A warm smile surely broke the stern demeanor of President Xi Jinping as his aides informed him that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait cancelled America’s latest military stunt, Project Freedom, a mere 40 hours after it began.

The eagle has been reeled in by the eaglets, the Arab allies said emphatically, for the first time since this war began,

no more لامزيد

Trump’s bold maritime crusade to force the strait open was axed last week, not on behalf of the Iranian response—which was notable and wreaked havoc in the UAE especially—but by some of the USA’s most important regional partners. Reports from Drop Site News and The Guardian indicate Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were completely taken aback by the operation, feared a fierce Iranian retaliation, and pulled the plug by closing their airspace to the hundreds of US aircraft before the conflict spiraled once again.

Whether or not “Project Freedom” posed any prospect of success, the mission ending through regional partners breaking ranks is unprecedented and bodes extremely poorly for cooperation in the future. The message is clear: you can’t count on us, and we can’t count on you.

Despite early reports that Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman was privately backing the US regime change war, a recent statement by Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence head—and son of late King Faisal—dispels those notions and indicates that the Kingdom never supported the US-Israeli operation. Rather, according to Al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia perceived Epic Fury as an attempt by Israel to “plunge the region into ruin and destruction” in order to “impose its will on its surroundings as the only remaining actor.”

To drive home their dissension, sources in Saudi Arabia disclosed that the nation is now pursuing a non-aggression pact with Iran and is inviting others in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to follow suit.

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait may be the first to defiantly break ranks, but the reality is dawning upon the entire GCC. Washington is not the same partner it once was, and Tehran looms larger than ever over Doha, Kuwait City, Manama, and Riyadh.

It now appears that the following divide has taken shape:

The outlier is the United Arab Emirates, who have insisted on prioritizing Israel as a partner over their Saudi neighbors—although a recent dispute over whether or not Benjamin Netanyahu secretly visited Abu Dhabi or not during the war is straining the off-the-record romance.

UAE drama aside, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations are recognizing the Iranian regime’s stability and are pursuing a more diplomatic approach.

Although Saudi Arabia has fared relatively well on the oil revenues front compared to some of their less geographically-fortunate neighbors over the course of the war, it has nevertheless incurred an major drop in oil revenues that may take years to recover from. With oil revenues indefinitely inhibited, and tourism plunging off a cliff, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has begun pulling back from the global economy, as evidenced by their recent abandonment of the controversial LIV Golf League. Saudi Arabia’s mounting challenges are dwarfed however by their neighbors such as Kuwait, who recorded 0 crude oil oil exports in April for the first time since the Gulf War. Bahrain and Qatar find themselves in similar straights.

Even if the strait miraculously opened tomorrow, the economic damage the Gulf has sustained to date is incalculable.

To add to financial concerns, new reports from mainstream outlets including The Washington Post confirm what digital open source analysts had suspected—US military assets across Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE have been severely damaged. Satellite informed estimates now indicate over 220 US military structures were struck by Iran’s ballistic missile and drone salvos in February, March, and early April. Many of these facilities have reportedly become inoperable and lie dormant as the tense ceasefire drags on.

The region now finds itself at an inflection point—finance billions in repairs on US bases for an unpredictable and neglectful ally, or pivot to greater independence and new security partners.

One nearby nation could serve as an inspiration for the Gulf and has successfully experimented in creating a ‘security-hedge’: Dijbouti.

The small, desolate East African nation maintains a rather interesting security arrangement, hosting naval bases from both the USA and China. In 2017, China chose a site in Dijbouti to launch its first foreign military base, placing it only a few miles from the USA’s massive Camp Lemonnier. Publicly, this decision was motivated by China’s desire to maintain freedom of navigation and to enforce the UN’s Charter combatting piracy. However, the site clearly provides other advantages, allowing China to project its posture in a volatile region dotted with American and European military facilities and to consolidate control over a new economic corridor into Africa.

The USA did not take kindly to Dijbouti’s welcoming of the People’s Liberation Army and condemned the move on several occasions. Dijbouti’s autocrat Ismaïl Omar Guelleh waved the USA’s concerns aside, more intent on securing China’s $14 billion in infrastructure investments than protecting the feelings of his American security partner. Dijbouti has taken it one step further though, and has willingly supplied Iranian vessels bound for Houthi-controlled Yemen in flagrant disregard of American interests.

Dijbouti was not reckless however, but clairvoyant. By catering to China, Iran, and the USA simultaneously, it has ensured further Chinese investment, has deterred Houthi attacks, and positions itself comfortably under the security USA’s security umbrella.

For Dijbouti and its neighbors to the East, radical neutrality may be the most compelling way forward.

Over the next few years, Gulf nations will massively increase spending on foreign weapons, likely on American arms but diversifying into Chinese weapons increasingly—such purchases are already underway as Qatar is reportedly planning to acquire new Chinese air defense systems. As 2030 approaches, American military installations will likely be downsized or phased out, and Chinese coastal infrastructure deals will begin to take shape. At first, these will be for logistics, or basic naval support in the Red Sea and in the Persian Gulf. Over time, these facilities will slowly grow into formal military facilities capable of true power projection. This is the Gulf’s real hedge against both Iranian and Israeli aggression. The Hormuz crisis has also given China its “in”, as it can justify military expansion in the region under the pretense of securing maritime navigation and security—something the USA was not able to do.

Epic Fury has not only empowered Iran, through reestablishing its deterrence and providing it indefinite control over Hormuz, but has also set in motion a complete restructuring of the Middle East’s security framework. When the smoke clears, America will look out across the region and see Chinese masts emerging through the haze.

All opinions and analysis are strictly my own

In an unprecedented diplomatic faux pas 13 long months ago, Donald Trump and JD Vance admonished Volodymyr Zelensky several times with the now infamous phrase “You don’t have the cards”.

Obnoxious antics aside, they were right, Zelensky was defending a maximalist position while neglecting the battlefield reality. Well, much has changed since this heated exchange, and while Zelensky’s prospects have scarcely improved, Donald Trump is now the one who is truly cardless in a crisis of his own making.

So far the US has failed to achieve a single meaningful strategic objective in Iran. Holding a weaker hand by the day, the US has not inspired a regime-change uprising, has completely lost control over the Persian Gulf, has lost billions in equipment and base infrastructure, and has isolated all allies except a global-pariah that has far more ambitious aims than itself.

So how did the most powerful nation in history end up with an offsuit 7-2 against an isolated and weakened Middle Eastern theocracy?

THE UPRISING THAT WASN’T

Early in the war’s infancy, Trump announced to the Iranian people, “when we are finished, the country will be yours to take”. Since then, he has announced multiple times that the war has been won, and while the theocracy has lost its ailing 86-year old Ayatollah along with numerous commanders, ships, and planes, it is far from defeated internally. Pro-regime voices have overtaken Iran’s city centers, massive rallies of hundreds of thousands have organized to praise the regime, and hundreds of potential dissenters are being rounded up in mass arrests. Anti-regime protests and riots have not resurfaced. If anything, it appears the population has nervously rallied behind the government as atrocities like the Minab Girls School bombing provide the impression that the foreign jets are not there to liberate them, but rather to bury their children in rubble and death. The country has also not fractured along ethnic lines, as the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies enthusiastically predicted. Rather, a CIA-backed Kurdish rebellion dissolved before it began and there is no sign of serious Baloch uprisings in the Southeast or Azeri uprisings in the Northwest.

As detailed by resigned former head of US National Counterterrorism Center Joe Kent—who held the highest level of security clearance in the United States and was privy to critical war planning information—misleading Israeli intelligence was fed to the Trump Administration to push for this War. While impossible to confirm specifics, one can assume this intel played up the possibility of quick regime change and a popular uprising and downplayed the Iranian’s capabilities. Internally, US war planners grumbled and even publicly expressed doubts. Their pleas fell on deaf ears though as the crowd of sycophants, hawkish DC think tankers, warmongering pundits, and the close personal associates of Netanyahu, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff—who were cosplaying as nuclear arms negotiators—won out.

Despite over 10,000 airstrikes on Iranian territory in one month, the regime continues to successfully hit Arab, US, and Israeli targets across the region and has established a lucrative toll booth over the critical global lifeline of Hormuz.

The blame game has already begun among Washington’s top officials. On March 27, JD Vance’s office leaked to the press that the Vice President blamed Netanyahu in a bilateral call and lambasted him for pitching a quick and painless regime change war. The US Administration’s failure is so glaring that it is now grasping at a litigious definition of ‘regime change’ with Trump, Karoline Leavitt, and Pete Hegseth declaring that Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei being replaced with Mojtaba Khamenei—who is widely reported to be more extreme—actually matches the definition of regime change. With the IRGC still at the helm, civilian leaders still in place, and government institutions completely intact, this claim is as preposterous as asserting that the United Kingdom underwent regime change following the death of Queen Elizabeth.

ISRAELI ESCALATION CONTROL

The main barrier to peace is not the enemy, but the friend. As outlined by Joe Kent, the Israelis hold a near monopoly on escalation. Trump may have done a bit of hemming and hawing after Israel’s outrageous strike on civilian fuel depots in Tehran on March 7—which plunged a city of 10 million into darkness and blasted poison into their breathing space—but it’s clear the Israelis clearly bomb where they want, when they want. Over the last two weeks, Israeli strikes have consistently probed the boundaries of Trump’s hastily imposed war-conditions, hitting key infrastructure such as Iranian steel factories, nuclear energy facilities, and water reservoirs – baiting the Iranians to hit similar targets in the Gulf, which they have. To the Israelis, the potential destruction of gulf energy and desalination plants would be a positive development that sets back their Arab competitors by decades and brings the whole region closer to a coalition effort versus Iran. Trump, like Joe Biden before him, has opted for meaningless finger-wagging with Bibi Netanyahu. The President may castigate, admonish, and claim the US had no part in the next escalatory attack–but ultimately no military aid will be conditioned and no real consequences will be felt by the Israeli side.

For Israel, the war is a must win, on all fronts. This is a key aspect most analysts are missing. Iran has set forth the condition that Israel not only has to cease their bombing of Iranian territory, it must also withdraw from Lebanon. For those who missed it, Israel has launched a massive offensive against Lebanon that has killed and injured thousands. Unlike recent border wars, Israel has vowed to remain indefinitely. On March 31, Israel’s defense minister pledged to occupy the country’s southern region as a “buffer zone”, all the way to the Litani River. The 600,000 Lebanese residents who have been forced out by Israel in recent weeks will not be allowed to return, and Israeli officials outlined plans to institute the '“Gaza approach”, decimating every residential, religious, and commercial building in the region.

This is not only a completely unacceptable proposal from Hezbollah and Lebanon’s perspective, but also kills the prospect of a deal with Iran. Hezbollah has endured an enormous cost to join in Iran’s defense on multiple occasions, which will not be forgotten by the Persian side. If Trump’s negotiation team can form actual talks and were miraculously able to reach some consensus with Iran on Hormuz, sanctions, a nuclear material handover, and a missile program resolution—there is still Lebanon to deal with. And from their advantageous position over Hormuz, and thus global markets, Iran is unlikely to make any serious concession while their Lebanese allies are in an existential battle.

Israel also has no immediate reason to end a campaign in Lebanon, which has broad public support and offers the prospect of permanently expanding the settler-state into new lands. For Israel, the war must continue on this front, on the Palestinian front, and on the Iranian front. Thus, the Merkava tanks will continue pushing to the Litani, ‘decapitation’ strikes targeting Regime leaders will keep occurring in Iran, and civilian infrastructure in both nations will be attacked as America’s copilot takes the yoke and flies up the escalation ladder.

GEOGRAPHY

Trump has also been routed by the great decider of many of history’s wars—geography. Iran has a one thousand miles of coastline along the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, an area roughly equivalent to the US West Coast. While this area certainly has chokepoints, such as the strait of Hormuz, there is no way to guarantee control of the entire coast without a massive invasion force. Without ground control of this coastline, and a significant area buffering it, Iran can continue to target vessels with ballistic missiles, drones and small boats. If the US manages to completely knock out their missiles and boats, the affordable, mass-produced Shahed will more than suffice in a prolonged mission to hit commercial ships. Maritime shipping, and the insurance cartel underwriting it, relies on near certainty to maintain price stability. A 98-percent safety rating is not financially viable, and therefore, this key global transit zone will not be secure without a lasting peace agreement.

Western media has speculated endlessly on the seizure of Kharg Island, Iran’s key oil terminal, or a US landing at islands closer to Hormuz such as Qeshem and Larak. These options will also fail to guarantee maritime security as Iran will fire from deeper within their nation, and are likely to massively backfire as US ground forces contend with Iranian guerilla warfare and threats from FPV drones or “flying IEDs”. Even one point-of-view social media video of a terrified marine being hunted by an Iranian fiber-optic drone is certain to plummet US support for the war further in the abyss.

Further complicating the US war effort from a geographical perspective is the Red Sea’s Bab-el-Mandeb strait, a vulnerable narrow corridor that a significant amount of Middle Eastern oil output has been redirected through amid the Hormuz crisis. Alongside millions of barrels in oil, this strait moves about 20 to 30 percent of annual global container traffic. The Bab-el-Mandeb was significantly disrupted in 2023 and 2024 on behalf of Yemeni militia Ansar Allah “the Houthis”, who have now joined the war on Iran’s side. The Houthis have yet to target commercial shipping, but they have threatened to play this trump card if “escalation continues against Iran, Palestine, and Lebanon”. With two of Asia’s largest oil transit corridors all but closed, oil could easily rocket past $200/barrel.

NO (GOOD) WAY OUT

With the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit and the 82nd Airborne in theatre, and a major announcement from Trump directly to the country due for tonight at 9pm Eastern, the prospect of a ground invasion appears to be a near certainty.

However, despite this high probability for escalation, there is a chance for TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out). Wall Street is betting heavily on this, as evidenced by the market rallies and oil slumps of March 31 and April 1.

Trump may lack any competence as a wartime commander, but he is still attuned to political vibes. The cacophony of sycophants and echo-chambers may not be sufficient to completely isolate Trump from how politically untenable a ground invasion would be. One scenario exists where Trump decides on a whim to end, or significantly wind down, the offensive campaign tonight. He could claim the strait is “open”—with the unspoken caveat that Iran now charges a toll on all traffic—and reiterate that military objectives were met and regime change has occurred. This would be a terrible result for the Gulf, who are left badly bruised and are now subject to an open-ended Iranian toll in the Hormuz, and would be a catastrophic result for the Israelis, who gambled on Trump decisively enacting Regime change and ending the nuclear threat once and for all. Netanyahu must now up the ante and do everything in his power to steer towards escalation; if Trump folds now, Israel may have just lost their last chance to co-opt the US military to take down their arch-enemy.

The nation of Colombia is quickly gaining notoriety for a new type of illicit global export – one that makes its presence known in the trenches of Eastern Ukraine and the refugee camps of Sudan rather than in the nightclubs of Manhattan.

Colombian mercenaries are appearing everywhere. Over the last year, abundant evidence has emerged of their involvement in the Ukraine conflict – on both sides – and in the ranks of the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces, who are waging a brutal campaign of ethnic annihilation in Darfur.

Additionally, reports have surfaced of Colombian ‘security contractors’ supporting drug cartel operations in Mexico and government-backed militias in Eastern Congo. The rise of this phenomenon was put on dramatic display in 2021, when 26 Colombian contractors were arrested for allegedly assassinating the Haitian President, plunging the Caribbean nation into a spiral of instability it has yet to recover from.

It seems that whenever bullets fly in a new conflict, the crisp cadence of Colombian Spanish is never far behind.

So what drives the world’s warlords to seek out Colombians over recruits from neighboring Ecuador or Venezuela, or anywhere else? Combat experience is perhaps the most decisive factor. Colombia’s armed forces are among the most battle-tested in the world, shaped by more than five decades of continuous conflict against FARC—from its emergence in 1964 until the 2016 peace accord—alongside ongoing operations against the offshoot ELN. During those years, Colombian soldiers rotated through live counterinsurgency campaigns in dense jungle terrain, gaining sustained exposure to ambush warfare, intelligence-driven operations, and prolonged combat rather than short, conventional deployments. When those soldiers retire early—often in their 40s, with modest pensions and limited economic prospects—they become prime targets for security firms seeking disciplined, battle-hardened personnel at relatively low cost.

Yet experience and socioeconomics alone do not explain the scale of the phenomenon. Beyond Colombia’s socioeconomic realities and violent history lies a more deliberate engine: the rise of a small network of motivated and morally bankrupt organizers who exploit this reservoir of veterans, converting hard-earned military expertise into a commodity for foreign wars.

This week, the US Department of the Treasury identified several of these organizers when it introduced sanctions against four Colombian individuals and four entities responsible for recruiting former Colombian soldiers for the war in Sudan.

The Treasury’s press release details a complex multinational corporate structure with entities in Colombia, Panama, the United States and the United Arab Emirates that are used to recruit, train, transport, equip, and ship Colombian men to the frontlines of Darfur. According to the release, this venture is headed by Álvaro Andrés Quijano Becerra, a former Colombian military Colonel who resides in Dubai, and Mateo Andres Duque Botero, a Colombian-Spanish businessman.

The Businessman

The luxurious Dubai life of Quijano and his wife & business partner, Claudia Viviana Oliveros Forero, appears to be split in equal measure between training for the city’s latest overpriced marathon and coordinating the recruitment of hundreds of drone operators, artillerymen, and snipers for one of the most ruthless militias on Earth—whose massacres in late October were so catastrophic that satellites picked up the bloodstains left behind from space.

Quijano has lived an eventful life. Colombian newspapers report that he was dismissed from the Colombian special forces in 2007 after he was arrested on suspicion of providing information and training members of the Notre del Valle Cartel. Quijano was tried alongside several other military officers in 2009, but a guilty verdict was not reached.

Archived military tribunal documents indicate he was also investigated on suspicion of murder at this time. Public details regarding the outcome of this case are scarce, and its result is unclear.

Following the trial, Quijano relocated to Dubai where he is reported to have joined the Seventh Special Forces Brigade with the UAE military. The experienced Quijano appears to have risen the ranks quickly, becoming a commander of one of the brigade’s foreign fighter battalions.

While serving the UAE, Quijano reportedly began a relationship with Emirati private military firms Global Security Service Group and Al Masar Recruitment Services to bring men into the foreign brigade. Despite his cartel linkages and past arrest, Quijano was able to register as a private security professional with the Colombian government in 2020, and was able to legally recruit Colombians on his own accord for private security positions in the UAE—he was not, however, granted a license to recruit soldiers for missions in Sudan.

