World

Fredrik Karrholm

Did demographics decide the Swedish election?

After four years in office, Sweden’s right-wing government appears to have lost its parliamentary majority in Sunday’s election. The count is not yet complete, and the center-left opposition leads by just over 30,000 votes. As of writing, the red-green parties hold 176 seats versus 173 for the right-wing bloc. Late postal votes and ballots from Swedes living abroad are being counted this week. One seat may still change hands, although few expect the balance to change. The government made a mistake by allowing citizenship applications to continue under the old rules while the new and much stricter citizenship law was being prepared Even so, it is far from certain that the left-wing Social Democrats will be able to form a new government.

Iuliia Mendel

Zelensky’s strategy is national suicide

For Americans who follow the Russian-Ukrainian war, the past few months must look very strange. In the first half of summer, the story from Kyiv – and the many western media outlets that repeated it – was that Ukraine was winning. Then, not long after the NATO summit in July, Kyiv announced it lacked the interceptors to prevent a winter disaster. The country needed 300 missiles to survive, we were told. Even if these 300 missiles arrive, they are unlikely to protect a country as large as Ukraine from the sheer volume of Russian ballistic attacks and glide-bomb strikes. Now it’s September, and Ukraine says it’s facing a $27 billion shortfall in defense funding. There seems to be a vast difference between the public relations campaign and the reality in Ukraine.

Jim Lawley

When will the Ceuta disaster end?

How many of the migrants who crossed from Morocco to Ceuta at the end of July remain in the city? Madrid has suggested that “only” about 5,000 remain in its North African exclave (population 83,000). But in that case why has Spain’s socialist government promised to create reception places for 6,000? The Ceuta government, meanwhile, puts the figure at about 13,000. Other local estimates run as high as 15,000. The argument over what Madrid knew about Ceuta beforehand is becoming increasingly embarrassing Hundreds of migrants unable to find places in official accommodation have been sleeping rough. One resident told El País: “Do you know what it is like to live with hundreds of blokes outside your front door shitting and pissing on the corners?

ceuta
Simon Diggins

Al-Qaeda haven’t gone away, you know

“They haven’t gone away, you know.” Gerry Adams’s chilling words, uttered during the peace process, to remind everyone that the IRA still existed, would do as well for al-Qaeda, the architects of the 9/11 outrage, the 25th anniversary of which fell on Friday. Osama bin Laden’s killing in May 2011 may have removed the titular head of al-Qaeda but, neither that well-deserved death, nor the subsequent splintering of al-Qaeda from ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) in 2014, has diminished either the virulence or potential danger that al-Qaeda presents.

al-qaeda

Ukraine

Owen Matthews

A grim turning point has been reached in Russia’s war on Ukraine

An important turning point has been reached in Russia’s war on Ukraine. But unfortunately for Kyiv, it’s not the “tide is turning” in Ukraine’s favor narrative that Volodymyr Zelensky has been pushing ever since his long-range drone attacks began smashing oil refineries and logistics warehouses deep inside Russia and sinking dozens of ships in the Sea of Azov. Rather, last night not one of the 27 ballistic missiles fired by Russia at and around Kyiv was shot down. At least 17 people were killed and a series of huge warehouses and major Ukrainian retail outlets were devastated. No grain vessels have docked for almost two weeks as Ukraine's summer harvest season enters full swing By the terrible arithmetic of war, the casualty numbers were not in themselves game-changing.

ukraine
Owen Matthews

Two wars are becoming one

Alarmed western observers are warning that the wars in Ukraine and Iran could merge into a single region-wide conflict. Ukrainian drones struck an Iranian oil platform, a Russian missile boat, and sanctioned cargo ships in the Caspian Sea late last month. But in truth, Kyiv has regarded Iran as a combatant in the Ukraine war since the summer of 2022, when the first Shahed drones arrived in Russian-occupied Crimea and Kherson. These drones were accompanied by instructors from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who trained Russian operators in their use. Moreover, this was not even Ukraine’s first strike on an Iranian target in the Caspian.

Charles Lipson

Will the wars in Ukraine and Iran merge?

