and the world’s largest proven oil reserves. As with Iraq in 2003, the slogan of American imperialism and its ‘blood for oil’ foreign policy circulated on social media before the dust had even settled over Caracas. ‘The overnight strikes on Venezuela,’ declared the Guardian, and Trump’s neo-imperial ‘declaration that the US would run the country and sell its oil, have driven another truck through international law and global norms’. This is a comfortable, nostalgic critique, harking

Sunday

Daniel McCarthy

Maduro got off lightly

Nicolas Maduro is a very lucky man. The Venezuelan dictator – or ex-dictator now – might not feel that way as he enjoys the hospitality of the U.S. justice system after being snatched from the safety and comfort of his own capital on the orders of President Trump. But once he’s had a bit of time to relax, he should compare photos of his capture, Nike-clad and brandishing a water bottle, to the way Saddam Hussein looked when he was dragged out his “spider hole” in 2003 – or the way Muammar Gaddafi looked when a mob of his own people got done with him. Maduro didn’t lose a war

Edward Howell

Kim and Putin's growing bromance should make us nervous

As Kim Jong-un himself announced at a New Year’s Eve event in Pyongyang, 2025 was an ‘unforgettable year’ for North Korea. During the final weekend of the year, the Supreme Leader supervised a ‘nuclear-capable’ long-range strategic cruise missile test, which he termed an ‘exercise of war deterrence’ against the ‘security threats’ facing Pyongyang. The test followed a week of oily letters between Kim and his new best friend, none other than Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader lauded the ‘heroic dispatch’ of North Korean troops to assist Russia’s war against Ukraine as an example of the ‘militant fraternity’ between Pyongyang and Moscow. Even if dynamics in the Ukraine war change this

Saturday

Carlos Flores

Can the ‘Donroe doctrine’ really change Venezuela?

During the early hours of Saturday January 3, an official statement from the White House, signed by President Trump, confirmed that the US had captured both President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and taken them out of Venezuela. At 2 a.m. sharp, thunderous sounds echoed through the capital city, part of what Trump called today “an assault not seen since World War Two… one of the most stunning displays of military might and competence in American history.” It was certainly an attack unlike anything ever seen in Venezuela. Within two hours, all of Caracas looked like a massive fireball, communications were down and areas were without power. The

donroe doctrine
Freddy Gray

What is the Donroe Doctrine's plan for Venezuela?

The US launched a military operation in Venezuela, targeting the regime in Caracas and detaining President Nicolás Maduro, who has been transferred to New York where he faces charges of narcoterrorism. Donald Trump has described the move as a decisive defence of American interests, but critics point point to the double standards when it come to Trump’s ‘America First’ doctrine. Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of The National Interest, joins Freddy Gray to discuss the strategic importance of Venezuela’s oil reserves, the role of socialism in the country’s collapse, and how Trump may seek to manage the risk of regional backlash and a counter-insurgency.

Charlie Gammell

Maduro's fall could galvanise Iran's opposition

On the afternoon of the 28 December in a Tehran electronics bazaar, shopkeepers (known as bazaaris) shuttered their shops and walked out, outraged at a planned gas price rise and crippled at the continuing slide in the value of the Iranian currency and the government’s powerlessness to shepherd Iran’s economy towards something better than corruption, unemployment and inflationary cycles. Tehran’s Grand Bazaar was quick to follow suit. A day or so later, several of Tehran’s most prestigious universities staged demonstrations. Smaller cities and towns have since taken up the baton of resistance, with government offices attacked and people openly calling for Khamenei’s death and the return of the Pahlavi dynasty,

Freddy Gray

Why Trump captured Maduro

Donald Trump likes to start the new year with a bang – or better yet a series of loud bangs. On January 3, 2020, his first administration ordered the drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force. Exactly six years later, his second administration has carried out a large-scale regime-change operation in Venezuela, blowing several sites to smithereens and capturing the Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife and flying them out of the country. This after a series of military strikes against Venezuelan and cartel targets in recent weeks and months. There had been strong rumours in Washington that Trump would order

Nigel Jones

Trump says the US has 'captured' Venezuela’s Maduro

Donald Trump’s undeclared war in Venezuela against the Marxist regime of President Nicolas Maduro has erupted into the open. Trump says the US has captured Venezuela’s leader and his wife. In a statement on Truth Social, Trump wrote: ‘The United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country. This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement. Details to follow. There will be a News Conference today at 11 A.M., at Mar-a-Lago. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP.’ Trump’s statement