According to reporting from Colombian outlet La Silla Vacia, after purchasing a firm in 2022 known as International Services Agency (A4SI), Quijano ramped up the recruitment of former Colombian soldiers. Many of these men report that they were duped into signing contracts to protect oil infrastructure in the Middle East, and did not realize they would be sent to the hellish frontlines of Sudan.

The Staff

Evidence of Quijano’s efforts has trickled onto the feeds of social media sites in the last two years as videos have emerged depicting Spanish speaking men fighting, and dying, in the sand swept streets of Sudan.

Reports from major news outlets indicate that after getting to RSF-controlled Sudan, often via Chad or Libya, these mercenaries train soldiers—including children as young as 12—and engage in offensive missions against the Sudanese military.

Colombian losses are beginning to mount. In August, the Sudanese military reported that it successfully struck a RSF plane loaded with Colombian mercenaries on the tarmac of Nyala Airport in Darfur, killing at least 40. The incident was shocking and led the Colombian President Gutavo Petro to issue a rare, and embarrassing, apology to Sudan. Although Petro vowed to end the scourge of mercenarism his country has unleashed, reports indicate Colombian fighters are still trickling into the combat zone. While the ultimate source of these men’s salaries remains opaque, all roads lead to Abu Dhabi as the Emirates have been exposed for consistently financing the RSF in return for Sudan’s blood gold.

The Alternative Worksite

Ambitious former soldiers have an alternative to the massacre-ridden Sudan however —Ukraine. Up to 2,000 Colombians have signed on to support the Ukrainian side as the country’s access to able-bodied men dwindles, and several hundred have been documented fighting in the country over the last two years.

While contractors hired by Ukraine may be less likely to face arrests from the International Criminal Court compared to their counterparts in the employ of the RSF, fighting for Ukraine has its own host of challenges. Chief among these is the incredibly dangerous nature of the conflict. As showcased by the award-winning film 2000 Meters to Andriivka, the trench-strewn battlefields of the Donbas are the most deadly acres of land on Earth, and every inch of territory gained comes at an immense human toll. Hundreds of Colombians are estimated to have perished or suffered serious injury in the war so far, and while exact statistics will likely never be taken, social media posts have depicted dozens of memorials in Western Ukraine to the Colombian men who gave their lives to the cause—or at least to the paycheck accompanying it.

Those lucky enough to survive the cold trenches of the front have aired various other grievances with their employer, alleging underpayment, racism, and poor support from the Ukrainian units supposedly there as equal partner forces. PTSD is not the only demon haranguing returning Colombians however, as two soldiers who served Ukraine were arrested in Venezuela on their journey home, and deported to Russia by Maduro. In Russia they will not be treated as regular POWS, and are likely to face lengthy prison terms or to be disappeared entirely.

Unsurprisingly, Russia has Colombians of its own. According to Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate, Colombian mercenaries are not only fighting on the Russian side of the conflict, but have committed war crimes on its behalf near the recently seized city of Pokrovsk.

The mindset of the mercenary reveals a dark side of masculinity and humanity alike. While war is often portrayed as a crusade of ideologues—a great clash of human wills—in reality it is frequently little more than a male-dominated work site: a place to pass time, collect a paycheck, climb out of debt, or trigger the occasional dopamine rush. Global conflicts have become a sanctuary for Colombia’s lost and desperate men, and if conditions at home fail to improve, the mercenary path will not merely persist but will continue to draw them in.

As of April 11, 2025, the Italian government issued a new decree-law (decreto-legge) on security, bypassing regular parliamentary deliberation or procedure. International organisations and commentators warn that it may drastically curtail fundamental rights, including freedom of speech, peaceful assembly, and civil resistance. Critics argue this move marks a significant authoritarian turn in Italy’s democracy under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

From Draft Law to Decree

The background for the new decree is to be found in late September of 2024, when the Italian Chamber of Deputies (i.e. lower house of the Italian Parliament) approved a new disegno di legge (draft law) on security, under the name of DDL Sicurezza, which was criticised by parts of the public and opposition parties for its seemingly illiberal nature. The bill aimed to introduce roughly thirty new offenses, aggravating circumstances, and sentence enhancements. The Meloni-led government spent seven months attempting to turn this draft bill into law, but it stalled in Parliament due to financial and political resistance. President Sergio Mattarella also initially voiced concern. Faced with dimming prospects of getting the law passed, the government switched strategy – bypassing ordinary parliamentary procedure – by turning the draft into a decree-law, typically reserved for national emergencies like natural disasters where rapid action is needed, as stipulated in the Italian Constitution. Unlike regular laws, a decree-law takes effect immediately upon publication, without vacatio legis (the usual waiting period of 15 days). If Parliament does not approve it within 60 days, it loses validity.

The government justifies its circumvention of parliament, framing the move as necessary "to protect citizens and support law enforcement". In fact, the new decree-law is for all intents and purposes the previous draft law, unchanged aside from some minimal aspects

Key Articles of the New Decree

Among the articles of the new decree, some provisions stand out.

As per Article 14, rail and road-blocks (even peaceful ones) become a criminal offence, turning what was once a fine into up to one month in prison, or up to two years if multiple people are involved. Critics have dubbed it the "Anti-Gandhi Norm," referencing Gandhi’s iconic nonviolent sit-ins.

Article 19 introduces an aggravating factor for protests against public works or strategic infrastructure. Any acts of violence, threat, or above all resistance against a public official, when specifically directed to prevent the realisation of said public works or infrastructure, result in harsher penalties. The timing of the initial draft law coincided with widespread demonstrations against the construction of the Bridge over the Strait of Messina, which could have served as the rationale behind the introduction of such a paragraph.

Article 26 targets prison revolts. It states that anyone involved in a prison revolt faces 1 to 5 years in prison, with organisers risking up to 8 more years - even if they only resist passively. This seems counterproductive given Italy's chronic prison overcrowding, with rates among the highest in Europe (up to 150%), already leading to deteriorating conditions. Regardless of the rationale behind this tightening of regulation, the Italian Union of Penal Chambers warns that the new provisions could further increase overcrowding, as prisoners’ sentences are further prolonged in case of riots. Article 27 extends similar penalties to migrant detention and reception centers (Centri per i Rimpatri, or CPR), facilities that have long been criticised for systemic human rights abuses. Migrants protesting – passively or otherwise – may face 1 to 3 years in prison, with organisers once again facing harsher punishment.

Article 32 states that citizens of non-EU countries cannot buy a SIM card in Italy without presenting a copy of a valid identity document - in the previous draft law, the requirement was a copy of the residence permit (which may take years to obtain). A person who still decides to sell the SIM card without the buyer presenting the document will be punished, and their shop could face closure for up to one month.

Article 21 concerns bodycams for police – a long-standing public demand due to repeated allegations of police abuse. Human rights organizations like Amnesty International have also pushed for mandatory identification codes for officers. While the new decree introduces bodycams, it leaves their use optional, allowing officers to decide if and when to wear them, undermining the promise of transparency regarding abuse committed by police officers. Article 28 further empowers police by allowing them to carry firearms off-duty.

What Does the New Decree Mean for Italy?

Critics such as the Italian General Confederation of Labour deem the decree as exposing a government unwilling or unable to address the root causes of public dissent, focusing instead on legalizing punishment and repression, which some have defined as a type of “penal populism”. The law has been denounced by the Forensic Congress Body and the Italian Association of Professors of Criminal Law for disproportionately targeting specific categories such as climate activists, protestors, prisoners, and migrants.

Prior, several organizations also criticized the content of the draft law, which formed the basis for the decree, and expressed similar concerns. The Union of Italian Penal Chambers has condemned it as a symbolic, unnecessary show of power with limited actual benefits for public safety (and later stated that the only thing worse than the DDL is the new decree). National and International organizations, including the OSCE, the United Nations, and the Council of Europe, have also flagged issues with the DDL, warning that it violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

According to Greenpeace Italy, the decree, named “Repression Bill” by a member of the opposition, would aim at deterring public mobilization and dissent, targeting specific and marginalized groups. While dissent is not fully and explicitly outlawed, the spaces and forms in which dissent can be expressed appear to be now narrowed, with peaceful and passive resistance possibly leading to criminal charges. Lawyers, NGOs, and even the National Association of Magistrates have openly voiced analogous fears, underlying the seriousness of the matter.

Should this ad-hoc decree become a permanent law, the new decree could have far-reaching implications for democratic safeguards in Italy, criminalizing basic rights enshrined in both the Italian Constitution and international human rights instruments. Legal experts have pointed out potential clashes with articles 3, 13, and 27 of the Constitution, which could leave the decree vulnerable to challenge before the Constitutional Court as a threat to the rule of law.

All in all, the new decree, an almost identical successor to the draft law - DDL Sicurezza, raises questions about how the government intends to balance public order and security with fundamental rights. While the move has been justified by a will to protect the Italian people, one could argue that when a government criminalizes dissent, it’s not protecting its citizens – it is protecting itself.

The civil war in Sudan is nearing a grim milestone. The armed conflict in Africa’s third-largest country has, as of April, raged for two years, resulting in over 8.8 million internally displaced people and 3.5 million refugees abroad. Over half—approximately 53%—of the internally displaced are reportedly children under the age of 18.

In the area around the capital, Khartoum, which has otherwise always been known as an oasis of peace in a war-torn country, more than 60,000 people have lost their lives. Due to the ongoing conflict and the chaos it has brought, there has been no systematic monitoring of the war’s victims. Several analysts and international organizations speak of a colossal number of unreported deaths and destruction in provinces and states outside of Khartoum, with the western Darfur region said to be particularly hard hit. Famine and otherwise preventable diseases have worsened the war’s consequences. Numerous reports also state that rape is being used extensively as a weapon by all parties in the conflict.

Read our latest analysis on the new ‘small and beautiful’ doctrine of China’s BRI by our Asia Editor, Gabriel Lane.

The civil war in Sudan, which has at times been called “the forgotten war”, overshadowed by events in Gaza and Ukraine, broke out as a result of internal power struggles between Sudan’s two “strongmen.” Following the Sudanese Revolution in 2018 and the subsequent military coup in 2019, the country’s dictator Omar al-Bashir— who had ruled the country with an iron fist for roughly 30 years —was overthrown. Initial optimism was quickly replaced by concern, as General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of Sudan’s armed forces (SAF), seized power in a 2021 coup. The opposing faction, headed by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti), leads the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has its origins in the camel-riding, fearsome Janjaweed militias that al-Bashir used in the 2000s to crush rebellions, commit ethnic cleansing, and spread terror in the Darfur province. The 2021 military coup was initially supported by Hemedti and the RSF, but fears of centralization led the RSF to attack SAF bases across Sudan on April 15, 2023, where they at the same time managed to seize the capital, Khartoum. And just like that, the civil war had begun.

Until recently, the war had reached a relative stalemate, but with a major offensive toward Khartoum, the SAF has succeeded in recapturing the country’s presidential palace. Symbolic as the victory may be, the SAF’s progress could signal a turning point in the war. This viewpoint is further supported by the fact that al-Burhan has been especially effective in securing support from both Russia and Iran. Iranian drones and Russian weapons have been crucial in securing SAF’s successes on the battlefield, and Russia has even recently secured a promise for a naval base in Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast.

From left: General Al-Burhan (head of Sudan’s army and de facto leader of the country), Riek Machar (First Vice President of South Sudan), Hemedti (leader of the paramilitary group, Rapid Support Forces), Salva Kiir (President of South Sudan). Source of photos: AP

Trouble Brewing to the South

Meanwhile, the war now threatens to spill over into the country’s southern neighbor, the world’s youngest country, South Sudan. Both SAF and RSF support their respective militias in the neighboring state. This comes at a delicate time for South Sudan. Political tensions and storm clouds are currently gathering over the capital, Juba. The UN’s Special Representative for South Sudan, Nicholas Haysom, briefed journalists on March 24, warning that unless drastic measures are taken, there is a high risk of a full-scale civil war breaking out in the country on the banks of the Nile. At the center of the new tensions are South Sudan’s enigmatic cowboy-hat-wearing President Salva Kiir and First Vice President Riek Machar.

The oil-rich country has only just barely emerged from the grips of war. Kiir and Machar are both parties to a fragile 2018 peace agreement, which ended a five-year civil war between forces mobilized along tribal lines loyal to either Kiir or Machar, and during which up to 400,000 people lost their lives. The peace deal remains fragile, largely because each leader still de facto controls their respective half of the country’s armed forces, geographically dispersed across the nation.

The new tensions arose when Kiir dismissed several key government officials in February as part of a cabinet reshuffle, dismissals seen by Machar’s faction as a breach of the 2018 peace agreement. As a result, sporadic bloodshed broke out in the north of the country, after which Kiir deployed loyal forces to the region, backed by airstrikes. Images shared on social media show women and children with horrific burn marks, and an investigation by independent Sudan Post found that ethyl acetate, an extremely flammable chemical, was likely used in the attack. More than 60,000 civilians have fled as a result of the recent violence. During the fighting, a UN helicopter deployed to evacuate UN troops from the area came under heavy fire, killing one UN crew member and a South Sudanese general. The UN-affiliated Radio Miraya reported that the so-called White Army, linked to Machar, is suspected of being behind the attack. Countries including France, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, and Norway have condemned the attack, and the U.S. Embassy has gone so far as to evacuate all non-essential American personnel from the country.

Last week, the situation took a dramatic turn when Machar was arrested by Kiir’s forces and accused of inciting rebellion. Machar’s party, Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-In Opposition (SPLM-IO), issued a press release implying that the arrest warrant for Machar “in effect” renders the 2018 peace agreement void. This is a significant step toward further escalation.

The growing conflict is on the agenda of the regional IGO, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). IGAD, which has a mandate to act on peace and security matters in South Sudan, met on March 12 for a summit to discuss the situation. Likewise, Kenya, currently holding the presidency of the other important regional bloc, the East African Community, has sent the country’s former Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, to South Sudan with a mission to de-escalate the situation. Odinga met with Kiir and urged South Sudan’s prime minister to reach a peaceful resolution. However, he was denied a meeting with the detained Machar.

Leading IGAD member Uganda has already, as of mid-March, sent its own special forces to South Sudan to secure Juba, the capital. Uganda’s move is, however, seen as controversial, as President Museveni is a close ally of President Kiir, and the action could be perceived by Machar’s supporters as a further provocation.

The hope for a peaceful resolution to the conflict could lie with the country’s youth and in a possible swift intervention by the international community. South Sudanese-American political scientist Abiol Lual Deng points to the fact that the young South Sudanese population—around 66% of whom were under the age of 24 in 2021—does not share the same mindset of ethnic division as the country’s leaders. She is also hopeful that the international community will step in should the budding conflict escalate into a full-scale war, noting that increased regional instability is not in the interest of any partners in the region.

In his speech to the Belt and Road Symposium in 2021, President Xi Jinping first used the term ‘Xiao Er Mei’ (小而美), which translates to ‘small and beautiful’, to lay out his vision of the future of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), eight years after the strategy was first announced in September 2013. This novel rhetoric from Beijing has been accompanied by palpable changes in the selection, design and regulation of BRI projects in recent years, with the focus moving away from expansive mega-projects to narrower, more precise initiatives in an effort to address some of the issues China encountered in the BRI’s early years. At the heart of these reforms, which are still ongoing, there is an effort to ensure that current and prospective BRI projects are financially feasible, less prone to corruption, and more aligned with Beijing’s environmental, strategic and economic ambitions.

Recognising this shift is not only crucial in understanding China’s international approach going forward, but also the future of global aid and development programmes more generally at a time when the US and UK are drastically cutting their overseas assistance budgets.

The Early Days of the BRI: Impactful, yet Troublesome

With over US$1.175 trillion spent in more than 140 countries, including around US$704 billion in construction contracts and US$470 billion in non-financial investments according to the Green Finance and Development Center (GFDC), the BRI has unquestionably had a monumental impact on connectivity and infrastructure projects across the globe.

The initiative has had clear benefits for Beijing, dramatically increasing trade, primarily in raw materials, between China and the Global South. Since 2013, over US$19.1 trillion worth of goods and services have been exchanged between the PRC and BRI countries alone. However, despite the obvious economic and strategic dividends that China has reaped as a result of the BRI, including enabling Beijing to begin to pivot away from its dependency on U.S. foodstuffs through its deepening trading relationships with Europe and South America, The BRI has not entirely been the win-win success story that the CCP presents it as.

In the decade since the first BRI projects were constructed, there has been significant controversy surrounding the economic sustainability and governmental impact of Chinese-financed initiatives under the umbrella of the BRI and the national security risks they allegedly pose. Most infamously, Beijing holds a significant proportion of the sovereign debt of countries in the Global South.

Indeed, China continues to be Africa’s biggest bilateral lender, holding around 12% of the continent’s total public and private external debt (close to US$87 billion) in 2022, a dynamic that, in theory at least, seems beneficial for the PRC with annual debt repayments from Africa alone increasing fivefold over the last decade. In reality, however, numerous African countries have faced significant difficulty repaying these loans. Many states have been forced to negotiate substantial debt restructuring agreements with Beijing, whilst China is estimated to have spent at least US$240 billion as of 2023 to prevent countries like Zambia and Angola from defaulting on their loans. Other borrowers, such as Nigeria, have also had to undertake unconventional financial measures, such as the issuing of ‘panda bonds’ in recent years, to raise sufficient capital to continue to afford repayments on their Chinese loans. This lack of focus on financial sustainability and allegations of corruption are not limited to Chinese projects and loans in Africa.

China has been forced to write off billions of dollars of debt across the Global South, which countries could simply not afford to pay back, such as in Venezuela, where Beijing lost US$20 billion of a US$62.2 billion loan to the country. Indeed, as a 2023 AidData study found, China continues to be owed around US$1 trillion in loans payments with 80% of the debt possessed by states which are characterised as in ‘financial distress’ whilst 35% of BRI infrastructure projects have reportedly faced “major implementation problems such as corruption scandals, labor violations, environmental hazards, and public protests”.

The failure by Chinese SOEs, provincial governments and other quasi-state actors to conduct extensive risk assessments throughout early BRI projects not only had adverse economic consequences but also unintended negative geopolitical implications for Beijing, which, as a result, has long been accused of engaging in ‘debt trap diplomacy’. This negative backlash can be seen in Southeast Asia, where energy and resource extraction projects linked to the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor, one of the six economic corridors of the BRI, caused a diplomatic row between the two countries. In this case, the construction of a Chinese-financed pipeline through territory controlled by ethnic armed groups, accompanied by mining and logging operations (which violated Beijing’s own economic sanctions), led to a public outcry in Myanmar with the Burmese government closing down a major Chinese power station in the country in retaliation.