This is a fraught moment, perhaps the most dangerous since the end of the Cold War. Two major wars are being fought, one threatening European security, the other the world’s energy supply. In East Asia, China continues to threaten Taiwan, and North Korea is reportedly upgrading its military technology with Russian help. Put simply, the bad guys are on the march, fighting for their regimes’ survival, their malign domestic projects, and as much regional domination as they can achieve. Although the wars in Ukraine and Iran have remained largely separate, there have been several intersections recently and a gnawing fear they could merge into a global conflict. That grim possibility is still a longshot, but there is real danger because the coalitions fighting the two wars overlap.

DC

Israel

Arieh Kovler

The man who could topple Benjamin Netanyahu

The year is 2019 and, after almost a full term in office, Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government of right-wing and religious parties heads to a general election. Opposing him is a former IDF chief of staff heading a new centrist party which quickly soars in the polls, making him the main challenger for prime minister. That challenger was Benny Gantz. Gantz formed alliances, fought elections and got caught up in the paralysis of Israel’s 2019-20 governing crisis in which nobody was able to form a coalition. Facing the threat of the Covid-19 pandemic, Gantz agreed to a deal with Netanyahu where they’d take turns at being prime minister – with Netanyahu going first, of course. Nobody except Gantz believed his turn would come.

Jonathan Spyer

Can Israel fend off Hezbollah without alienating America?

As the 60-day period of negotiations stipulated by the Memorandum of Understanding between Iran and the US gets under way, the issue of Lebanon is fast emerging as a central bone of contention. It is also revealing significant differences in the stances of America and Israel.   Israel has sought throughout to detach its battle with the Iranian proxy group Hezbollah in Lebanon from the negotiations – and from the larger effort to settle the conflict between the US and Iran. The logic is as follows: Hezbollah intends to continue its war against Israel.

israel lebanon
Ben Clerkin

Israel is the new Ukraine

J.D. Vance didn't call Benjamin Netanyahu out by name, but in sternly reprimanding the "Cabinet of the Israeli government" from the White House podium on Thursday, he sent Israel and its Prime Minister a clear message. In demanding more respect, raising the threat of severe consequences and ordering the country to get in line, the Vice President echoed the public fight he picked with another world leader and US ally: Volodymyr Zelensky. It wasn't quite as spectacular as the now infamous Oval Office blow up in February last year between Trump, Vance and the Ukrainian president. But Vance went further in his criticism of Israel than any other US President or Vice President in recent memory.

Vance

America

Europe

Noa Hoffman

Why Britain’s West Bank sanctions are savvy politics

British PM Andy Burnham’s move to impose sanctions on West Bank settlements is politically savvy – but not because it will achieve his purported aim of advancing a two-state solution. For one thing, the impact in Israel will be minimal. Ed Miliband was clear that the new sanctions regime will target those “providing services such as construction or financing for Israeli settlements,” while trade within the Green Line will continue. Yet the principal providers of such services to the settlements are Israeli banks, major companies and the Israeli government itself. Short of Miliband sanctioning them, the policy is unlikely to achieve much. The economies of the West Bank and Green Line Israel are completely intertwined.

west bank sanctions
Jim Lawley

Even playgrounds are no longer safe in Ceuta after the migrant invasion

Ceuta, population 83,000, suffered what is being described as its worst night of vandalism last night since some 70,000 migrants poured across the Moroccan border at the end of July. Vehicles and rubbish containers were set alight in several districts, fires were started among belongings in migrant encampments and police intervened in several fights between migrants. Madrid puts the number remaining in its North African exclave at around 5,000. But current estimates in Ceuta suggest it is almost double. Night after night, Spanish television shows disturbing scenes from Ceuta Nearly 13,000 pupils are due to return to school today under an extraordinary security operation.

Nicholas Farrell

The triumph of Giorgia Meloni

Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government this weekend became the longest surviving Italian government since the fall of fascism in 1945. It is a remarkable achievement for a woman who identifies as a conservative, but who has been relentlessly branded as “the heir to Mussolini” and a far-right threat to democracy because she was once a post-fascist. Regardless, Italy’s first female prime minister has become the standard bearer of the European right as the people of Europe continue to pivot right. Elections next year look likely to bring the right to power in both France and Spain.

Friday

Chris Mondics

Twenty-five years after 9/11, is America growing complacent?

