America

With fresh wind in his sails after his success brokering a somewhat fragile peace in Gaza, Donald Trump has once again turned his attention back to Ukraine. According to reports, the US President’s team has secretly been working on drafting a new plan to end the war. Concerningly, though, once again that confidential plan is being hashed out with Russia – without any input from Ukraine or its European allies. Details of the plan are, as yet, scant – although a report by Axios suggests that it will be made up of 28 points falling under four rough headings: peace in Ukraine, security guarantees for the country, security in Europe

This may not be the conclusion Israel imagined when it launched its campaign in Gaza. Not all the hostage bodies are home. Hamas is bruised, but not broken. The region remains volatile. Yet even as combat continues, the United Nations Security Council, backed by an American administration long assumed to be ‘pro-Israel’, yesterday endorsed a resolution that places an armed international force in Gaza, sketches a vague pathway to Palestinian statehood, and outlines a governing arrangement in which neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority is central. For Israel this is a moment of profound uncertainty – a reminder that military operations, however successful, do not automatically dictate the shape of

No sooner did Democrats in the American Senate reach a deal to end the federal government shutdown than a frenzy of liberal pearl clutching ensued. The Democrats should have held out longer, they argued. Healthcare subsidies could have been rescued. Donald Trump’s approval ratings were plunging. Golly, maybe the Democrats could even have driven the dreaded Trump from office? Jonathan Chait’s verdict in the Atlantic was not untypical: ‘Senate Democrats just made a huge mistake.’ Don’t believe a word of it. The surprising thing isn’t that Democrats folded. It’s that they held out as long as they did. In the end, the moderate Democratic Senators, ranging from Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman

In the aftermath of war, a new front opens. Not in the ruins of Gaza’s cities, but in the corridors of diplomacy, where maps are redrawn with words and allegiances. Israel now finds itself encircled not by tanks but by treaties, resolutions, and incentives: a web of international manoeuvres that promises ‘stability’ while redefining the terms of its own strategic freedom. At the centre of this recalibration is the United States, whose post-conflict blueprint projects a pacified region steered by pragmatism, compromise, and multilateral oversight. But beneath the rhetoric of reconstruction lies a more perilous logic: one that treats deterrence as destabilising, ambiguity as maturity, and the survival instincts of

It is often difficult to discern the exact meaning of President Trump’s public statements. He does not consider words carefully, being a politician of pure and visceral instinct, but he is also not especially articulate, and this can produce ambiguous jumbles of language. Last week, minutes before he met President Xi Jinping of China at Busan Airport in South Korea, Trump made an extraordinary statement on his Truth Social platform: The United States has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country… Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within 5 years. Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War

For the past twenty years, Ireland has been Europe’s improbable overachiever. A small island nation on the fringe of Europe managed to turn EU membership, American corporate investment and allegedly shrewd strategic diplomacy into an economic success story. While the Celtic Tiger whimpered following the 2008 crash, it leapt back into action with remarkable agility, creating a low-tax, free-market economy. Dublin became the unlikely bridge for American tech and pharmaceutical giants to meet the European market, a centre of financial services and an agile diplomatic operator. As the US counts costs, not cousins, Ireland’s mix of moral posturing and strategic freeloading will wear ever thinner Throughout the Biden years, Ireland

Donald Trump says his meeting with Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC summit in South Korea today was ‘amazing’ and that, on a scale of one to 10, it merited a 12. Which means that on a scale for scepticism, it probably deserves a 13. Its biggest achievement appears to have been to at least put the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies on hold, though stock markets, excitable all week as the summit approached, opened flat this morning. Fundamental issues remain unchanged, the momentum towards economic separation will continue, possibly accelerating during the breathing space provided by an extended truce that is unlikely to last.