This lackluster regulatory oversight, which was not uncommon during the early years of the BRI, can also be seen on the Malay Peninsula. In this instance, two different Chinese provincial governments signed separate multi-billion-dollar deals to develop port infrastructure in Malaysia despite the fact that the construction of two different harbours so close to each other made little strategic or economic sense. Incidents such as these, as well as criticism of the quality of Chinese infrastructure construction in general, have led to increasing international skepticism of BRI projects, with Malaysia and Tanzania among the countries to cancel Chinese deals in recent years.

In addition to evolving attitudes abroad, domestic economic concerns at home, linked to China’s underwhelming post-pandemic economic recovery, also began to have a significant impact on Beijing’s overseas development strategy. As the true extent of the real estate crisis, eye-watering levels of local government debt and the impact of Western trade and investment restrictions started to become clear, BRI funding levels started to drop substantially; with BRI investment in Africa, for example, falling to only $7.5 billion in the year 2022. Facing these internal and external headwinds, Xi Jinping was increasingly forced to consider a remodeling of his signature foreign policy initiative.

The Shift to ‘Small and Beautiful’

In light of these challenges, China’s leadership began to take action in the years preceding the first articulation of the ‘small and beautiful’ doctrine in 2021. This could be seen as early as 2018 when a new state agency was established to scrutinise BRI programmes and curtail funding for what Xi described as “vanity projects”. Going further, Xi also announced at the Belt and Road Symposium in 2019 that the BRI must transition from an initiative that “paints with broad strokes” to one that uses “a fine brush approach” and prioritises high-quality sustainable development projects as well as ESG (environment, sustainability and governance) programmes. Building on this, the Chinese government set out eight ‘guiding principles’ for a reformed BRI at the 2023 Belt and Road Forum, which aimed to combat the corruption, environmental, and debt issues that had previously tainted the BRI’s reputation and effectiveness.

This rhetoric signaled an effort to shift Chinese BRI funding away from ‘high profile’ and ‘hard connectivity’ mega-projects with extremely ambitious infrastructure and connectivity objectives, such as the repeatedly delayed US$10.4 billion Nigerian Lagos-Kano railroad, to less expensive, greener, lower risk and higher-yield ‘soft connectivity’ initiatives with shorter construction timelines. Examples of such projects highlighted by Chinese state media outlets include the funding of local artisan embroidery initiatives in Liberia, biogas development schemes in Tonga and Samoa, as well as a “mushroom-growing technology in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Rwanda”, which are a far cry from the expansive mega-projects Beijing had championed previously.

Read our latest analysis on the status of women’s rights under Italian PM, Giorgia Meloni, by our Italy Correspondent, Sara Cincotti

Chinese officials have also been keen to give center stage to green and technological initiatives in their rhetoric about the new ‘small and beautiful’ BRI doctrine, with particular emphasis on the ‘Digital Silk Road’ and ‘Green Silk Road’. Indeed, in the wake of criticism of the substantial negative environmental impacts of a number of BRI mega-projects, the PRC has plowed significant capital into green BRI initiatives in recent years. According to the IISS, green-energy investments under the umbrella of the BRI amounted to US$9.5 billion in 2023 alone - with a focus on critical minerals, solar cells and electric vehicles (EVs), sectors in which China already holds a ‘near-monopoly’ position in global supply chains.

This new doctrine of investment in green energy projects is in line with the principles laid out by Xi Jinping in 2021 as part of China’s Global Development Initiative, which emphasises the pursuit of ‘Stronger, Greener and Healthier Global Development’. The extent of this shift is staggering, with analysis by Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center noting that in 2022, Chinese development finance institutions (DFIs) did not finance a single new fossil fuel initiative, in stark contrast to Beijing's previous extensive investment in oil and gas projects under the BRI.

Much of the recent capital invested in green BRI projects has been targeted at Southeast Asia, with roughly US$3 billion of BRI funding invested in renewable energy initiatives in the region between 2019 and 2023. These projects range from hydropower projects along the Mekong River to EV lithium-ion-battery initiatives in Indonesia and the Philippines. Africa, too, has been a location for Chinese green-energy financing deals with the Export-Import Bank of China allocating around US$502 million for three low-carbon energy initiatives on the continent in 2023. Moreover, Beijing also announced plans for thirty new renewable energy programmes during last year’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) as part of a wider US$50 billion funding commitment.

These programmes, in addition to their economic and climate drivers, have an underlying geopolitical component too, with Beijing seeking to secure its critical minerals supply chains as well as consumer markets for Chinese green technology, such as EVs, following the US and EU continuing efforts to de-risk from China.

Another noticeable impact of the ‘small and beautiful’ doctrine is the changing scope and nature of Chinese development financing. The new doctrine, in concert with other factors such as the Covid-19 pandemic, has led Chinese lenders to become much more risk averse both in terms of overall loan volumes but also concerning the risk they take on through facilitating such borrowing. Indeed, as the IISS notes, the average deal size of BRI construction projects in 2023 was the second-lowest year in the Initiative’s history (down nearly 50% from 2018 according to the GFDC) whilst Beijing has also limited the amount Chinese banks are allowed to lend overseas.

This is a significant departure from the previous practice of BRI financing in which Chinese firms were entirely responsible for each initiative’s funding, investment and construction. In the early years of the BRI, one or more Chinese institutions would provide the totality of the capital for a project, one Chinese firm would be the sole equity investor of the project, and a single Chinese contractor would be responsible for the programme’s implementation. In recent years, however, to avoid Chinese parties bearing all the risk of a project, Beijing has encouraged Chinese SOEs to expand the practice of undertaking smaller percentage participation in investment and loan deals whilst simultaneously seeking to attract other state-owned and private creditors to invest in BRI programmes. The practical implications of this change of funding model and focus on smaller, yuan-denominated investments can be seen in recent Chinese loans structuring in Africa, where Beijing is increasingly opting to transfer capital through “financial intermediaries such as regional African banks” rather than providing the funding directly to African governments.

This effort to mitigate fiscal risks by minimising Chinese exposure to African states is echoed in the PRC’s FOCAC 2024 Beijing Action Plan which, as the Global Development Policy Center notes, calls for infrastructure development in Africa to be financed by “adapting capital structuring… a clear departure from the debt-funded large infrastructure projects that were so prevalent during the early years of the BRI”. As well as diversifying the financial structure of BRI deals by encouraging the growth of equity models and public-private partnerships over conventional loan models, Beijing has also sought to increase engagement, particularly on green-energy and technology development, with middle-income countries, such as those in the Gulf, in addition to low-income states in the Global South.

The transition to ‘small and beautiful’ projects has not been seamless, however. Chinese SOEs, banks and government agencies have had to face the perennial issue that, beyond the Politburo’s broad pronouncements, it remains unclear precisely how Xiao Er Mei translates into project frameworks. Despite difficulties, though, in practice, BRI funding has begun to rise again in the last couple of years. According to the Chinese Loans to Africa (CLA) database, “in 2023 Chinese lenders issued 13 new commitments with a value of US$4.61 billion to eight countries and two regional financial institutions”. This rise marks the first time since 2016 that the total value of Chinese annual loans to Africa has increased. It is simultaneously the largest volume of lending since the COVID-19 pandemic, despite remaining well below the more than US$10 billion annual rate seen during the BRI’s early years. This increase has not been confined to Africa either, with the China Belt and Road Initiative Investment Report highlighting that overall 2023 was the highest year for BRI-related investment since 2018, with close to US$50 billion allocated in that year alone.

Looking to the Future in an Uncertain World

Chinese reforms to the BRI’s development financing model, driven by the new ‘small and beautiful’ doctrine, have not occurred in a vacuum. In and of itself, the international development landscape has undergone a fundamental shift in recent months. At a time when the US and the UK are both substantially reducing their international aid spending - with the White House dismantling billions of dollars’ worth of USAID programmes and Downing Street seeking to free up funding for greater defence spending - concern has grown that Beijing could take advantage of this Western retrenchment. Indeed, beyond the gutting of USAID’s humanitarian programmes, uncertainty hangs over Biden-era US led development and green finance initiatives such as the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII), PREPARE, and the Indo-Pacific Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) with the Trump administration withdrawing from the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) last month.

Amidst this reshaping of the international aid landscape, China is championing an alternative path. While much of the coverage of the 2025 Munich Security Conference focused on the American Vice-President’s speech and Washington’s signaling that it can no longer be relied on as a guarantor of European security, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi also gave remarks, which despite their potential significance, went largely under the radar. In his speech Wang Yi made an overture to Europe, stating that Beijing was “willing to synergize high-quality Belt and Road cooperation with the European Union’s Global Gateway strategy, so as to empower each other and empower the entire world”. Although serious discussions of a future ‘synergy’ between the BRI and the EU’s Global Gateway (Europe’s international infrastructure strategy) remain extremely distant, Wang Yi’s comments reflect the reality that China and the EU (alongside Japan) may soon be the only big international development aid players in town.

In light of recent apprehension that China will now step in to fill the void left by the US and UK, it is important to understand that Chinese development financing, particularly in the ‘small and beautiful’ era, is fundamentally different to Western aid practices. Beijing is unlikely to simply replace Western funding dollar for dollar. Whilst China recently raised an extra US$4 million together with South Korea to fill a critical funding gap that the Africa Centres for Disease Control faced following American disengagement, it is highly improbable that this practice will be replicated on a large scale. This is because, unlike USAID and the British FCDO (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)'s substantive focus on healthcare and humanitarian aid, Chinese loans and grants are primarily allocated for trade, infrastructure and security initiatives.

Grasping the complexities of China’s approach to development financing, particularly the BRI’s shift to ‘small and beautiful’ projects in recent years, is imperative to understanding the changes confronting the development assistance landscape in the years to come. With the future remaining uncertain as the international aid landscape shifts beneath our feet, Beijing’s rhetoric and, more importantly, actions are worth watching in the long months and years to come.

By Laurits Bugge, Copenhagen

Last week, Türkiye was rocked by a political earthquake. Ekrem İmamoğlu, the Mayor of Istanbul and a key figure within the main opposition party, the Republican People's Party (CHP), was arrested at his home by local police on Wednesday morning. On Sunday, he was formally charged and taken into custody pending trial.

A video on X shows İmamoğlu preparing for the encounter: he is getting dressed, calmly, while addressing his supporters: “There are hundreds of police officers at our door” - he said in the video, posted to his personal account, and added: “We are up against tyranny, but I will not be discouraged”.

The arrest occurs at a pivotal moment in Turkish politics. In recent years, the CHP has gained significant momentum, while President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) has faced various setbacks, such as the loss of political power in Istanbul - Türkyie’s largest and most important city. The AKP and its Islamically conservative predecessor had previously controlled the city for 25 years, but suffered an unexpected defeat to İmamoğlu in 2019, and again in 2024, when İmamoğlu emerged victorious once more.

The loss of Istanbul in 2019 was particularly bitter for Erdoğan himself, as he shares a deep personal connection to the city. It was here that he began his political career, serving as mayor from 1994 to 1998. At the time, he was a member of the Welfare Party (RP), an Islamically conservative party that would later go on to be banned in 1998 for violating the principle of separation between religion and state.

The formal charges against İmamoğlu include allegations of corruption and having links to the Kurdish militant political group, PKK, which is recognized as a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the USA, and the European Union. These charges come in the wake of the revocation of İmamoğlu’s university degree, due to alleged irregularities. The revocation, which occurred merely a day before the arrest, crucially prevents the mayor from running for president, as having a university degree is a requirement for occupying Türkiye’s highest office.

A further 100 arrest warrants were similarly issued for multiple of İmamoğlu’s advisors, a prominent journalist, businessmen and several other officials of the CHP, most of whom have been taken into custody.

The opposition has moved quickly to condemn the arrests as being politically motivated, arguing that they constitute a direct order of Erdoğan. They claim that they can be perceived as a response from Erdoğan against the perceived threat of İmamoğlu’s rising popularity, which some suggest could propel him to the presidency in 2028. While Erdoğan is constitutionally barred from running again in the 2028 elections, as per the Turkish constitution, he has repeatedly floated the possibility of constitutional changes this year, further adding to the concerns of the opposition.

Despite a four-day ban on demonstrations imposed by the local governor, the arrest has sparked mass protests across Istanbul. In major cities throughout Türkiye, people—led by young students—have taken to the streets to protest the country's ongoing democratic backsliding, which has led to the erosion of political rights and civil liberties, as highlighted by organizations like Freedom House. Many Turks are labeling the arrest a coup against their democracy, and also use the occasion to express their frustration over the state of the economy, growing corruption, and the frequent use of the judiciary to target political opposition. Since 2018, Türkiye has been classified as “not free” by democratic watchdog organisations, including Freedom House.

This isn't the first time that prominent opposition leaders have been arrested in Türkiye. In 2016, Selahattin Demirtaş, the former leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), was detained and later sentenced to over 40 years in prison, on charges of alleged ties to the Kurdish militant group PKK. More recently, Ümit Özdağ, the current leader of the Victory Party, was arrested in January of this year after publicly insulting Erdoğan, on charges of "publicly inciting hatred and hostility.”

A Rising Star

Since his mayoral victory in 2019, İmamoğlu has been regarded as a rising star in Turkish politics. His initial win, however, faced significant challenges. The 2019 electoral result was annulled by Türkiye’s electoral board, after the ruling AKP had appealed to the board, citing concerns about alleged voter fraud. İmamoğlu, nonetheless, went on to win re-election by an even greater margin. The mayor has remained in office for the past six years, and in 2024, he handed Erdoğan and his ruling party their most significant defeat in over two decades when he secured his re-election.

Turning to the national level, in the May 2023 presidential elections, the CHP came in second. The elections came a few months after a devastating earthquake hit eastern Türkiye. The sheer scale of the destruction exposed a deep-seated corruption in the country’s building sector and pointed to a failure in enforcing stricter building regulations, promised by the authorities, in the wake of the deadly 1999 İzmit earthquake. Some analysts suggest that a storm of disinformation was used to secure Erdoğan’s re-election. The election, which saw CHP Party Leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leading the "Table of Six" coalition, with İmamoğlu as one of his two vice-presidential candidates, became the closest in Turkish history, with the CHP losing by about 4%.

If İmamoğlu manages to run for president in 2028, he could become a serious contender to Erdoğan. He is one of the most popular politicians in Türkiye, and observers commend him on his relaxed and eloquent nature. They also cite his appeal to different social groups, where he calls for a more inclusive style of politics that does not discriminate or offend. If he were to win the presidency, it would mark the first time the CHP returned to power in 45 years.

Read our latest analysis on the status of women’s rights under Italian PM, Giorgia Meloni, by our Italy Correspondent, Sara Cincotti

The CHP - Atatürk’s Party

Mustafa Kemal, widely known as Atatürk, became the first president of Türkiye after the Turkish War of Independence, which followed in the wake of WWI. Atatürk subsequently held the presidency until his death in 1938. Atatürk played a pivotal role in transforming the country into a modern state by adopting and strictly enforcing Western civil and criminal laws, as well as commercial practices, intending to establish Türkiye as a Western nation in the eyes of the world.

Through a series of broad reforms, Atatürk modernized the country - albeit in the ‘Western’ sense of the word. These reforms included the introduction of state secularism modeled upon the French laïcité, which included a ban on religious attire in public institutions, the latinization of the Turkish alphabet, encouraging women to abandon traditional Islamic clothing, and the introduction of women's suffrage. Innovative as much as they were disruptive - and divisive - the reforms shared one goal: To reshape Turkish society.

To this day, the CHP continues to uphold Atatürk’s ideology, known as Kemalism.

Historically, the Turkish military regarded itself as the protector of Kemalism, the secular Turkish state, and the pro-Western ideals inherent in Kemalist ideology. On several occasions, it intervened to overthrow the government whenever it deemed that the administration was straying too far from Kemalist principles. The military was a dominant force in Turkish politics up until the failed coup of July 15, 2016, which aimed to overthrow President Erdoğan. The conspirators justified the coup by citing the erosion of secularism, the decline of democracy, and widespread corruption within the Turkish Republic.

It is important to note that this stewardship of Kemalist ideals has not always been bloodless. The Turkish military has a long history of using coups as a political tool, controversially acting as kingmaker by deposing several democratically elected governments throughout the 20th century. The bloody coup of 1980, in particular, has left a deep and lasting scar on the public’s memory.

The failure of the putchists in the 2016 coup led to significant changes in Türkiye's political landscape. The state transitioned to a new presidential system, concentrating vast political power in the hands of the president as various political, institutional, and constitutional checks were dismantled. The military has since been fully neutralized and is no longer regarded as wielding any significant influence in Turkish politics.

İmamoğlu, himself a Kemalist, advocates for a return to the founding ideals of the Turkish Republic established by Atatürk.

A Return To Kemalism?

İmamoğlu and Erdoğan represent the two main political divides in contemporary Turkish politics, embodying starkly contrasting visions for the country. If the CHP were to regain power, we could see a reversal of recent political changes by reducing the concentration of power in the president’s office and recommitting Türkiye to a more secular, ‘Western-style’ democracy, while one does wonder what that means these days. Some polls show that growing numbers of Turks are starting to favour the CHP over Erdoğan. Both parties are currently polling around 30%, with the CHP leading in some surveys.

On the other hand, Erdoğan has steered the country toward an increased Islamic revival, gradually eroding the secular foundations of the state since rising to power. Some of Atatürks more controversial laws, such as the ban on scarves for students, lawyers, and journalists, were revoked by Erdoğan, however, amid much criticism. Erdoğan defended his actions, insisting that he was protecting Muslims' right to freely express their religion. Religious schools and the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) have also come to play a greater role in the educational system, while religious content has been increasingly incorporated into regular academic high schools. Policy changes like these have greatly appealed to a large conservative population, which has felt marginalized by a more secular elite since the country’s founding in the 1920s.

Returning to the events of today, the arrest could be considered ‘the nuclear option’ from Erdoğan, signalling that he views the CHP in general, and İmamoğlu in specific, as a major threat to his rule, despite him looking untouchable a decade ago.

İmamoğlu was formally elected as the CHP’s presidential candidate this past Sunday, despite being in jail, as he was the only candidate on the ballot. The vote saw a huge turnout, as the CHP opened the polls to the public, beyond its members, with İmamoğlu receiving over 14 million 850 thousand votes, according to party chairman Özgür Özel, in a post on X. However, these data have not been corroborated by independent sources.