The ghostly silence and calm that settled over Washington, DC is what many in the city remember most about the aftermath of the 9/11 plane hijackings and ensuing destruction of the Twin Towers and a portion of the Pentagon.  City streets were emptied of traffic. The airports closed and most public transit came to a halt. Not since British troops burned the Capitol and the White House during the War of 1812 had there been an attack of that magnitude on mainland America. The threat has not gone away. It has since morphed into smaller-scale events carried out by lone actors  Virtually all of the nation’s elected leaders and much of its bureaucratic workforce were evacuated.

Steven Edginton

Why did the British government label Charlie Kirk supporters ‘extremists?’

One year ago, Charlie Kirk was shot dead; the British government immediately got to work. Following Kirk’s murder, the Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU), a UK government counter-extremism and anti-terrorism unit, began monitoring thousands of social media channels, gauging the reaction of what they describe as “Extreme Right-Wing” (ERW) activists. RICU has stirred controversy over its role in coordinating ‘controlled spontaneity’ campaigns in the aftermath of terrorist attacks Published here for the first time, a memo written by RICU reveals that officials assessed that “Extreme Right-Wing” activists, including Tommy Robinson, would use Kirk’s assassination to “push pro-free speech narratives.

Alex Alfirraz Scheers

‘A failure of imagination’ did not cause 9/11

On a balmy autumnal evening in October 2001, a secret task force assembled by the CIA and the Pentagon met in a nondescript concrete-and-glass corporate building at the end of Fiji Way, a run-of-the-mill thoroughfare 20 miles west of Los Angeles. That task force, however, was anything but run-of-the-mill. Dubbed the Entertainment Industry Task Force, it comprised 30 of Hollywood’s most renowned filmmakers and creatives, including household names such as Oliver Stone (Platoon), David Fincher (Fight Club), and Randal Kleiser (Grease). Their mission was to imagine the next devastating terrorist attack, mere weeks after the 11 September 2001, attacks set fire to the Manhattan skyline and shook the world.

Thursday

David Loyn

We risk another 9/11 by ignoring Afghanistan

Twenty-five years after 9/11, and five years after the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, armed resistance against their rule is growing. The new militias are finding support in a population weary of Taliban rule. The latest group to join the fight, the Afghanistan United Front (AUF), have had their campaign blessed in a fatwa by a large group of Afghan Islamic clerics and scholars, who question the religious legitimacy of the Taliban. “It is our duty,” they write, “to destroy the lying and deceptive narrative of the Taliban to save our religion and our people from this extremist and heretical group.

afghanistan

Wednesday

Ross Clark

Oil at $100 a barrel is a disaster for Trump

When Donald Trump's political obituary comes to be written, none of his colorful phrases over the years will seem quite as outrageous as his remark in June, when the Consumer Prices Index hit 4.2 percent: "I love the inflation." He later claimed that he meant he loved the inflation figures because they weren't as high as they could have been. But that isn't going to wash: he had scorned the very people who had voted for him, and for whom inflation is a very big deal, by dismissing inflation as something unimportant.  He won't be making the same mistake, presumably, now that oil prices have hit $100 a barrel once more, for the first time since July.

oil
Britain Israel
Paul Wood

Britain’s sanctions against Israel will backfire

The historian Niall Ferguson, sometimes of this parish, said: “The law of unintended consequences is the only real law of history.” The new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s government is getting a lesson in that with its new sanctions on goods from Israeli settlements. The sanctions are meant to help the cause of a Palestinian state but may have the opposite effect. As an added bonus, they could hit British exports to the US. Ben-Gvir demanded international sanctions against Britain as long as we remain in possession of territory ‘violently stolen from the Argentine people’ The “comprehensive reset” of British policy towards Israel comes in the middle of a rancorous Israeli general election campaign.

Monday

Owen Matthews

Ukraine is losing the war

Vladimir Putin has not changed his war aims a jot since 2022 and remains determined on fighting on. Donald Trump has no new plan for peace other than bringing the Ukraine war to an end on Putin’s terms. And Kyiv is running out of money and men to defend itself, just as surely as it has already run out of Patriot interceptors to defend its skies against the Kremlin’s barrages. Those are the three depressing takeaways from the latest round of shuttle diplomacy in Moscow and Kyiv by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff. On the eve of their departure, Trump said his boys would be presenting “a new plan” for Ukraine. It quickly became clear that no such initiative existed.

