Middle East

Donald Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ proposal is a continuation of Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. Trump calls it a ‘layered defense shield, safeguarding the American homeland with unwavering precision, ensuring the security and resilience of our nation’. Trump shared few specifics in the May 20 news conference, saying “Golden Dome will …

“The Trump administration’s baseless deployment of the National Guard is plainly retaliation against California, a stronghold for immigrant communities,” one advocate said. U.S. President Donald Trump deployed 2,000 National Guard members in response to protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in Los Angeles over the weekend, as Secretary of Defense Pete …

While nuclear crises between the “Big Three” can still be managed, preventing an arms race will be much more difficult.  The rise of China as a prospective strategic nuclear superpower increases the challenge of maintaining deterrence stability and implementing nuclear arms control over the world’s most dangerous weapons. In light …

War-Preparation and militarism are now the main factors that keep the West together – and will make it fall faster. The Western world has lost its consciousness, perception, and instruments of conflict analysis, resolution, peace-making, and reconciliation. They’ve been squeezed out by militarism’s kakistocrats – a political science term that means …

Executive Summary The U.S. government’s expressed commitment to human rights is routinely undermined by its actual commitment to maintaining America’s global military primacy. Since the 1970s, Washington has cast itself as a defender of global human rights, when Congress passed laws to bar the U.S. from providing security assistance to human rights …

Academic Neta Crawford warns that if Donald Trump follows through on his threats of war, emissions will soar and the planet will pay the price  Carbon footprint of Israel’s war on Gaza exceeds that of many entire countries  Revealed: Nato rearmament could increase emissions by 200m tonnes a year The …

An 18th century white slaver’s rulebook has, unsurprisingly, failed to serve the interests of a modern, multi-racial democracy. We can do better. People increasingly ask if we are in a Constitutional crisis, but we are past that. We have undergone a regime change, and are operating outside the bounds of …

If the Trump administration wants to cut Pentagon waste and avoid future wars, it should set its sights on abolishing the Combatant Command system. The torrent of foreign policy news in the second Trump administration flows so fast that big ideas are often swamped and sink. One such case was …

Trump’s foreign policy trip marked a stark pivot away from what had long been a neoconservative version of Middle Eastern policymaking in Washington. Will the result be peace or just profit? Colorful career criminal Willie Sutton once may (or may not) have been asked why he robbed banks. “Because that is …

Hector is tricked into combat and killed beneath Troy’s city walls. Trump might well heed the moral to The Iliad story. Presentation at the XXIII International Likhachev Scientific Readings, St Petersburg University of Humanities and Social Sciences, 22-23 May 2025 – Transforming the World: Problems and Prospects’, XXIII International Likhachev Scientific Readings, …