The party has since the arrest called for mass protests, and continues to do so, arguing that the recent developments constitute a coup against “President Ekrem” (their new nickname İmamoğlu). The CHP has urged opposition parties to boycott the country’s next presidential election if President Erdoğan decides to run for re-election.

Much focus will be on the release of new polls from Türkiye, to gauge the public's reaction to these new developments, and to assess whether the CHP can effectively capitalize on the drumming up of support, generated by İmamoğlu’s arrest.

The sheer extent and intensity of the protests could also serve as a marker outright, as the arrest has sparked some of the biggest protests in over a decade. Tuesday saw them continuing for the seventh night in a row, and they have spread to other major cities like Ankara and Izmir. Erdogan has since condemned both the CHP and the protests, calling them a “movement of violence”. Over a thousand protesters have already been arrested, and videos have surfaced of violent clashes between police and protesters, with officers using rubber bullets and tear gas while protesters have retaliated with fireworks. The scale of these protests may provide us with a glimpse into the future, and the potential fate of Erdoğan and the AKP in the next presidential elections, due to be held in 2028.

Laurits Bugge is a History graduate from the University of Copenhagen, fascinated by political history from the 20th century

Giorgia Meloni is the first Italian female prime minister, a feat in and of itself. She was chosen, in the September 2022 elections, to lead a predominantly right-wing government. Meloni’s party, Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) gained an impressive 26% of votes (around an 8% increase with respect to the pre-Covid 2018 elections). The right-wing coalition, she was nominated to spearhead, secured 44% of the votes, mirroring a general European trend: the rise of far-right and populist parties – such as in Hungary, Sweden and, as of this February, Germany, where Alternative für Deutschland reared its head as a force to be reckoned with in the recent election to the Bundestag.

On the surface, one would expect Meloni’s election to be a victory for Italian women – upon closer scrutiny, her policies tell a different story. Right-wing populism is not exactly known for advocating women’s rights. Thus, the question becomes: Is Meloni's government truly advancing women’s rights as it claims, or is it using a feminist façade while simultaneously eroding them? Is it enough to wear heels to turn populism into feminism? Since her election, the Italian Prime Minister has been famous for wanting to be called Il Presidente (President in its Italian masculine annotation), rather than La Presidente – explicitly associating the masculine gender with power. This, somewhat oddly, is in stark contrast with her repeated remarks highlighting her identity as a woman and as a mother. In the two years she’s been in power, Meloni has acted ambiguously in the areas regarding women and their rights in Italy. Such areas include the issues of abortion, gender equality, female employment, and domestic violence.

Abortion in Italy: Law, Access, and Recent Developments

In Italy, voluntary abortion is regulated by Law 194 of May 22, 1978, which recognizes both the right to life of the embryo and fetus, as well as the woman's right to physical and mental health when pregnancy, childbirth, or motherhood poses a risk. As for the conditions laid down for legal abortion, within the first 90 days of pregnancy, a woman may undergo an abortion based on her autonomous decision if she believes that continuing the pregnancy could endanger her physical or mental health. After the 90-day threshold, abortion is permitted only under medical certification, either in cases where the pregnancy poses a serious risk to the woman’s life, or health, or when there are severe fetal abnormalities or maternal illnesses that threaten the woman's well-being. Beyond 22 weeks, if a late diagnosis of a severe fetal condition occurs when the fetus is already viable outside the womb, abortion is no longer permitted under Italian law, forcing women to travel abroad for the procedure. Regardless of the stage of pregnancy, a woman seeking an abortion must first consult a doctor. The doctor then issues a necessary certification. If the case is not considered urgent, the woman must undergo a mandatory seven-day waiting period before proceeding with her desired abortion.

Although Law 194 is designed to guarantee free access to both surgical and medical abortions, in practice, access to abortion remains severely restricted in Italy and is not officially considered a right (Law 194 does not affirm abortion as a right but rather regulates cases in which abortion is not considered a crime), as showcased by the annual report on the implementation of Law 194 published in 2024 (data from 2022) by the Ministry of Health. One of the principal barriers facing Law 194 is the high rate of conscientious objection among healthcare professionals (i.e., the rejection of performing a specific action insofar as it clashes with personal beliefs or convictions, oftentimes religious). Nationally speaking, the average rate of conscientious objection among gynaecologists is 63%, reaching a staggering 91% in the region of Molise and hovering around 80% in other Italian regions. The lowest rate in the country is in the Valle D’Aosta region, with 25% of gynaecologists objecting. Other healthcare professionals, including general practitioners and pharmacists, also contribute to de facto abortion restrictions by refusing to prescribe medical abortion pills or provide essential services. Despite these issues, registered voluntary pregnancy interruptions in 2022 numbered 65.661, a 3.2% increase compared to 2021.

Despite claiming that she does not intend to abolish or modify Law 194, Prime Minister Meloni has defended conscientious objection and underplayed problems associated with abortion access in Italy, equating the freedom of doctors to refuse to conduct an abortion, to the freedom of women to abort. On April 23, 2024, the Italian Senate approved a controversial NRRP (The National Recovery and Resilience Plan) implementation decree. The amendment, proposed by Fratelli d’Italia deputy Lorenzo Malagola, grants regional governments the authority to allow anti-abortion associations into family planning clinics (consultori). This decision undermines the role of the consultori, which are meant to provide neutral, supportive care for women considering abortion. Furthermore, Minister for Family, Natality and Equal Opportunities (a Ministry previously named the Ministry for “Equal opportunities and Family”), Eugenia Maria Roccella, has made misleading statements about abortion rights, falsely claiming that “feminists have never considered abortion a right” and that "there is no right to abortion."

Fratelli d’Italia’s political program prioritizes increasing birth rates and support for families while advocating for the 'full implementation' of Law 194’s prevention measures. However, their approach seems to reinforce existing structural barriers to abortion rather than addressing them – further evidenced by proposed restrictive measures such as granting full legal rights from conception, mandatory fetal heartbeat exposure, and the inclusion of pro-life organizations in public family planning centres. Sexual education remains optional in Italian schools, despite being one of the most effective ways to prevent unwanted pregnancies and reduce the need for abortion.

In 2024, a significant development occurred. A nationwide petition promoted by pro-life associations sought to introduce mandatory ultrasound and fetal heartbeat listening as part of pre-abortion consultations. If passed, doctors would be required to show women an ultrasound of the fetus before they can proceed with an abortion, and force women to listen to the fetal heartbeat, regardless of their consent. Opponents of this measure argued that this would entail severe ethical and psychological concerns for the woman, increasing emotional distress for individuals who are already experiencing a difficult decision which is often associated with guilt and psychological distress. No comment by Prime Minister Meloni was disclosed on the matter.

Thus, even if Meloni truly will not repeal Law 194, the real challenge to abortion in Italy is not strictly legal, but rather practical. Restricting or hampering abortion in Italy does not require legal changes. In fact, to guarantee a functioning right to abortion, it would be necessary to amend the law. Access to abortion is already severely limited due to conscientious objection, what could be deemed an institutional hostility towards abortion rights and attempts to introduce coercive pre-abortion measures. As long as these barriers persist, abortion in Italy remains a restricted and stigmatized procedure, available in law but increasingly inaccessible in practice, with some women (those who can afford it) being forced to travel outside their region to access reproductive care.

Female Employment, Pay Gap, and Natality Trends in Italy

Giorgia Meloni has, in several public speeches, credited her government with the growth of female employment and a decrease in female unemployment. There is some truth to such statements – but not the whole truth. Female employment in Italy has shown a steady increase in recent years, though significant gender gaps and regional disparities persist. According to ISTAT data, by the third quarter of 2024, the increase in female employment reached 1.4% compared to the previous year, accompanied by a decline in the female unemployment rate.

Looking at the long-term trend, the overall female employment rate in Italy is now 6.4% higher than it was in 2008. Notably, much of this employment growth has been concentrated in the last four years, but seemingly starting before Meloni was elected. At the same time, female unemployment has been steadily declining since 2021. In December 2021, the female unemployment rate was 9.8%, dropping to 9.2% in 2022, then to 8.2% in 2023, and further down to 6.8% in 2024. This indicates that while Prime Minister Meloni is correct in stating that female unemployment is decreasing, this trend does predate her election and possibly reflects broader labour market dynamics rather than a direct outcome of her policies. For instance, the male unemployment rate has been consistently declining since 2013.

However, some worrying data was not reported by President Meloni. For instance, Eurostat points out severe regional disparities (among the most intense in Europe) in Italy regarding employment. Employment levels among women vary significantly across different regions of the country. In 2024, female employment rates were highest in the North (62.4%), followed by the Center (60.8%). In stark contrast, in the South, only 36.9% of women aged 15-64 were employed, highlighting a persistent North-South divide in labour market participation.

Furthermore, Italy has some of the highest gender employment gaps in the European Union. In 2023, the gender employment gap in Italy was at 19.5%, among the widest in the EU, alongside Greece (19.8%) and Romania (19.1%). The highest regional disparities in employment rates were also recorded in Italy, with Campania and Puglia both reporting a 29.5% gender employment gap – the highest in the EU. Despite some progress, Italy remains one of the worst-performing EU countries in female employment. As of 2022, Italy lagged 14% behind the EU average, with 55% of women aged 20-64 employed, compared to 69.3% of men.

The gender gap intensifies when considering maternity and employment rates. One in five women has to exit the labour market after giving birth in Italy. In 2023, the employment rate of mothers decreased significantly compared to fathers: for mothers with one child there was a 63% employment rate and for mothers with two children a significantly lower 56.1%, compared to respectively 90.4% and 90.8% for fathers. This suggests that family responsibilities in Italy disproportionately affect women's work choices, forcing many to reduce their working hours or leave the workforce. In addition, Italy's overall wage gap stands at 43%, compared to the EU average of 36.2%. The data tell a different story than Meloni’s narrative.

The Meloni government has introduced several policies aimed at supporting women and families, but these measures have resulted as narrow and insufficient in addressing the structural issues affecting female employment in Italy. One of the most notable initiatives is the "Mothers' Bonus", which provides financial support to mothers. However, the bonus is only available to mothers with at least two children and who hold permanent contracts, thereby excluding a large number of working women, especially those in precarious or temporary jobs. Receiving the bonus might increase recipients’ income enough to disqualify them from other government benefits, proving potentially counterproductive.

Another key area of concern is childcare and family support policies. The government has increased subsidies for nursery school costs but, at the same time, it has decided to cut EU funds that were earmarked for expanding childcare services. As a result, the number of available nursery spots has been reduced, forcing many families to incur extra costs for childcare. This lack of accessible childcare remains a major obstacle to women's participation in the workforce. Additionally, the government has implemented a VAT increase on essential infant products, such as diapers and baby formula, reversing previous reductions. This has further increased financial pressure on families, particularly on low-income mothers. For a government that supposedly advocates for children’s lives and traditional families, such proposed measures do not enhance women’s situations, and oftentimes aggravate it.

Gender-Based Violence

Femicide is the act of murdering a woman simply because she is a woman. Although violence against women as a whole (physical, emotional, economic abuse) is an extremely salient issue in Italy, this article will only briefly tackle the latest data on femicides in Italy and the newest proposed legislation of the Meloni government regarding this worrying situation (accompanied by equally worrying data and numbers). According to the latest ISTAT data, 117 women were murdered in 2023 (-7,1% compared to the previous year). Estimates also suggest that femicides account for approximately 82% of all women killed (96 out of 117). In cases where the perpetrator was found, 88.9% of women are victims of a male killer.

Most femicides are at the hands of either partners or family members. The context in which the murders of women take place is predominantly related to the family or affective killings (about 81%). “Passionate motives" for murders, regardless of sex in Italy, affect about 12% of victims killed; in the case of female victims, this percentage goes up to 27.4% and 60% for female victims aged 35-44. In 51% of all cases, Italian women are killed by their current or previous partners (out of 63 women killed by a partner or ex-partner, 61 are men). In 2023 the rate of women killed by a former partner was equal to 0.21 per 100,000 women – for men, the same rate was 0.02 per 100,000 men. Women who were killed by other family members (31) were killed by men in 83.8% of cases. 94.3% of Italian women are victims of other Italians.

On the 7^th of March 2025, the government approved a new draft law incorporating the crime of femicide as autonomous in Italian law. It prescribes life imprisonment for any perpetrator of this type of crime and introduces aggravating factors and increases in penalties for the offences of personal abuse, stalking, sexual assault and revenge porn, according to a declaration by President Meloni on that day.

This development has arguably been a result of national pressure after the murder of Giulia Cecchettin (22 years old) by her ex-boyfriend in late 2023. Italians flooded the streets to demand justice after yet another victim of gender-based violence and murder. The draft law is certainly a big step forward for Italy. However, the opposition and public opinion are already protesting the dead-ends of this measure. The problem remains the same: the focus is entirely on punishment rather than prevention, it is an a posteriori measure instead of an a priori provision. Emotional, sexual and affective education for youth, increased funding for anti-violence centres, and structural measures to ensure women’s economic independence - key to reducing the gender gap – these are the fundamental, basic steps towards resolving a deeply-rooted issue. However, Minister Roccella herself recently declared that sexual education in schools does not prevent femicides (despite this being confirmed by international organizations such as the UN and WHO). There is another challenge – this anti-femicide law, with stronger punishment for perpetrators, risks being deemed unconstitutional by the National Constitutional Court, because of its possible clash with Article 3 of the Italian Constitution ( that all should be equal in the eyes of the law).

Feminism Behind the Façade or Merely Populism in High Heels?

Overall, Italy's current trajectory illustrates a broader discrepancy between a superficially feminist rhetoric and policies that, in practice, restrict women’s rights and reinforce traditional gender roles, or at least do not actively attempt to enhance women’s positions and rights in Italian society. Italy's abortion debate reflects a broader struggle between women’s reproductive rights and conservative policies aimed at boosting birth rates. While abortion remains legal under Law 194, the increasing institutional and procedural barriers – from high conscientious objection rates to the infiltration of anti-abortion groups in the consultori – suggest that access will continue to shrink unless structural changes are made.

It is also clear that to achieve sustainable progress in female employment, gender disparities, and natality, Italy requires deep structural interventions rather than temporary financial fixes. Many Italian women are trapped in unstable, low-income jobs or forced into part-time work due to family responsibilities, reinforcing long-term financial insecurity. Without comprehensive reforms addressing these systemic challenges – from ensuring genuine reproductive rights to enhancing support for women's economic independence and preventing structural violence – the feminist façade, or populism in high heels if you wish, will continue to obscure the systemic inequalities that hamper substantial progress.

Sara Cincotti is TLR’s Italian Correspondent, and a Master’s student at the University of Bologna, pursuing a degree in International Affairs. She has a keen interest in human rights, political science and world politics.

This is an op-ed. All opinions expressed are the author’s own.

In 1947, President Truman set out what would later become known as the ‘Truman Doctrine’. He argued that “The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms. If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world. And we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation”.

Seventy years later, President Trump insisted that “We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength”. In the past six weeks, President Trump and Vice-President J.D. Vance doubled down on this hard-edged, inward-understanding view of American power — selling out allies and bringing smirks to their foes.

On the surface, this looks like the weak, woolly idealism of Truman and the postwar order versus the realist recognition of international anarchy and national self-interest under Trump. Or as Sir Alex Younger, former head of MI6, puts it, we have swung back from the multilateral world of Helsinki to the strongman world of Yalta - the 1945 conference where Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill decided the fate of the war-stricken West.

But the Trump-Vance presumption that realism and idealism — the former, foreign policy based on self-interest, the latter on values — are mutually exclusive is mistaken. For idealism is the linchpin, or at least the window shop, of American hard power.

The Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944 marked the beginning of a liberal international order underpinned by the belief that economic interdependence would reduce the incentive for conflict and imperialistic expansion.

Yet the ideological view that trade between democratic allies increased the likelihood of peace (or ‘democratic peace theory’) also served a pragmatic purpose. After the Second World War, driven by the economics but also the ideal of globalisation, power diffused into a more informal, economic, viscous state. The dollar became the reserve currency and oil prices were pegged to it in the 1970s (known as the petrodollar system). This allowed the United States to deter enemies — as in the case of the Iran nuclear programme — purely through economic measures.

Read our latest interview with Serbian party leader Aleksandar Cvetković about the ongoing protests in Serbia:

In the decades after the Cold War, US dominance was consolidated further. Creeping American private sector dominance over global supply chains provided the state with the power to squeeze choke points across an increasingly interconnected world - from bank transfers to subsea cables and (today) cloud servers and NVIDIA chips.

Take the example of the international payment system, SWIFT, which dominates financial transactions. At its peak, 90% of global international payments went through SWIFT. Originally driven by the US private sector’s demand for market efficiency in the 1970s, SWIFT came to be viewed as a tool of economic warfare that could be used by the state. In 2012, SWIFT was used to isolate Iranian banks and enforce sanctions against the Iranian nuclear program. A decade earlier, SWIFT had been used to track illicit financial activity by terrorists post-9/11. And, of course, in 2022 SWIFT was leveraged to lock out Russian banks after the re-invasion of Ukraine.

Therefore, by driving free trade, buttressed by the international rules-based order, the United States locked its allies and adversaries alike into a system of interdependence, which has until now allowed it to “balance power without weapons”. The idealistic argument for a “world safe for democracy” thus played an indispensable role in securing modern American hard power.

In other words, the liberal international order was 'dual use': both a commercial driver of profit and a toolbox of influence.

Trump and Vance appear to no longer believe that values are of importance in American foreign policy. Pundits have highlighted the administration’s swing to realism — rejecting ‘woke’ foreign policy that fails to prioritise America’s interests. This view has resulted in everything from pulling $43bn in USAID programs to putting tariffs on long-time allies.

But this fallacy of ‘realism' is not simply morally shallow; it represents a fundamental misunderstanding of American power.

As Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, authors of Underground Empire, foresaw in 2019, American allies have been willing to accept its dominance over digital and financial networks because of their hitherto “shared democratic values and…economic interests”. But this acquiescence can only exist as long as America’s allies benefit more than they suffer from America’s “network hegemony”. By selling out Ukraine and weaponising its economic network, Trump will undermine American power in the long run.

The problem with economic chokepoints is that by overusing them, you compel other states (allies and foes alike) to 'de-risk'. Putting up tariffs on Canada or building up moats around critical technology diffusion abroad will only encourage others to fill in supply chain gaps and build their own network empires. China is already doing this with the digital technology stack in Southeast Asia, for example, by building out its own cloud servers (the essential data infrastructure underlying modern digital economies).