Constantin Eckner

How the AfD made history by winning in Saxony-Anhalt

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is on the verge of leading a state government for the first time in history. According to the preliminary results announced on Monday morning, the AfD achieved 43.8 percent in the state election of Saxony-Anhalt, more than doubling their voter share compared to the previous election in the state in 2021. The AfD achieved 43.8 percent in the state election of Saxony-Anhalt, more than doubling their voter share Meanwhile, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the party of chancellor Friedrich Merz, lost 20 percent and fell to 17.2. The election result from Sunday is not only damaging to the CDU, but to all historically established parties in Germany. They might not be able to prevent the AfD from governing for the first time.

Sunday

Robert Hardman

King Harald’s death could revolutionize Norway

Affable, unflappable and imposing (he was a 6ft 2in ex-Olympian), the late King Harald of Norway was also blessed with good luck for much of his life. The first notable dose of good fortune occurred at the age of three, when his mother managed to spirit him and his sisters out of their home country hours before the Nazi invasion – and away to safety in the US. He returned to a nation so devoted to its monarchy that the children of postwar Norway pooled their pocket money to help buy his grandfather, King Haakon VII, a royal yacht. The Norge remains in service to this day, funded by an uncomplaining nation. Compare that with Britain’s royal family, who had to wave farewell to their yacht Britannia back in 1997 after a long and toxic political squabble.

harald

Friday

Ian Thomson

Inside Jared Kushner’s Albanian adventure

For much of its history, Albania remained as shadowy and remote as the fictional Syldavia of the Tintin comics. Letters to Albania were sometimes returned from Albany, New York, with the postal direction “Try Europe.” The country came into existence only after 1912, with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Its first ruler, King Zog, was hounded out by Mussolini when he invaded in 1939. Five years later, the Italians and their Nazi German allies were expelled in turn by the Albanian nationalist leader Enver Hoxha. A Muslim-born communist, Hoxha turned his Balkan fiefdom into a self-immolated model of Stalinist planning, where party purges, summary arrests and show trials were routine. In the early 1990s, Albania hurtled toward capitalism.

Thursday

Lisa Haseldine

Is Europe brave enough to keep pointing the finger at Putin?

Just under a month after three drones were discovered in quick succession at Leipzig airport, the German government took the unexpected step of publicly naming the country behind the incidents. Standing alongside foreign minister Johann Wadephul on Tuesday afternoon, the German minister of the interior, Alexander Dobrindt, announced: “The German government has concluded that Russia is responsible for the hybrid attack in Leipzig on 4 August.” According to Dobrindt, the German government was able to conclusively determine Russia’s involvement thanks both to a police investigation and findings made by the intelligence services.

putin russia
Gavin Mortimer

Marine Le Pen’s Muslim headscarf ban is popular, not populist

Marine Le Pen has promised to ban women wearing Muslim headscarves if she becomes president next year. The leader of the National Rally declared on X: “I will submit to the French people, by referendum, a bill to combat Islamist ideologies with numerous powerful measures, including the banning of the Islamist headscarf in public spaces.” Le Pen may be out of step with the rest of the political class but she is speaking for a majority of the people France has led the way among European countries on the issue of conservative Islamic dress. In 2004, for example, a law was passed prohibiting the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols in schools. It applied to Christians, Jews and Muslims, but France was accused of using the bill to persecute Islam.

Tuesday

John Fund

Iceland’s ‘No’ vote is a warning to Europe

This summer, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, bluntly told the American Council on Foreign Relations think tank that Europe was trapped in a high-tax, ultra-regulation model. “When Mark Carney said, 'The middle powers should get together' – it's a fantasy. They did that, it’s called Europe,” Dimon said. “The GDP of Europe has gone from 90 percent of America to 70 percent. And in our view, it will probably continue to erode over time because of high taxes.” The 27-country European Union’s response to such criticism has been to double down on its bad policies and try to enlarge its membership. On Sunday, their latest attempt came crashing to earth as Iceland’s electorate voted 53 percent to 47 percent not to even begin talks on becoming an EU member.

iceland
Jim Lawley

Is Ceuta the beginning of the end for Pedro Sánchez?