Brendan O’Neill

The keffiyeh crew’s curious silence on Iran

And just like that, the left loses interest in the Middle East. In 2025, they spoke of little else. They culturally appropriated Arab headwear, poncing about in China-made keffiyehs. They wrapped themselves in the Palestine colours. They frothed day and night about a ‘murderous regime’ – you know who. And yet now, as a Middle Eastern people revolt against their genuinely repressive rulers, they’ve gone schtum. It is especially electrifying to see Iran’s young women once again raise a collective middle finger to their Islamist oppressors What is it about revolts in Iran that rankle the activist class? These people love to yap about ‘resistance’ and ‘oppression’. Yet the minute

Friday

Richard Ekins

Can Britain strip Alaa Abd El-Fattah of his citizenship?

Does the government have the power to strip Alaa Abd El-Fattah of his recently acquired British citizenship? Sources within government reportedly say no. But the relevant legislation is in fact highly permissive. The government cannot avoid taking responsibility for deciding to exercise or not exercise the power to deprive him of his citizenship. The government may decide not to exercise its power here. But it cannot maintain that there is simply no power to act El-Fattah was registered as a British citizen in December 2021, in the course of the campaign against his imprisonment in Egypt. Successive UK governments made efforts to secure his release from prison in Egypt. He was released in September and was

Andrew Gilligan

The real Alaa Abd el-Fattah scandal

The real scandal of Alaa Abd el-Fattah is that it is nothing new, and that not enough has changed. For decades, in dozens and dozens of cases, the British state has legitimised, worked with, empowered or funded extremists and bigots; people with values deeply opposed to Western democracy; people who sometimes literally seek our destruction. Periodically, some new bad guy – in this case Abd el-Fattah – is exposed by the media or thinktanks. There’s a row. The person or body concerned is sometimes jettisoned, sometimes not. But the basic operational failure keeps happening. As a No. 10 adviser, I was several times lobbied by MPs who plainly knew nothing about the things

Mani Basharzad

Iran wants its monarchy back

There are protests in Iran again. But this time, something is different. In the uprisings of 2019, 2022 and 2023, the dominant slogan was negative: what Iranians did not want. ‘Death to the dictator’ echoed through the streets. Today, the country has moved beyond rejection. Now there is affirmation. A name is being chanted: Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi. More than ten Iranian cities have risen up in recent days, from the most conservative quarters of society to elite universities. Across Iranian cities one hears slogans: ‘Pahlavi will return’, ‘Javid Shah’ – the Persian equivalent of ‘Long live the King’ – and simply, ‘King Reza Pahlavi’. For the first time since

Wednesday

Catherine Perez-Shakdam

Are we witnessing the end of Iran's Islamic Republic?

Iran’s clerical establishment has spent nearly half a century insisting – always with that brittle certainty peculiar to ideologues – that history culminated in 1979. That the Shah is a hushed embarrassment, monarchy a quaint relic, and the very notion of a crown something to be packed away with mothballs and other discarded finery. Yet politics, like biology, evolves in defiance of official catechisms. And Iran, in these final days of 2025, looks less like a regime in command than a contraption still whirring chiefly because no one has yet found the off-switch. Iran, in these final days of 2025, looks less like a regime in command than a contraption

Leon Mangasarian

Shoot an elephant to save Africa

Africa’s elephants are out of control, and the continent’s people, and plants, are paying the price. Far too many elephants, with far too little territory – surrounded by ever more people and with culling hampered by Western animal rights groups and green activists – risk contributing to a wildlife-induced forest ecocide. Millions of mopane, baobab and other trees, are being pushed over, devoured or shredded into bushes. Great national parks are in danger of being transformed into desert-like scrubland. Elephant numbers have exploded in Kruger over the past century During a week hiking in what should be forest but now is a degraded bushland near the Olifants River on the

Tuesday

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s proxy war in Yemen

The escalation that emerged overnight in southern Yemen did not originate on the battlefield but in a relatively quiet logistical operation. It began with the arrival of two ships carrying weapons and military vehicles from the United Arab Emirates, docking at the port of Mukalla in Hadramawt. The cargo was unloaded without coordination with the Saudi-led coalition or with Yemen’s internationally recognised authorities. Early this morning, Saudi aircraft struck it at or near the port.  Mukalla marks a shift from managed rivalry to overt confrontation between Saudi Arabia and the UAE inside Yemen Saudi Arabia described the strikes as action against unauthorised external military support entering Yemen. It stated that