Ironically, it was Putin himself back in 2014 who made a point that is now a truism for Europe that America is “cutting the branch they are sitting on”.

Guy Ward Jackson is a Science & Tech Policy Analyst and holds an MA in intelligence & international security from King's College London: Check out his Linkedin here.

Check out other op-eds written by Guy Ward Jackson below:

Since November 2024, Serbia has been engulfed by significant anti-corruption protests, primarily led by university students. The movement began after a tragic incident in Novi Sad, where the collapse of a railway station canopy resulted in 15 deaths. This event ignited widespread public outrage over alleged government corruption and negligence. A symbol of the disaster, a bloody red handprint has become the unofficial banner of the protests. Various high-ranking resignations have followed since November. Protesters are, however, still on the streets and the movement’s fervor does not seem to have dampened the slightest.

TLR has spoken with Serbian Party Leader, Aleksandar Cvetković to learn more about the protests: Their origins, the internal fallout they have caused, and their potentially geopolitical implications. Cvetković is the leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO): A centre-right political party in Serbia. SPO was the main party in opposition to Slobodan Milosevic’s regime in the 90s and has traditionally championed a pro-European path for Serbia.

If you were to describe the origins of the current protests ongoing in Serbia what would they be?

The origin of the protests is a people dissatisfied. In Serbia, all of our successive governments or regimes have lasted for only about 10 years. Milosevic’s regime lasted from 1990 to 2000. The successive Democratic Party governments lasted together from 2001 until 2012. Afterwards, Serbian Progressive Party rule started in 2012 and now it's 2025. It’s a bit over time. You could say they are overdue for a change. You can feel that many people are dissatisfied for many, many reasons. Often completely diverging ones. We have people who are dissatisfied because the Kosovo question hasn’t been resolved yet diplomatically. Marching alongside them are people who are dissatisfied with any further acknowledgement of Kosovo’s autonomy. Completely different opinions. Amongst them are also pro- EU citizens and pro Russian protestors. What they share is that they are against the regime - against the government.

You speak of a general outrage. Was there a specific event that sparked the protests?

The specific trigger for the start of the protests was a major catastrophe at the train station in Novi Sad. Its concrete roof collapsed which caused the death of 15 people. The catastrophe in itself, but also the lack of justice following it, gave you a sense of corruption, a sense of irresponsibility. All of these things have been present over the years, but now you see this terrible thing happen.

Somebody is responsible but no one has answered for it. Where there should have been swift institutional legal justice, there was none. The response should have been stronger. It’s not just a political issue. It’s really about the basic workings of the Serbian state. Is a state like that sufficiently ready to maintain European legal institutions? To ensure the rule of law? Does it keep responsible individuals accountable? That is the main topic of these protests. And it is this ineptitude that this new generation - your generation - simply does not accept. That was a key trigger for the ongoing protests.

So we have a beginning: a train station roof collapsing due to possibly some contractor cutting corners. This is then fused with a general frustration among especially younger Serbs who are dissatisfied with the country’s institutions. Is that correct?

Correct. Because the response made by all levels of government was inadequate and not as quick as it should have been. It wasn’t focused on the problems at hand. It’s now been three months. Nonetheless, we still haven’t seen any ‘real’ responsibility being taken. The government keeps acting like everything is okay. True, after all these months of protests, in the last days we have seen some officials resign, but unfortunately, it hasn’t been enough and it is really for many reasons too late…

As you mention, several high-ranking officials such as Prime Minister Miloš Vučević have resigned. Could you specify what the government’s response has been and if we are likely to see more significant resignations in the future?

I don't see much space for further resignations. After the resignation of the Prime Minister, there is only one more significant resignation that could happen: the resignation of the President of Serbia. But talking to student protesters, it doesn’t seem to be their main goal. The ones that I have spoken to, tell me that they don’t see the catastrophe as being his responsibility and that they don’t direct their demands towards the institution of the Head of State. So I'm not sure we would see something like that happen. But no one can really tell what time will bring to us.

On November 8th - just a few days after the November 1st Tragedy at the train station - I wrote an article for the magazine Politika. In that article, I wrote that Serbia needs more responsible and decent people. Because in that week and subsequent time, we didn't have any satisfactory response from the government. They tried to minimize the whole thing to say: “okay, it happened, but we are not responsible”.

Time will tell who is really responsible. But unfortunately, Pandora's box has now opened. And after it’s opened, you cannot go and just say: “Okay, shut it down”. You cannot shut it down.

I can see that the protests have spread to many regions and municipalities. Only 4 of Serbia’s 280 municipalities have not seen any protests. Interestingly, President Vučić has also commented on the protesters, calling them an internal enemy, supported by outside actors aiming to destabilize and dismember Serbia. What do you make of this?

Yes, unfortunately, that has been one of his responses. For me, that shouldn’t be happening. Because when you speak about an ‘inside enemy’ or ‘outside enemy’ that also doesn’t shine particularly well on you. By doing so, you acknowledge that your country is not strong enough or that you don’t have the ruling method to stop that - that you are actually weak. If somebody is an enemy of the state, you should have legal institutions to deal with that, making it less of a political issue.

What does he intend to gain then by using this rhetoric?

Well … that has always been the rhetoric here in Serbia. We are used to that from our communist past. Both the inside and the outside enemy part. In the age of Yugoslavia, everybody in the West was our outside enemies. Inside there were also enemies. And besides, after a point, the outside enemy was also to the east. As such, during Yugoslavia, there were all kinds of enemies. But actually, it was just to keep the one-party state, the communist party, in power.

After Tito died, that same communist regime collapsed. But unfortunately, we saw a similar thing happening. That many people adored and worshipped one man - whoever he was. Setting aside their critical thinking, not knowing what policy was actually being conducted. This cult of personality was, and still is, a huge problem. Because then you have one man, and everybody who is against that one man is the enemy. That is not good in political terms and it’s not healthy for a democracy. It's something that divides people. It divides society. When you have a divided society - pro and contra - you can divide and conquer. You can rule, but it's not for a good cause and it’s inherently unstable: It could well end today, tomorrow, next year, or the year after that.

Society needs to be stronger, knit together and to understand what's the main issues at stake. It's like with a small kid. You can’t always intimidate it. You can’t always speak in a hard tone to it: “that everything is bad, that everybody is against us”. You cannot do that for a long period of time. The kid grows.

How have the protests impacted Serbian society?

Last night, I read an article where the Rector of Belgrade University, Vladan Đokić, wrote about the protests. There is one sentence in particular I will read to you:

“Death, injustice, and violence woke up the empathy, solidarity, and love for justice in young people in whose future we had doubted”.

This sentence is at the core of what is going on. You now have students, young people, who are showing to all of us, that they are awake. That they care for Serbia. That they don’t just want to go out in Europe - they are in Europe. They are here – but in Europe. When we last met in October in Geneva there was nothing going on in Serbia - then everything changed. I told you how young people are the key to the future and that young people possess the energy to change society. Look what happened: a few days later I came back to Serbia and saw that exact thing materialize.

So if I understand you correctly, these students, as you see them, are a politically aware, but also a fractured group in terms of political views and priorities. With regards to the EU, however, are the protesters more pro-Europe? And could the protests lead to the Serbian government seeking closer ties to the EU?

Actually they are not. At least not openly. But I am quite certain that if they manage to express their demands and if those demands end up being realized, they could end up pushing Serbia in a pro-European way. Maybe some of them don’t want to be a part of the EU, but with time they could become more pro-EU, as what they do is essentially pro-European. In essence, it’s quite paradoxical. But it is an important thing to keep in mind that it's not a homogenous structure of students. Nonetheless, they share an idea: that they need their country back and that legal institutions need to work for everybody, not just for the few.

Back from who?

You see, you have to understand something. Nowadays, it's this government. But before that, it was very, very similar with the other parties. So it's something that these young people are used to. That it's not good, it's not equal, it's not justice, there is no justice. What has changed is that they are politically idealist now, and that is really, really great.

Because we need, all of us need a more idealistic approach. Because during these years, all of us are becoming more and more distant from our ideals. And for politics, you have to have ideals.

In just a couple of sentences. Where do you see these protests going?

Yeah, that's a question of million dollars. That's something nobody can tell you right now. If the protests and public opinion go towards the opposition, they go towards asking President Vucic to resign as the main beacon of this government. But if you ask many people who are attending the protests or people who are dissatisfied but are not involved in protests, we need to start a dialogue with the government to improve on issues such as living costs and better conditions for elections. I'm not sure. What I know is that we can’t have a revolution. For a revolution, you need something more. In reality, it’s tragic if you need a revolution. It's not good for any system or any country to have. If you aim at peacefully resolving this, then you have to start working together with the government. You have to work together with the opposition. To see the light at the end of the tunnel and move forward. Opposition parties here tend to just put obstacles in the way of the government, blocking policy.

For me, this is actually a good political moment because these students go across Serbia and they show people that there is liberty; that there is freedom; that you can speak different than the regime. That you can even speak different than the opposition parties. You are free to speak. And that is something that this society needed.

So you’re optimistic about them?

I'm partly optimistic. I'm partly optimistic because I think that this is something that our society needed to be liberated from...

From what?

The swamp. To be liberated from a swamp where everything is stable, stagnated, a status quo. There are more people now who feel they are a part of something and that is good.

So would it be right to say that it has caused a new mobilization in Serbian politics? A political awakening of sorts.

You’re totally right. You have to awaken people to start thinking about politics. Because during past years, they didn't think about anything related to politics, because the only two options were: you are either for the government or you are against it. It's not good. You have to be for programs, for ideas, for projects. So we have something very good going on in Serbia. Notwithstanding that, we have also made great progress in recent years with initiatives such as the Open Balkan Project and we are also preparing for Expo 2027.

That's leads me to my next question. The SNS government has championed these initiatives in recent years. Also including the Kosovo-Serbia normalization agreement of 2020. Are these protests in any way endangering these initiatives? Suppose they for instance turn violent.

If they turn violent, that is something that is not good for Serbia, of course. It also isn’t good for the region as a whole, as we need space for improving ourselves. We need space and peace for more economic development. We don’t have time to fight again as we fought in the former Yugoslavia. We need peace, we need stability.

But of course, you have to understand that also the protests themselves are endangering some kind of project at home because economic stability suffers, when people aren’t going to school for three months, when they are not going to their faculty, when the streets of Serbia are blocked, shops are closed and there is general strike.

Everybody is in some kind of chaos, a little bit chaos, chaotic. In that atmosphere, all good things are also in danger. But, you know, as I spoke about earlier, you need political issues and you need to resolve political issues. That is something that a good government does.

So they are shaking up economic stability in Serbia?

You see, this is the issue. Our government is now preoccupied with these protests. Our government has resigned. We need to see if there are new elections or new government. So that is how these projects could be endangered. Because you have that kind of instability. It's not tragic. Of course, it's not tragic. But it is something that you cannot do some good things because you have to do some other good things.

Are early elections on the table?

Well, perhaps there will be elections. We still don’t know. Because the SNS are waiting for when its convenient for them, I think. But it could either be new elections or a new government. Because they have enough MPs to elect a new government. But who knows, maybe new elections are upon us. My party, the Serbian Renewal Movement is proposing totally new laws for the elections, organizing elections with different number of electoral constituencies, with everything new.

Over the last decade in Serbia, we have seen a great deal of democratic backsliding: crack-downs on the free press, election irregularities, state funds being used to finance SNS campaigns. When protests broke out in 2023 against this, the Serbian government complained that Europe was trying to orchestrate a Maidan revolution in Serbia. The Russian ambassador supported this rhetoric. Serbia seems to be caught between two blocs. And in a tumultous new world order where countries are increasingly forced to pick a side, where do you see Serbia's future geopolitically?

That is a really complex issue and a complex question. I think that we need to stop pretending, as Serbs, to be part of the East to the West and part of the West to the East. Serbia has to be where it is. It’s in Europe. And Europe in my eyes is united, despite Mr. Trump’s influence and differences now in the transatlantic coalition.

I think that what we really need to see is that we are part of Europe. So we have to stay on the European path. And what does that mean? It means that we need to be more open to all of Europe’s institutions. You know, for example, the European Parliament is the parliament of our continent. We have to understand that there are eurosceptics, even inside the EU, but they are still ‘inside’. If someone in Serbia wants to be eurosceptic, they also have to understand that the future of Serbia is in the EU. You can be more pro-European. You can also be more nationally focused European. But all of us are Europeans.

I don’t follow. Why does Serbia’s future have to be in Europe? How come you can’t go at it alone?

Because I don't see any other alternative. There is a willingness of many people in Serbia to be an ally of Russia. Not just Putin’s Russia but Russia in general. That is a sentiment that goes back centuries, not only these last decades. However, we’re on the European continent. You know, I have this saying when I’m asked if I’m pro-NATO. I just say: “Look at the map”. If you look at the map of Europe, you will see that around Serbia, all countries are in NATO. So our national interest is to be friendly with all of our neighbors because if we are not friendly then we have a problem.

The same can be said about the EU. It serves as a vessel to solve problems. Even when states have disagreements, the EU can manage those problems with diplomacy. It can manage them with politics or by spreading European values and cohesion. Unfortunately, Serbia has lost 30 years of European past and present, because we used to work against it. That is something that I think that in the near future we need to do - to reconnect with Europe.

Why has Serbia been working against EU accession in your opinion? Is it because of the vested interests of an elite? Is is due to Russian influence?

It’s a mixture. A mixture of everything. It's partly due to our legacy as a post-communist country. Because during the communist period we were something different than Bulgaria, Romania, or the rest of the Eastern bloc. Coupled with the fact that we were taught, as other communists, that the West was evil, that capitalism was evil. We were different, but not so different. So that communist past is still inside of many of our generations.

Another thing of note is the influence of the Secret Service from the communist times. We’re actually the only country that hasn’t opened up its Secret Service dossiers of the communist period to the people. We don't know which of our leaders did what during thethat time. We don't know who in our intellectual elite was actually associates of the communist regime, or agents of the Secret Service. So that adds to the mixture.

And of course, there is the influence of these Russian interests, because they have an interest in maintaining their presence in the Balkans. China also has influence in Serbia and its own economic interests that are very different from those of the EU.

So there are many, many influences. A mixture of everything. And unfortunately our democratic institutions are also very young. Although we have had a democracy for 35 years now, it has been plagued by a series of problems. Milosevic’s wars, UN sanctions, and the assassination of Zoran Djindjic, Prime Minister of Serbia, coupled with the geopolitical interests I just mentioned.

We are a very fragile and young democracy. So we need support from Europe and we need support from our allies.

Do you find it probable that in a potential new European reality where the US is less involved in European affairs, Serbia would be more willing to accept integration with a Europe that is decoupled from the US?

Trump will somehow leave Europe. At least to some degree. But I still think that you get to Brussels faster by Washington than by Moscow. Still. Mr. Trump will certainly try to make his own agenda. He will do so with China, with Russia. He will try to do his best. But we in Serbia need to be allies with the United States, regardless of who is in the White House. And we in Serbia also need to be allies with our continent and our house. Our house is Europe. If you have a fire in your house, you don’t just go outside. You will try to put the fire out. And afterwards, if you don't manage to do it, you will ask your neighbour for help. So we need to work together in the region, we need to work together in Europe. This is our house.

So if we were to sum up our conversation here, it is that Serbia is a young democracy; it's been plagued by turmoil, which has caused political apathy within the young population who has finally had a political awakening because of an abrupt event that caused a massive shock around the country. Is that more or less correct?

Yep, that's it. You managed to say everything in just one sentence.

It is no secret that technology, as well as social media, is ever-developing and is becoming increasingly influential on the media landscape, as well as our politics. Within this, its owners, big-tech tycoons such as Elon Musk continue to encroach on the world of politics, both in the US and abroad. The need for a better understanding of how to navigate this “post-truth” society, or indeed crisis, has never been greater. For the vast majority of the population - not just younger age groups - the predominant news source is digital, where there is less official regulation, authentication and governance. Notwithstanding the rise of alternative information sources such as influencers and AI, as well as the complexities of fake news, whose impact on political developments we are just starting to see.

While this is an issue the West at large is grappling with, it is particularly acute in Europe: trust in politics and institutions is increasingly being questioned, and outside forces are attempting to further complicate the landscape. Modern media platforms are becoming the de facto source of information, and this can cause wider societal issues. As seen in the riots in the UK last summer, where disinformation was spread on social media and utilised to further incite violence. Following on from this, given Elon Musk’s recent foray into British politics, and his connections to the Reform UK party, could this be a potential bridge to more of his influence on the continent? It is not out of the question to assume that the European Union and Europe at large could be the next subject of Musk’s attention. Whether this proves to be the case or not, this could serve as an incentive for Europe to take action within and around the media landscape; especially given the EU’s claim to be leaders of free speech and the free press.

Education in media literacy is touted by some as the key to solving Europe’s predicament. Media literacy education broadly consists of improving digital literacy, critical thinking skills, and education in journalistic bias; the EU in particular already has policies addressing these, but is this enough to deal with the issues it may face?

Europe In The Vanguard

As a ground zero, Europe is taking important steps and achieving progress in developing media literacy education. For example, the European Commission’s Revision of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) encourages and monitors Member States’ management of tech and media-related issues more generally, including online protection and safety for children. Indeed, the Commission already has media literacy policies, strategies and international research groups, and their commitment to media literacy education for all ages is commendable.

Furthermore, a 2024 comparison of eight European countries (France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Romania, Spain and the UK) showed that thus far media literacy progress is focused on practical skills concerned with digital literacy and online safety. Here, in line with EU and national guidelines/regulations, media literacy is interpreted as a ‘line of defence’ against online threats. Considerable progress has been made in these ‘practical’ skills, teaching how to traverse the (online) media landscape. However, a quick search reveals that, for the British strategy at least, there has not been an update since the Johnson era of the Conservative government. That’s not to say the current Labour government is not working on it, but an update is certainly due before the first anniversary of the 2024 election.

Comparably, however, Europe is a leader in media literacy education on a global level. Within Asia, for example, there is a complete lack of consensus on what baseline media literacy education should comprise, not helped by vastly different free speech and press laws across the region/continent. Similarly, a 2024 survey of America highlighted how there is a huge state-to-state discrepancy, as well as resource shortages even in states with media literacy education policies. Whether this is surprising or not is up for debate, given how education policy varies so greatly from state to state generally; and taking into account the current climate in the US surrounding social media, fake news and politics. Interestingly, Australia's ABC news network has its own webpage dedicated to citizen engagement with journalism, with a section focused specifically on media literacy, including AI in journalism and classroom education on the issue. The BBC has a similar page, which is still admirable, but is of course unconnected to the wider European directives on media literacy education, given the BBC’s impartiality requirements.