Spain’s socialist Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, has accused social media networks linked to Israel and Russia of spreading misinformation that helped fuel the crisis culminating in the sudden mass arrival of approximately 80,000 mostly Moroccan and sub-Saharan African migrants in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta (population 83,000) on 30 and 31 July. Madrid says some 5,000 remain in the city on the North African coast, although other estimates put the number considerably higher. Like other EU leaders, Sánchez has consistently opposed Russia’s war in Ukraine. But he has gone much further than most in his criticism of Israel, repeatedly describing its actions in Gaza as “genocide.

Monday

Klaus Dodds

How Denmark’s royals could help defend Greenland from Trump

Donald Trump’s bloviation about Greenland has been near-constant since he became president elect in November 2024. In the intervening period, the demands for the territory's acquisition have varied in tone and substance, from menacing statements to social media memes that are best thought of as bizarre. The response from both elected governments of Denmark and Greenland has been a consistent rejection of Trump’s demands. Meanwhile, European NATO allies have rallied around the Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, who came through a hard-fought election in March this year. Frederiksen used last month's NATO summit in Ankara to reiterate that Copenhagen was ready and willing to defend the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark.

greenland

Friday

Charlotte Eagar

Ratko Mladic was the ultimate Serb hillbilly hero

It’s rather appropriate that General Ratko Mladic, the 84-year-old former commander in chief of the Bosnian Serb army, “Butcher of the Balkans” died in the same week as Dolly Parton – he was the ultimate Serb hillbilly hero.   Shortly after his arrest, in the summer of 2011, I drove with my husband through the rocky hinterlands of Herzegovina. Mladic had finally been arrested, a month earlier, 15 years after the end of the war, by Serb special forces, masked, without insignia, to give them anonymity from possible reprisals from any sentimental Serb loyalties. He put up no resistance when he was arrested – he’d been on the run since 1996, and his Praetorian guard had long retired to their pig farms or were in prison for drugs.

Gavin Mortimer

The fight for France’s future is underway

The fight for France is underway. The 2027 presidential campaign began last night as the leading candidates clashed in a live debate on the center court of Roland Garros. Yesterday's confrontation came on the same day a poll confirmed that Marine Le Pen is streets ahead of her rivals in the court of public opinion. The leader of the National Rally boasts an approval rating of 33 percent, more than twice that of the left’s Jean-Luc Melenchon. He is on 16 percent with the centrist former prime minister Edouard Philippe 2 percent behind. Fourth, on 11 percent, is Raphael Glucksmann, the leader of the center-left Place Publique.

Thursday

Eilis O’Hanlon

How Ireland succumbed to ‘radical chic’

When a law student from Co. Kildare was stopped this summer on suspicion of transporting a bomb across the Irish border for use by dissident republicans, her solicitor said she had not been aware of what was in the bag and that she had been “manipulated.” Yet the 25-year-old’s arrest highlighted an alarming revival in Irish republicanism – and the role being played by a younger, well-educated, middle-class generation. During the Troubles, much of Ireland mercifully avoided the pull of radicalism. There was always a certain degree of quiet sympathy for the IRA in predictable sections of the media and academia, but popular support for Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican party, in the 26-county Republic remained negligible throughout the worst years of terrorism.

Wednesday

Piotr Wilczek

Does Poland have an image problem?

What if the hiring of a PR expert became a PR disaster? That’s precisely what has happened in Poland. On 29 July, when Prime Minister Donald Tusk appointed Barbara Mróz-Gorgoń, a professor of marketing, as the government’s new plenipotentiary for promoting the Polish brand, this was thought to be a shrewd hire that would bolster the country’s image on the world stage. Then someone read one of her reports. Poland has managed to develop from a bankrupt communist state into one of the most successful economies in Europe The Poles’ Self-Portrait, published last year by a think tank chaired by Mróz-Gorgoń, was supposed to give a thumbnail sketch of the Polish national character.

Poland
Owen Matthews

What was the CIA doing in Moscow?

Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe paid an unannounced visit to Moscow yesterday, spending eight hours in the Russian capital before returning to the US. Though he visited the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that they had met – though Ratcliffe certainly spoke to his counterpart Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s SVR external intelligence service, and other top Russian security officials.  The list of topics urgent enough to prompt the first personal visit of a US cabinet-level official to the Kremlin in six months is short.