Establishing the Media Literacy Curriculum of Tomorrow

Media literacy as a school subject in its own right might not be so far off as some may think: organisations such as Carnegie and non-profits on both sides of the Atlantic are calling for exactly that. Some of the practical skills that media literacy education should undoubtedly include are fact-checking and AI. Understanding the importance of fact-checking, knowing which platforms utilise it (as well as whether they are machine or human fact-checkers), and how to access this information, is imperative - especially given the ever-changing policies of social media companies on this issue. For AI, it is understanding how and when it is used, who uses it, and the consequences of its use - as many are unaware of its effects on, for instance, the climate.

However, an ideal media literacy education curriculum for Europe, and for that matter also the world, must encompass several other facets. The need for young people to be competent in ‘information skills’, such as critical and evaluative thinking, is of course integral; but this must go hand-in-hand with more functional skills. The expectation that the practical skills alone are efficient is misplaced.

Being clear on the different strands of media literacy education, and the value of each is an integral foundation. This allows for appropriate resources, and better teaching and understanding. These include critical media literacy (critical examination of systems, ideologies etc), digital literacy (the use of digital tools and their broader impact), information literacy (analysis and evaluation of the use of information) and news literacy (journalistic ethics, practices and standards). Understanding how these intersect and overlap, and how this should inform the teaching of media literacy is pivotal. Free media literacy programs for teachers are already being launched in the UK in order to “train the trainer”.

Ideally, media literacy education in Europe should also be preparing the next generation for increasingly AI-centred employment. Technological competence has been integral to the job market for some time now, and for better or worse AI is only going to become a more integral part of this. Whether a job is incorporating AI, regulating it, or anywhere in between, analytical and critical skills relating to provenance and bias will help European job seekers stand out in the competitive market. This in turn could help to boost the Eurozone and domestic economies for the long term, future-proofing at a time when the continent desperately needs it.

There are of course challenges to media literacy education: one is the potential for an uneven spread of media literacy education. Where thus far the vast majority of media literacy education has been concentrated in schools, this has led to a lack of it outside of schools, most notably for vulnerable children and adults - for whom the lack of such an education could be most impactful. Both contexts of media literacy education are obviously imperative, but to not give them both appropriate policy attention could lead to an exacerbation of the problems Europe already faces from a lack of media literacy education.

Another challenge is the potential politicisation of media literacy education policies. This is of course true of any policy, but given how social media is fertile ground for polarisation, conspiracy theories and scepticism. Indeed, there is potential for a ‘catch-22’ situation, where attempting to regulate social media, or its uses, potentially contradicts free speech principles. Without clear communication on the policies, there is the potential for them to be misconstrued as indoctrinating Europe’s youth against freedom of speech, especially if coming from the EU. However, this should not prevent or deter implementation. Clear communication on how the policies promote and protect free speech is necessary to avoid this potential criticism and for the best implementation of the policies themselves.

The Outlook

Europe has the capacity and political will for much-needed regulation: the EU has previously forced Apple to conform to its values, and certain countries (such as France) are considering minimum ages for social media. This does not have to be a problem for Europe, but an opportunity: to be trailblazers in nurturing critical thinking skills in the generation of tomorrow amidst an ever-changing relationship between media and politics and social media backed by big tech.

Europe has certainly made progress, but it should not ignore the challenges, or potential opportunities, which lay ahead. Implementing media literacy policies could be beneficial in preparing the economy and society for what the future may hold, technologically and politically. With some effective cooperation, Europe has the potential to become a real leader in this space and to reap the rewards.

The embers are only smoldering since the fall of the long-time Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad. It is only a little less than two months ago that the 59-year old autocrat fled the country with his tail between his legs, substituting the lavish floors of his Damascus Presidential Palace, with the cold comfort of his solemn exile in an apartment in Moscow. Albeit that the reality has much changed for Syria’s former dictator, back home, on the ground in Syria, the faint echo of the drums of war pierce the hot desert air once again.

As of writing, the much-awaited peace that in December settled upon the war-torn country, has not reached the far eastern Kurdish-held territories of the Autonomous Administration of North and Eastern Syria (AANES), better known under the name of Rojava. About 20% of the country’s internationally recognized territory falls under the control of the Kurds in this region. Importantly, it also holds most of Syria’s resources, including oil, gas, grains, and water.

Here, during the civil-war, Syria’s massive minority of ethnic Kurds established a de-facto autonomous state, providing all the necessities, that are the mark of one. These include education, social benefits, and the region even boasts a sizeable army, going under the name of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). On a historic note, these Kurdish fighters were vital in the culling of ISIS, and are, accordingly, by many in the West viewed as an ally in the region. The SDF run and maintain internment camps housing 9,000 ISIS fighters, but rely on support from the U.S.-backed coalition for financial support in these detention operations.

Nonetheless, the recent shattering of the long-reigning political status quo in Syria: the flight of Assad, and the rise to power of the elusive Ahmad al-Sharaa, backed up by his Hayat Tahir al-Sham (HTS) milita, has done much to uproot the situation in which the Kurds found themselves. What could before be deemed as a perilous, but yet predictable situation, has now turned into an existential crisis for the Kurds. Gone is Assad, who in the latter years of the war seemed relatively content to keep a low profile and consolidate his gains, and in is a new regime seemingly hell-bent on reunifying Syria, whether through diplomatic or military means. On top of this, two other factors are paving the way for a new regional conflict. HTS’ links to Erdogan’s Türkiye and the erratic wild-card of a certain president in the White House. The stage is set for conflict if diplomatic measures are not taken.

A Diplomatic Solution?

After the fall of Assad, optimism was wide-spread at the advent of a new political reality in Syria. Al-Sharaa, seemingly overnight, exchanged his military khaki for the attire of a statesman, appearing in suit and tie and meeting with foreign leaders to discuss the rebuilding of the country and its diplomatic situation. While his past links to Al-Qaeda and ISIS, were worrisome ‘characteristics’ in the eyes of many, both at home and abroad, his conciliatory rhetoric and promises of being a changed man, has worked to assure many of his good intentions. As a result of this, entities such as the EU is already talking about easing sanctions on the country.

One of Saraa’s first priorities post-Assad was to reach out to the Kurds in search of a diplomatic solution to what is essentially a division of the country. Damascus, seemed convinced that with what they deemed the raison d’etre of the SDF - the fight against ISIS and the protection of Rojava’s population against Assad’s oppression - now gone, reunification was not so far down the line. A secret meeting between Sharaa and the leader of the SDF, Mazloum Abdi was held on December 30th, to negotiate the future of the country. The details of this meeting later became public, revealing that despite some confidence-building measures, the two sides are still very far apart from a solution.

What we know about Damascus’s negotiating stance is the following: the SDF should dissolve itself and put its approximately 70,000 fighters under the command of Sharaa’s new defense ministry. This demand has also been posed to the other armed groups of Syria, amongst whom the SDF is the last armed group waiting to submit. Damascus also demands the expulsion of dozens of non-Syrian leaders from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), with Turkish members handed over to Ankara. Why this is, we’ll return to later in the article. Additionally, Damascus calls for dissolving the autonomous administration while agreeing to decentralization and Kurdish rights, returning strategic resources to Damascus, coupled with the transfer of control of Syria’s borders with Türkiye and Iraq to the central government. The new government also demands to take over the management of relations with the US-led international coalition, and the running of prisons and camps housing ISIS fighters and their families.

On the other hand, the negotiators from the AANES held firm on their own counterproposals, which included maintaining the SDF as an autonomous military bloc within the new Syrian army, preserving the structure of the autonomous administration, and ensuring that SDF fighters serve in their home regions in northeastern Syria. Their negotiators also demanded that the Kurds retain a fixed share of strategic resources, maintain military control over their borders, and that Kurdish participation in the preparation of the upcoming national dialogue conference, the Prime Minister’s office, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, be secured. They also call for explicit constitutional recognition of Kurdish rights. This last point is of particular importance as the Kurds were essentially stateless under the former Assad regime, not recognized on par with the country’s Arabs as equal citizens.

On a more conciliatory note, Abdi supposedly agreed to some confidence-building measures, such as raising the new Syrian flag, handing over civilian border crossings to Damascus, and restoring control over “security squares” previously controlled by the Assad regime in SDF territory.

On a further positive note, both parties agreed to hold another round of talks and establish negotiation committees ahead of the proposed national conference, scheduled to be held in the near future.

What is perhaps the most important take-away from these negotiations, however, is the reluctance of the Kurds to surrender what could be deemed the closest attempt at a Kurdish state in decades. The Kurds, if they are not severely pressured through military means, will most likely not settle for less than some degree of autonomy. What compounds the risks of conflict, however, is Damascus’ close relationship with Ankara.

Turkish Intervention

Ankara’s intense “preoccupation” with the future of the Kurds, whether this be in Iraq or Syria, and its fear of anything resembling a Kurdish state in Türkiye’s back yard, has shaped Ankara’s involvement in the region over the last decade. Its leader, Erdogan, accuses one of the main elements of the SDF, the so-called ‘People’s Protection Units’ or YPG, of having connections to the Workers Party of Kurdistan (PKK). This is a deal-breaker for Ankara, as they consider the PKK a terrorist organisation. The recent terrorist attack at an aerospace company near Ankara, two months ago, has only served to highlight the necessity for action in preventing a ‘hostile’ Kurdish state on its southern border. Because of this, Türkiye has regularly bombed the AANES since 2015, and has amongst other things targeted civilian infrastructure, which in an extreme case in 2024, cut off 1 million people from clean water and electricity.

On the ground, Türkiye has sought to work out a solution by occupying a ‘safe-zone’ in Northern Syria, and occupying the majority-Kurdish Afrin province in North Western Syria. We have in an earlier article here at TLR which covered the negative implications of Turkish-sponsored groups in this region, with a focus on the destruction of historical heritage sites (read more here). And in what could be deemed the foreign-policy coup of the decade, Türkiye has managed to secure for itself a regime friendly to Ankara in Damascus, that turns a blind eye to the continued Turkish support for its Syrian proxy group, the Syrian National Army (SNA), and its land operations against the Kurds in Northern Syria. Heavy fighting between the SNA and the SDF is ongoing at strategic locations such as the Tishreen Dam, with many casualties on both sides as the result. Similarily, the Syrian regime does not seem to have required Ankara to halt the Turkish Air Force’s airstrikes on the AANES, perhaps due to the fact, that a weaker AANES serves the interests of both parties, as the negotiation power of the SDF diminishes with each bombing.

Türkiye’s close relationship with Sharaa’s regime and hostile stance towards PKK elements in the AANES most likely explain the specific terms of Damascus’ negotiation position related to the PKK. More specifically, the expulsion and transfer of PKK leaders from the AANES into Ankara’s custody. Pro-Türkiye rhetoric in Damascus seems to be hardening; on January 15th Syrian Foreign Minister, Asaad Hassan Al-Shibani, adopted a more escalatory tone at a meeting in Ankara, saying that the U.S.-backed SDF-presence in Eastern Syria was “no longer justified” and that “the new administration would not allow Syrian land to be a source of threats to Turkiye”. A few days later, Syria’s defence minister, Murhaf Abu Qasra, explicitly rejected integrating the SDF as a military bloc into the army, adding that while the government was open to talks with the SDF about dismantling, “if we have to use force, we will be ready.”

Atleast some elements of the Kurdish bloc, however, are also greatly complicating the peace efforts. The PKK has reportedly carried out four car bomb attacks in Manbij, Tell Rifaat, and Deir Jamal in Aleppo’s countryside in late December and early January, coinciding with security incidents in Syria’s coastal areas. As a result of this, Damascus has reportedly criticized SDF’s leader Abdi, for what they perceiveas inability on his part to exert control over the disparate elements of his bloc parallel to ongoing investigations. These recent attacks have hardened Ankara’s perceived need for urgency in dismantling PKK elements in the AANES. Perhaps as a last-ditch effort to hold onto a fragment of its former power in the country, Damascus points to Iran as the main driver behind these recent attacks. They cite Iran’s close relationship with the PKK in Iraq, and recent calls, made before the attacks, by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to rise against the “new sunni islamists rulers”. These verity of these accusations levelled at Iran are hard to establish. Nonetheless, it is difficult not to imagine that Teheran is displeased with the recent loss of one of its most important allies in the region, and could take punitive or distabilizing measures as a result.

The Wild Card - Trump and a U.S. Withdrawal

The real wildcard in these ongoing developments in Syria, is contingent on developments on the opposite side of the Atlantic; more specifically on a man notorious for his spontaneity, or rather - unreliability. Somewhat paradoxically to the hemispheric isolationism engraved in the mantra of “America first”, President Donald J. Trump, has not shied away from getting involved in the affairs of the Middle East. His recent proposal to turn Gaza into the “Riviera” of the Middle East: a piece of sunshine sea-side real estate under the supervision of the U.S., being probably the most ‘creative’ example. According to the Pentagon, as of December, the U.S. had about 2000 troops deployed in Syria. Their mission is described as “degrading the Islamic State terrorist group and support local partners operating there”. These local partners, as mentioned, include the SDF.

However, the Department of Defense is now seemingly drawing up plans for a full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, two U.S. defense officials told NBC News on February 4th. And this withdrawal may come sooner rather than later. In the same article, the defence officials stated that Pentagon officials are drawing up plans for a full withdrawal in 30, 60 or 90 days. This new development comes in the wake of an Oval Office media event on January 30th where Trump was asked about current events in Syria. To this he replied: “We’re not getting, we’re not involved in Syria […] Syria is its own mess. They got enough messes over there. They don’t need us involved in everyone.” Whether this withdrawal actually materializes remains to be seen. He has attempted it before. In late 2019, Trump ordered Secretary of Defense Jamis Mattis to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria. Mattis pushed back against the order and ultimately resigned in protest. Nonetheless, Trump withdrew most U.S. troops but subsequently moved them back, where they remain to this day.

A withdrawal could serve as both an escalatory and conciliatory measure in relation to a potential Syrian conflict. Interestingly, it might also be a smarter move in securing long-term U.S. interests, than what it appears at first glance.

On one hand, a U.S. withdrawal could force the SDF divert its troops towards offensive operations against the SNA and abandon its internment camps, freeing thousands of ISIS fighters. This would most likely be deemed unacceptable by the new Syrian government, leading them to take military measures, and deemed a threat by Ankara, convincing Türkiye to step up its military operations in Syria.

This next point is cynical, perhaps more than the author would like it to be. On the other hand, by committing a second ‘betrayal of the Kurds’, which a withdrawal would arguably be, the U.S. could solve one of its biggest diplomatic headaches in years, which could help ease the way for peace in Syria - albeit not one that is favourable to the Kurds. The U.S. support for the SDF is, per excellence, a diplomatic headache for Washington. On the one hand, the U.S. is interested in keeping the pressure on ISIS, and probably worried about how another Kurdish betrayal (the first being the U.S. withdrawal from Syria in 2019) would make it look to its allies. On the other hand, maintaining strong relations with Türkiye, both as a NATO ally and given its role in Syria and the broader Middle East, is also crucial to Washington. Similarily, sustaining the weak position in which Iran finds itself after the removal of Assad, a key ally of Iran, is paramount to U.S. policy. Hence developing relations with the new Damascus government is paramount. By supporting a counter-insurgency campaign without an obvious end, Washington risks alienating both parties. Furthermore, by supporting a strong quasi-independent entity inside Syria, the U.S. could indirectly be inspiring other areas to opt out of Damascus’ control, thus impairing the establishment of a strong, unified Syria, which could be perhaps an even stronger ally in finally rooting out ISIS. This rests on the assumption of course, that the U.S. be willing to remove HTS from its list of foreign terrorist organizations.

A stronger governmentwould have a stronger negotiation position when dealing with the Kurds. This may prove to curtail dreams of Kurdish autonomy, but a strong, functioning government is vital in creating the conditions for Syria’s 12 million refugees and internally displaced people to return home, which could in turn also dramatically reduce the financial burden of key U.S. allies such as the EU and Türkiye holding millions of Syrian refugees.

A Possible Path Forward

The Kurds could anticipate Trump’s withdrawal by proposing concrete measures to help expedite the negotiation process, achieving a more favourable end for them. If the SDF sheds its non-Syrian senior PKK group of leaders, withdraws from majority ethnic Arab areas of the northeast, where the population is reportedly increasingly hostile, and turns over key petroleum infrastructure to the central government, this could soften the stance of Damascus. Although these are major concessions, they could prompt Sharaa’s government to allow the integration of the YPG as a political party in Syria. Something similar has already been seen with the arguably PKK-aligned DEM party to be found in the Turkish parliament. Perhaps the new government may even concede that Kurdish troops serve in and be in charge of security in the country’s east, which could help the central government maintain control and the pressure on ISIS.

For such concessions, Sharaa would most likely need to pressure Türkiye to halt the limited military operations of its proxy, the SNA, and bring an end to the country’s air campaign in Syria.

As for autonomy, the SDF could strive for an agreement, possibly modelled on an agreement made by Baghdad with Iraqi Kurds in the 2005 Iraqi constitution, albeit the Syrian version would most likely need to be less formal and expansive in nature. Some degree of self-governance could be agreed (and perhaps also similar initiatives initiated for other local communities around the country formed of various sects), with the integration of SDF units into the new Syrian army, particularily as an anti-ISIS force, similar to the role Kurdish Peshmerga Brigades played in the Iraqi army during the fight against ISIS. Assuringly, an official from the PKK recently told Reuters that the PKK would leave North Eastern Syria if “the SDF maintains a leading role there”. This could help stave off Ankara’s worries.

Breaking The Cycle of War in The Middle East

The Kurds are not in a favourable situation, but much of the potential for a diplomatic solution rests on their capacity to move quickly and engage the new Syrian government with creative diplomatic handywork, which could perhaps be helped along by international actors. Nonetheless, the Syrian government, may arrive at the same conclusion, that the hand of time is playing to their benefit. A US withdrawal from Syria and Turkish incursions into the AANES, may even be viewed as positives in the eyes of Damascus, as they make their opponent’s negotiation position considerably weaker. With that said, the Kurds won’t give up their closest attempt at statehood in decades without a fight. And the possible implications of their desperation: the liberation of thousands of ISIS fighters as troops are diverted to offensive operations, a possible further alignment of PKK elements with Iran, compounded by the human calamity of a return of full-scale war to a Syria that is only barely starting to rebuild, are staggering. Today, the future of the Middle East as we know it, and the future of the threats that have been its scourge over the past decades - Islamist terrorism and Iranian expansion - are being decided in the hot desert of Syria. A positive outcome in Syria, could provide the region with a much needed model of how to bridge differences and move forward against common threats.

In line with our mission to enrich your analysis of world politics, the Lookout Report’s editors and reporters have been trawling through newspapers worldwide, compiling the overview of how each continent reacted to President Donald J. Trump’s inauguration yesterday. Some countries are concerned, some relish in what they view as new opportunities, while oters reluctantly prepare for the worst.

Africa - Josh Schlicht, Reporter and Co-Founder, Washington D.C.

Headlines in Africa on January 20th, 2025

In Trump’s inaugural address, Africa went unmentioned, and, is likely far down the list of priorities for Trump at the moment.

While Trump did not acknowledge Africa today, Africa certainly acknowledged him.

Nigeria’s main news outlets did not perceive the President’s inauguration speech in a particularly positive light. The Vanguard responded to the speech by drawing focus on the 47th Presidents’s past criminal convictions and his porn star hush money payment. The new American leaders’ “Golden Era” speech was not lauded by other Nigerian outlets either, such as The Nation or the Guardian Nigeria who covered the proceedings with a distinctly dry, matter-of-fact tone.

In South Africa, where the ANC continues to reign over the post-apartheid state, Trump’s inauguration received a critical response from ANC-sympathetic papers. The ANC, and South Africa in general, share an especially anti-colonial disposition amongst African states and have attached significant value to international organizations such as the UN and ICJ – in which they sued Israel on claims of genocide – and are thus unlikely to appreciate Trump or his consistent bashing of said institutions.

South Africa’s Times Live covered that President Cyril Ramaphosa would not be attending the American President’s inauguration - a tradition at this point. 2025’s inauguration also departed from the typical, in that several heads of state – Argentina’s Milei, Italy’s Meloni, and China’s Vice President Han Zheng were invited and attended. With such a select grouping invited however, it is unlikely that Ramaphosa will take the lack of invitation as a slight. He is expected to meet with Trump in November for the G-20 Summit in Johannesburg.

An ANC critical paper, the Daily Maverick, highlighted Trump’s important contribution to achieving the Hamas / Israel ceasefire. However, author J. Brooks Spector said the new president’s speech “careened down a dangerous highway at a high speed, without restraints”. In reference to Trump’s more radical proposals, ie. mass deportations, seizing overseas territory, and sending astronauts to Mars. Despite the overall skeptical coverage, The Daily Maverick’s highlighting of Trump’s peacemaker role in the Middle East could win him fans in South Africa and across the continent. In today’s speech he touted that his presidency will be one of the “peacemaker”. If Trump is inclined, perhaps he could help settle some of Africa’s horrific ongoing conflicts in Sudan, the DRC, and in the Sahel among others.

In Kenya’s Nation newspaper, Trump’s speech was covered in a fairly balanced manner. However, one article did point out that Trump’s vow to end birthright citizenship would conflict with the Constitution and that the President’s January 6th antics and invoking of a riot cast a shadow on today’s event.

The overall consensus among selected African papers seems to be one of light skepticism and detachment. There is little emotional pull as offered by European papers who feel that Trump has a major stake in their continent’s future. The American President certainly has a role in Africa, and could change things for better or for worse, but is far from a kingmaker.

Trump’s projected maneuvers to cut back foreign aid, to reduce US military presence abroad, to undermine climate treaties, to raise tariffs, and to deport undocumented immigrants will leave several challenges for African leaders to contend with. The gap left by America may provide space for African governments to emerge with greater responsibility, or perhaps it will push the continent further into the embrace of Putin and Xi.

East Asia, Felipe Branner, Editor-in-Chief, Rome

Headlines in East Asia on January 20th, 2025

In China, the suprising attendance of Chinese Vice President Han Zheng at Trump’s inauguration, and Zheng’s post-inauguration meeting with US Vice President JD Vance, has served to instill some optimism in the Chinese newspapers that a diplomatic solution to the troubled US-China relationsship is still possible. Global Times, which is regarded by many as the official voice of the CCP on foreign policy, highlighted how Trump has expressed desire to visit China in his first 100 days, and underscored how China-US cooperation can be possible as long as the two parties show mutual respect, strive for peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation. The journal concedes that the relationship between the US and China is still at best cold, but calls this version of Donald Trump more “sophisticated” and mentions the limited possibility to exert pressure on Trump from “aggressive” Democrats, as a new positive development in US-China relations. The People’s Daily also highlights a fruitful call between Xi Jingping and Donald Trump, writing that the two leaders reached many an important consensus in different areas. Paradoxically, or atleast contrary to how many typically describe Trump, The People’s Daily seems to perceive Trump as a new driver of stability in the relationship, or atleast describes the transition of power as a potential for a “reset” in relations.

In South Korea, the inauguration of Trump is described by newspapers as both a crisis and an opportunity. This can be seen in an editorial, by major South Korean newspaper, Chosun, where on one hand, the editorial raises concerns about what a potential US military decoupling from South Korea could have for the country’s safety, especially in a time of leadership crisis. Nonetheless, on the other hand Chosun also remarks that Trump’s appeared openness to South Korea acquiring Nuclear weapons could be a step forward in reaching military independence for the country. While expressing worries about tariffs, the journal also argues that if Trump chooses to decouple economically from China, Korean manufacturing will be needed to supply the US with imports, presenting a huge opportunity for South Korean business. The Korea Times, repeats Choson’s worries about tariffs, and expresses doubt that we’ll see a new Trump-Kim bromance this time around, as the Kim Jong Un of today is a stronger and more assertive international player.

In Japan the reactions have been moderate. Nonetheless, in line with the Japanese experience of the last Trump presidency (when Trump sporadically withdrew the US from the new US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership, leaving Japan to pick up the scraps), major Japanese newspaper Nikkei, leads with an editorial saying that “We don't need a Trump "dynasty" - we need order”. The Yomiuri Shimbun focuses on the raw data, and features a poll showing that 72% of respondents said they feel uneasy about Trump’s America First policy, and raises doubts about the outlook of PM Ishida’s potential for building a relationship of trust with Trump, with 66% of respondents answering they saw it highly unlikely such a relationship could be built. Japan Today reiterates the need for Japan to be a leading player in securing stability in the region through arrangements like the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD). Japan Times foresees increasing US demands for Japan to ramp up its defense spending, and to cough up more cash for US protection, calling the election of Trump a “perfect storm” for the US-Japan relationship.

South Asia, Gabriel Lane, Reporter, London

Headlines in South Asia on January 20th, 2025

Headed to the South Asian giant of India, the Indian press reacted to Donald Trump’s return with a measure of concern and hope. “Ties will go through their share of challenges… [but] shared anxiety about China will continue to be the glue that brings Delhi and Washington together” assessed the Hindustan Times. On the whole, Indian commentators view the new president as “more powerful than ever before” with their focus centred around what the new administration’s approach could mean for the bilateral relationship as well as the Indian diaspora in the United States. The popular newspaper Dainik Bhaskar for instance notes that if Trump decides to raise tariffs against Beijing, New Delhi could be a beneficiary given their role in the global supply chain and as a member of the QUAD. This sense of opportunity was echoed by The Hindustan Times which argues that under Trump, India will have “many friends across departments in the administration on day-to-day functional issues”, feel politically and ideologically more “comfortable and aligned” (particularly given Trump and Modi’s supposedly good relationship) and maintain a “degree of trust” on security and intelligence issues.

The Indian press is less thrilled however about the implications of the new administration’s domestic policy with concerns over the continuation of the H1B visa programme (of which Indian’s is the number one recipient) aired by numerous outlets (despite Dainik Bhaskar’s insistence that “the US tech sector is dependent on Indian talent and Musk and Ramaswamy are in favour of India”). Questions are also raised about Trump’s promise to deport millions of illegal immigrants with Indians, according to Dainik Bhaskar, being the third largest group threatened by this potential future policy.

Ultimately recognising the transactional nature of Trump’s foreign policy outlook, a number of popular outlets conclude that the scale and depth of bilateral ties as well as America’s strategic commitment to the Indo-Pacific “will hinge on India’s ability to offer a robust case of what it brings to the table and Delhi’s utility for Washington”. With this in mind, The Hindustan Times argues that India’s approach will require “imagination and flexibility” as well as being able to articulate to the new administration why “made in India and made in America do not clash”.

Amongst the Indonesian press, there is very little discussion of the implications of the new Trump administration upon the country with many of the main newspapers like Suara Merdeka and Kompas instead solely focusing on the schedule and ceremonial aspects of the inauguration. The few articles that did analyze what Trump’s return to The White House means for Indonesia generally focused on economic ties between the two countries with The Jakarta Post arguing that the new administration’s ‘America First’ rhetoric and “quid pro quo approach” to trade could impact the Indonesian government’s efforts to agree on a free trade agreement with Washington. The success of this effort to pursue an FTA with the US, The Jakarta Post assesses, is dependent on “what Indonesia brings to the table” again highlighting the impact of Trump’s transactional approach to foreign relations. This dearth of media coverage perhaps reflects the view amongst Southeast Asian states that the new administration is not prioritising engagement with countries in the region; an outlook only reinforced by President Trump’s nominee for US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s inability to name a single ASEAN member state or recall the size of the regional bloc during his confirmation hearing last week.

Middle East, Felipe Branner, Editor-in-Chief, Rome

Headlines in the Middle East on January 20th, 2025

Probably the most divided region in terms of perceptions on the inauguration of Donald Trump, is the Middle East.

Egyptian newspapers are relatively moderate in their coverage of the inauguration. However, one of the biggest Egyptian newspapers, Ahram, states how the Arab message to the US must be unequivocal: "Although we do not oppose US support for Israel’s security, this support must not come at the expense of Arab states' security and sovereignty, including that of a future Palestinian state." Ahram also calls for the new president to revive comprehensive peace efforts, not small-scale normalizations such as the Abraham Accords.

In Israel, reactions to Trump’s inauguration have been overwhelmingly positive, with the exception being progressive newspapers such as Haaretz. The Times of Israel focuses on Netanyahu’s response, who has predicted “best-days” of the US-Israeli relationsship ahead, and also on the fact that Trump highlighted the grievances of the October 7th hostages in his speech at the inaugural parade, speaking with freed Israeli hostage Noa Argamani and her relatives standing right behind him. Haaretz on the other hand, expressed similar concerns as seen around the world at just how much Trump will upend the state of affairs in the US, and also about just how much the peace process in Gaza relies on the whims of one notoriously reckless president-elect.

In Iran the tone is, as one could expect, quite different. The Tehran Times mentions how allegedly, since November, American and Israeli media is zeroing in on Iran and its nuclear program. They’re convinced that Trump, the “ignorant president” as they call him, is being tricked by a zionist media conspiracy with one goal – to see Iran in shambles. Iran Daily, takes a more constructive approach, focusing on the Iran nuclear deal. The newspaper writes that it hopes for a more realistic approach to Iran by the new US President, based on international law.

Latin America, Felipe Branner, Editor-in-Chief, Rome

Headlines in Latin America on January 20th, 2025

Latin America’s coverage of Trump’s inauguration has been shaped by a spoonful of Latino flair, and major concern as the region stands to be one of the most affected by a new hemishperic MAGA “imperialism”. Satiric cartoons of Trump, at the limits of political correctness, and an uncanny degree of focus on Melania’s choice of clothing and an apparent kiss-gone-wrong between Trump and the new first lady, lets us atleast know that some things are staying constant in these fast-moving times.

In Mexico, to say that the country is worried, would be a gross understatement. Major Mexican journal, El Universal, describes Mexico as being “first in the line of fire” and expresses worries about the consequences that mass deportations, tariffs, and a strained bilateral relationship could have for the future of the country. El Universal also states that the seemingly hand-picked presence of especially two Latin American leaders at Trumps inauguration, Javier Milei and Nayib Bukele, shows a worrisome signal about which governments in Latin America, Trump deems worthy of support, leading the journal to speculate that Trump will seek a bukelization of Latin America, meaning supporting hard-right regimes, championing superprisons with sub-human conditions and harsh crackdowns on organized crime. Amongst other mildly scary satires, El Universal also featured a satire of a stuffy Trump dressed as Napoleon with a swastika instead of a French lily on his hat, standing on top of a globe (see above).

Argentina’s La Nación expressed optimism about Trump’s close links with the country’s president Javier Milei, who is poised to attend a whole rank of events in the MAGA universe these coming days. Clarin, one of the other major news outlets in the country, focused on a failed kiss between Trump and Melania, due to the latter’s extravagant and very wide hat.

In Brazil focus has been on Bolsonaro who was invited to attend the inauguration, but due to travel restrictions placed on him related to his ongoing legal proceedings, was unable to attend. O Globo, one of Brazil’s biggest newspaper’s argues that Brazil is not a priority for Donald Trump, which the paper calls “very good news”. Nonetheless the journal points out that the US’ withdrawal from the Paris agreement and a potential intervention in the Panama Canal could have disastrous long-term implications for both the Brazilian environment and businesses. And the journal also focuses on Melanias dress.

Europe, Jamilla Smith-Joseph, Europe Editor, London

Headlines in Europe on January 20th, 2025

Europe is in panic mode: fear and instability are apparent and abundant. Trump returns to the White House exactly as the US economy is projected to outperform the Eurozone twofold, and with tariffs looming, the EU is already looking to expand its trading options. However, the morning of, Europe’s shares appeared to stabilise - with hope that the trade storm could be weathered.

Security is another matter. Calls for European military independence persist amidst questions about Trump’s spending targets for NATO. Ukrainian media in particular has highlighted the need for Europe to plan for every possible eventuality; given that Trump may bypass Europe - and crucially, Ukraine - in potential peace negotiations.

Then there is Britain, whose ‘special relationship’ has arguably never felt less special. Starmer faces a plethora of challenges: from potential rejection of the UK ambassador to the US, to Labour’s domestic rivals aligning themselves with Trump. The question of the UK actively reorienting itself towards Europe has certainly been asked.

Interestingly, it has been argued that anxiety over the return of Trump is a uniquely European problem, but that the danger lies in automatic appeasement. If we turn that around, Trump could be exactly what Europe needs: a wake-up call, and an opportunity for Europe to stand stronger in its own right. Perhaps Macron’s dream of uniting Europe will come true; or is Trump the beginning of the end?

This is an op-ed. All opinions expressed are the author’s own.

Historical Doubt

Prior to the Second World War a deep resentment with the inefficiency of democratic regimes was wide-spread amongst the peoples of Europe. When onlookers were observing the economic “miracle” of the Third Reich, a sense of awe and powerlessness was a common thread through the perceptions of the peoples of Deladier’s France and Chamberlain’s Britain. Albeit the horrors of fascist rule were clear from 1938 onwards, propelled by events such as the brutal Krystalnacht, many were left questioning their own government’s ability to handle the fallout of the Great Depression and the challenges of securing order in nation-states plagued by ideological and ethnic polarization.

It was only after Hitler showed his real face to the world with the annexation and proclamation of the Reichsprotektorat over Bohemia-Moravia (now the Czech Republic), a Wagnerian-Hitleresque fantasy of “conquest” void of ethnic or post-Versailles irredentism, that Germany and France started mobilizing and preparing for the inevitable war to come. Nonetheless, the policy of appeasement, (best encapsulated by the Munich Agreement that de facto sealed the fate of Czechoslovakia, without even awarding the Czechoslovaks a seat at the table), and a wide-spread doubt in our own capabilities was still hard to shake off, as movies such as Darkest Hour, brilliantly shows.

What is not so well known, however, is just how dire a state the economy of the Third Reich found itself in prior to Hitler’s 1939 invasion of Poland. As a result of the country’s burgeoning military industrial complex and lavish public spending on megalithic infrastructure and vanity projects, Nazi Germany’s economy was on its knees, plagued by rampant inflation, only kept down by artificial price controls – which anyone mildly familiar with economics will know is dangerous and often catastrophic terrain. In the words of Hitler himself, the need to incorporate more territories and resources to stave off an implosion of the German economy, was one of the key drivers for war. Much the same can be said about Mussolini’s Italy, which below the surface was a ticking time-bomb lacking resources fueling its need for colonial conquest (coupled with dreams of restoring the Roman Empire) in Albania and Abyssinia (now Ethiopia).

Looking back at diaries and news reports in the lead-up to the Second World War, this is hardly, if ever mentioned in “the West”. Instead there seems to have existed atleast some degree of, albeit reluctant, admiration in countries such as Britain or France, for just how far Herr Hitler had managed to bring Germany out of the ashes and of the order that Signor Mussolini had achieved in a seemingly uncontrollable nascent Italian state. Democracy and its leaders were seen as stuffery, diddery, and weak.

When I draw on this old tale, this recipe for destruction which it really was, it is because I believe there are genuine relevant lessons that “the West” can learn today from our behaviour of the past. What I will endeavour to argue is that our biggest strength, our free speech, freedom of information, and capacity for reflection and self-doubt, serves at times also as our greatest weakness. Especially today in a world plagued by new adversaries and challenges from within and without.

The Challenges of “The West”

On the surface our current situation does not look ideal, to say the least. Entering into 2025, the traditional motors or stabilizers of “Western” cohesion, the US, the UK, France, and Germany are all at least on paper finding themselves in some degree of crisis.

The first driver, the US, has with the election of Donald Trump become an expansionist (at this point happily only in rhetorical terms) great power in the old meaning of the term. Severely battering its long-standing good relationships with close NATO allies such as Canada and Denmark (never mind Panama and Mexico), over apparent MAGA desires of a North American “superstate” incorporating both Canada and Greenland into the US, this has grave consequences for the faith and trust on especially the European side of the Atlantic in the solidity of the transatlantic bond. Recently European leaders such as Olaf Scholz have expressed worries about just to what extent the US recognizes the territorial integrity of its allies, and at the worrisome use of the threat of tarriffs (or even military measures) if Denmark does not comply with the US’s proposal to buy Greenland.

The second power, the UK, is still struggling to find its feet post-Brexit, having to contend with sluggish growth for the last many years, even with PM Keir Starmer now picking up the slack of what can only be deemed a chaotic decade of Tory leadership.

The Franco-German motor in the EU is not faring much better. France, is at the time virtually a revolving door of prime-ministers coming and going, as President Macron faces challenges from both the far-left and far-right, over a proposed pension-reform. In Germany, the ruling coalition’s disagreement about the revocation of the Schuldenbremse or debt-brake has pushed the country into early elections, that Scholtz seems poised to lose, at the same time as far-right Alternative Für Deutschland storms forward in the polls.

As for the project, the multilateral, rules-based, liberal world order that “the West” has sought to export, especially since the end of the Cold War, as our regime of good global governance, it seems less and less credible. The war in Gaza, which happily now seems to be coming to an end, has served as an example of “Western” hypocrisy, with the US’s blatant shielding of its ally, Israel, in spite of numerous observed war-crimes, being case in point. Trump has expressed, and showed, time and time again blatant disregard for multilateralism, undermining much of the admirable work Joe Biden has done in reestablishing trust in the US by its allies.

“The West’s” main strength, our freedom of speech, media and information seems to be used against us – directly harming our democracies. Firstly, the 2016 election of Donald Trump, with recent elections in Georgia, Romania, and Moldova showing similar patterns, election interference by foreign autocracies has been rampant, shaping the popular opinion, while spreading doubt and distrust amongst the governed against our elected representatives. Secondly, what Joe Biden recently called an “oligarchy” of unimaginably wealthy business-men and tech moguls such as Elon Musk, are showing just how much influence their technological platforms and wealth can buy them both domestically and abroad, with Musk’s daily “election lottery” of USD 1,000,000 to swing-state voters in Pennsylvania and his recent interference in UK and German politics, countries of whom he is not a citizen, being the best examples of such. Thirdly, our freedom of information, both in good and bad times, on our economic well-being, statistics on unemployment, and levels of debt, are arguments served on a silver-platter to autocracies, that they can use to show to their populace just how bad we’re doing.

We Must Believe in Ourselves

It is easy to despair and falter as a citizen of “the West” when faced by all these vile challenges. However, we must learn to believe again in our strength and in our traditional ideals. Amid a narrative of failure, similar to the one that plagued “the Western” states in the lead-up to the Second World War, we must take a step back and review our capabilities and long-term strategy. If not, history is most likely due for a rhyme, if not a repetition – and being a young man at the somber age of 25 – I have plenty of impetus to react, as I imagine places more inspiring to celebrate my 30^th birthday than in a trench in some field in Lithuania.

I propose four long-term strategies going forward.

1) A recalibration of our “adversaries”’ situation

2) A coherent adherence to our ideals

3) Increased regulation and education in media literacy

4) Acknowledging and leveraging the power of multilateralism in defense

Recalibration

Although it is difficult not to marvel or be ensnared by the Chinese economic miracle and the resilience of the Russian economy against our economic sanctions’ regime, there are indicators that things are not going as well for these autocratic powers challenging the liberal world order as it may seem. As much as our freedom of information is open and readily available to all, their economic indicators and statistics are opaque at best, wrong at worst.

China’s economy is built on a pyramid of shadow-banking (that is financial activity that takes place outside the traditional banking system) which accounted for 86% of China’s GDP in 2019. In a recent chat with a China-expert, I was let into the baffling world of how provincial-level governments in China finance themselves exactly through this type of loan-taking from trust-funds pooling savings of citizens that are then held in real-estate. The command-structure of the Chinese economy favors goal setting on a national plan for specific industries that are deemed strategic and of national importance. Each province then competes to be one that can create the most successful state-owned-enterprise (SOE) in that specific industry. These SOE’s are fueled by shadow-banking debt, and only 2-3 of the most successful end up making the mark and receive funding on a national level, the rest are left to their own devices. This has created a Chinese bubble of over-production, explaining its constant search for new markets to offload this excess production, the Belt and Road Initiative being a key example of such searching. Coupled with a shaky housing market, that has shown signs of collapse over the last years, with the sinking of Evergrande being the best example, the Chinese economy is a dangerous cocktail.

In East and South Asia, we also underestimate, to just how much of a degree Xi Jinping’s assertiveness has alienated regional players. Tokyo is pursuing rearmament to counter Chinese incursions into the East China Sea and has broadly taken up the mantle as the main defendant of the liberal world order in Asia since the first election of Donald Trump, taking over on initiatives such as the Trans Pacific Partnership, instigated by Obama, but saved by the Japanese when Donald Trump pulled the US out of it. South Korea is more firmly than ever reorienting itself towards “the Western” camp; even ASEAN countries that have been treading the line, pursuing a policy of non-alignment have expressed concerns about Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea. A quote by former Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte sums this up well: “I love China … but … is it right for a country to claim a whole ocean?”. Xi Jinping’s stoking of nationalist fervor to rally support around the CCP and his persona only seems to bind himself as a hostage towards further unilateral assertiveness, as especially young Chinese nationalists clamor for more foreign policy “victories”, most likely in Taiwan or the East or South China Seas. This will most likely push neighboring countries increasingly into the “Western” camp.

We similarly seem to overestimate China’s ability to speak with one voice. It is in my opinion ludicrous to view China as uniquely an extension of what Xi Jinping says and does. To believe that 1,3 billion people think with one hive-mind is a gross overestimation of the CCP’s hold on power, and frankly an insult to Chinese intellectuals of whom prominent voices, such as Jinghao Zhou or Zhongying Pang are raising concerns about the increasing stranglehold of the CCP on every aspect of life and the regional pushback against China’s increasing unilateral assertiveness.

Russia on the other hand has shown itself remarkably resilient to “Western” sanctions with its economy contracting by 2.1 percent in 2022 but growing in both 2023 and 2024. Nonetheless, this growth has been fueled by increased defense spending, and as its economy has transitioned into a full-scale war economy, rampant inflation has been the result. Similarily, shortages of certain supermarket goods and rising prices on daily amenities, such as eggs, is felt by the average Russian consumer. Vladimir Putin, who seldom directly comments on problems related to Russian society even admitted recently in his annual televised Q&A session, that inflation and an “overheating” of the Russian economy are major concerns at this point.

On the diplomatic front, Russia’s allies are increasingly reserved to international “pariahs” such as North Korea. The much-heralded China-Russia axis, that some have claimed to be the next geopolitical block facing “the West”, is not much more than an economic partnership, where China is by far the senior partner. And China is dead scared of “Western” economic sanctions, due to the ramifications that an economic downturn could have for the CCP’s hold on power, which in turn will most likely keep it from entering into full-scale military cooperation with Russia anytime soon.

By highlighting these two cases I do not by any means want to signal that they can be directly compared to the case of Nazi Germany before the Second World War. It is merely an exercise of reflection, my “Western” god-given right be that, to reevaluate our situation vis-à-vis our “adversaries” which should serve as some degree of antidote to the notion that we are a failing “civilization”. Nonetheless, there is also some danger at merely relishing in the hardships of our rivals. That is not the goal of this article. We risk, and especially now with Donald Trump at the helm of “the West”, to be moving into a world seen as a “zero-sum game”, where the total amount of goods on a world level is limited, and where our situation, if it is to be improved, must come at the detriment of others. In other words, it is them or us. Here I want to diverge from the “hawks” in Bruxelles or Washington. For if we are to work towards a brighter future, and not into the morass of darkness and war, we must use this new realistic perception of our rivals’ capabilities, to increase our faith in our own strength. The question then is becomes not; if we are still strong, it becomes what we want to use our strength to do?

Coherence and Ideals

This is where the next long-term strategy comes into play. With a firm belief in our continued strength our next step is to defend and adhere to our ideals. The best ace in our sleeve, has always been, and will continue to be a model built on justice, human rights, freedom, and rules ensuring peace in the world. This might sound idealistic, and we have battered this model time and time on end, but when the darkest hour comes, as in the Second World War, it is these ideals that make people flock to our banner. It is thus paramount that we start adhering to the principles that we ourselves preach as universal.

The greatest risk that I see in 2025 is that we continue to show ourselves as hypocrites with a double standard facing conflicts such as the one in Gaza. Similarily in the South China Sea, the US cannot claim that China should abide by the UN Convention on the Law of the SEA, if the US itself is not even a signatory to that same convention.

We should also be adamant in protecting other countries fighting our fight. That includes standing up for Taiwan when China, threatens the island militarily or breaks cross-strait agreements, as these in the eyes of some scholars even can be viewed as documents of international law. And we can absolutely not allow ourselves to forget Ukraine, the most violent breach of international law in decades. It was only after Eastern Europe saw Britain’s and France’s betrayal of Czechoslovakia that they lost faith entire in our protection, and joined ranks with the Axis.

When we preach sustainability and the importance of the green transition, and our companies afterwards poison the rivers in the Global South and export low grade toxic“jungle-fuel” to African countries, it is understandable that public perception in these countries turn against us. In general, when engaging in development in the Global South, we should move away from calling it “aid” and instead learn from the Chinese model and provide assistance with a focus on development. We should also learn from the Chinese, and drop the notion, so built into our Euro-American societies of us vis-a-vis “a third world”. Instead we should roll out the red carpet for African and Asian leaders whether they are from Swaziland or Burkina Faso. The Chinese are trailblazing us. Everytime the Chinese hold a Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, which has been held since 2000, it is like a small UN General Assembly, with more than 50 African leaders attending. The key here is to learn how to become a partner and not a patronizing other. The export of human rights and good governance can still be a core tenets of our operations, but we must be better at listening and meeting Africa and Asia on equal footing to understand what African nations require to build their desired future.

It is not strategic bankruptcy to defend and follow the rules-based world order. If we preach it, we must follow it, and on equal terms. By following a consistent approach to international conventions and rules, we may lose some short-term advantages, but the EU in specific (as my hopes for the US under trump are relatively meager) must show states “on the fence” that “the West” puts action behind its words, and can be viewed as a trustworthy partner both in trade, development, and security moving forward. That's was and still is, our strongest card. In the words of Joseph S. Nye:

“When you can get others to admire your ideals and to want what you want, you do not have to spend as much on sticks and carrots to move them in your direction. Seduction is always more effective than coercion, and many values like democracy, human rights, and individual opportunities are deeply seductive.”

Increased Regulation and Media Literacy

As we move into a new age of true-to-life AI-generated imagery, disinformation bots, and alternative news sources from especially social media, we need to learn how to synergize or at least find a way to fuse our freedom of information with the challenges of social media. Autocracies do not face this challenge to social cohesion – China’s restricted version of TikTok does not need to worry about Russian bots.

For “the West”, this is probably the most ethically challenging issue moving forward, as its solution is the one that goes the most against our own ideals. For many, the notion of limits on our digital freedom of expression, or even moderation goes against the core of what it means to “liberal” (or conservative if you are in the US). MAGA and President Trump are to be found on this side of the spectrum. Mark Zuckerberg’s recent u-turn with regards to content moderation on Facebook is just one example of how much traction this “digital-world-version-unshackled” is gaining especially in the US. Especially when the tech-giants can save vast sums of money cutting content-moderation and fact checking.

Our democracies are entering into a new age, for which they are not prepared. Media literacy, the nurturing of critical thinking and analysis of digital content, especially amongst our youngest, must be made mandatory if we are to sustain a degree of belief in our system of government. The same goes for some degree of fact-checking, age limits, and content moderation, This can only be done through regulation, and this regulation has to come from the very top. The EU should be at the forefront of this. Especially now that the tech-giants are “bribing” the Trump family with lucrative show deals about Melania Trump worth tens of millions of dollars or trying to enlist him as their protector against future lawsuits targeted against them by the EU.

We need to make sure these platforms are still serving the interests of citizens, not peddling them on as products or breaking social cohesion through engagement-driven polarizing algorithms.

The Importance of Multilateralism in Defense

“The West” should also not forget that we are a force to be reckoned with, but that this force is one based on multilateralism – not short-sighted bilateral recklessness and extortion, as the leader of our alliance seems to make it out to be. Granted, the prior Trump administration was a great driver in getting European countries to finally consider proper defense spending. Nonetheless - if the Americans don’t want to go at it alone that is – they need to recognize that the security infrastructure that has kept “the West” safe for 80 years is one based on mutual trust and multilateralism. Although it may seem inconsequential to Trump, US power projection capability is too, contingent on the goodwill of its host nations. The US Sixth Fleet is docked in Naples, its European military hospital in Germany, its strategic space force base in Greenland, not to mention its gigantuan bases in South Korea and Japan. Trump’s disdain for alliances and preference for dealing with countries on a one-on-one basis sets a dangerous new precedent, with potential to drive wedges between us. Even though hemispheric isolationanism may seem like a low-hanging fruit for a populist such as Trump, the loss of our combined Western capability, including the awesome militaries of countries such as Poland, Finland, and Japan, would be detrimental both to US prestige and power projection capability in the future. We need to cherish the strength and uniqueness of an organization like NATO and its affiliate partners, bringing peoples of shared values together from Tokyo to Lisbon.

The West is Still Standing

In short“The West” is still here. We have the strength. We need to be more trustworthy, not out of altruism, but for our own safety’s sake. We must listen, learn to be open but also ready to defend what we believe in, inside the framework of the liberal rules-based order that I – and I firmly believe, also we – deem worth fighting for.

As Seen in Reaction.life

This is an op-ed. All opinions expressed are the author’s own.

The Existential Garlic Threat

Back in December 2023, the Republican Senator Rick Scott wrote to the US Commerce Secretary claiming that the import of Chinese garlic poses a national security threat to the United States. Scott was concerned firstly about the safety standards of Chinese garlic, arguing that “Food safety and security is an existential emergency that poses grave threats to our national security…and economic prosperity”. He was also worried about the economic strategy behind China’s “dumping” of garlic into the market at below-cost price as a form of predatory pricing. Scott then went into fastidious detail about the different types of garlic which should be investigated, including unpeeled, “peeled, chilled, fresh” or “packed”.

How have we arrived at a point where garlic is viewed by some as a national security issue? Peeled or unpeeled? Across swathes of the economy, so-called ‘critical sectors’ (from artificial intelligence to biotech) are being labelled as matters of strategic advantage and national security. The fact that something as banal as garlic might be raised as a national security issue in the same vain represents a significant, if laughable, example of a serious reality: throughout the West and beyond, the line between economics and national security has become blurred.

The Cold War & National Security

The economy was not always deemed a national security issue. Surprisingly, the Cold War was characterised by a relatively narrow conception of security. The primary concern was nuclear and non-nuclear capabilities, and deterrence between the two major powers: the US and USSR.

But, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and compounded by rapid globalisation, the scope of national security expanded: from environmental security to migration. The economy, too, was slowly absorbed into the realm of interstate competition. With the crumbling of the Soviet Union came the loss of a common enemy — paving the way for more fierce economic competition between supposedly friendly states. The US, for example, began worrying about semiconductor dependency on Japan — described in the 1980’s as a “critical national problem”. As the Soviet Union collapsed, therefore, the seeds of economic security were sown.

Private Sector Power

This concern with relative economic power after the Cold War was compounded by the emerging issue of ‘dual use’ technology. Throughout the Cold War, technological innovation frequently arose from state investments into national security which then spilled over into consumer goods. GPS, for example, was developed by the U.S. Department of Defence during the Cold War to help military operations and precision missile development. But by the 1980s, the U.S. Government made GPS available for civilian use — ultimately leading to the creation of an entirely new consumer sector.

After the Cold War, however, the reverse became true: the state no longer dominated innovation. Instead, as Beverly Crawford puts it, “those cutting-edge technologies most vital to military power are not found in defence research labs but in global commercial markets”. The result was that the line between the military and civil industrial complex began to dissolve.

Today we are witnessing the stark absence of that line. Companies like NVIDIA are not simply important for the US economy, but essential for national security and for the United States’ strategic advantage over other countries. These private companies are both strategic assets and national security risks.

This poses a fundamental dilemma for modern state governments — a question of autonomy and capability. Do you try to maintain key technological research and private sector companies within domestic control in order to ensure autonomy and self-sufficiency? The Biden administration’s ramping up of export controls on semiconductors towards China is a case in point. Or does doing so come at the cost of curtailing innovation and making production more expensive, both of which could also undermine state capability (and, in turn, national security)?

Either way, rapid globalisation and the rise of private sector power has diminished the power of the state — and encroached upon the national security realm.

9/11 & Systemic Risk

Threats were once acute and simple: ‘we have an enemy (e.g. the Soviet Union) and they are threatening our national security’. Al-Qaeda’s attacks on 9/11 changed that. They proved that power was no longer held by states, but could be wielded randomly — and lethally — by non-state actors. The world entered what is now called the grey zone of conflict.

This new reality not only made national security harder to protect, but it also initiated a transition of security thinking from acute, specific threat to systemic risk. Bush in 2007 talked of “vulnerability to terrorism”being “a new condition of life”. The emergence of terrorism therefore pushed the realm of national security away from traditional guns, borders, and wars to a far more insidious world of unknowns. National security took on a tone of everydayness. So today’s confluence of national security and economics is partly an extension of that post-9/11 dispersal of threats.

2008: Mutually Assured Financial Destruction

And yet the expansion of the domain of national security, as well as the indefatigable rise of private sector power, were necessary but not sufficient factors in turning the economy into a national security problem. It took an economic crash to securitise the economy.

Following the 2008 financial crisis, there was a particular worry amongst U.S. hawks about foreign-owned debt — especially debt owned by China. Hilary Clinton suggested in 2008 that America’s reliance on Chinese foreign investment was causing the “slow erosion of our economic sovereignty”. There were logical reasons for this fear. If China or Japan made a decisions to decrease their vast holdings of U.S. dollars, that could instigate a currency crisis, force the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates, and create a recession.

The former U.S. treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers labelled the post-2008 US-China economic relationship as a form of “mutually assured financial destruction” — since both sides had the capability to destroy each other.

Suddenly, following 2008, the Cold War language of atomic war was being used to describe the state of the global economy. Economics was being absorbed into the language of war.

COVID and The Interdependence Paradox

However, it was another, more recent black swan event which really turned the page to a new age of economic security. Under the stark light of the pandemic it was clear how many businesses had failed to become resilient, and how vulnerable supply chains were. The penny did not just drop, it crashed. The global shortage of semiconductors — those precious chips that find their way into everything from phones to ballistic missiles — dented global GDP by 1%. And then followed by the Russian (re)invasion of Ukraine in 2022 also seemed to pour cold water onto complacent globalists, with Germany cancelling its ill-judged Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia. This was all, of course, compounded by US-China great power rivalry.

The subsequent rise of supply-chain ‘de-risking’ strategies, export controls, and foreign investment screening has led to a new era of “geoeconomics”. Trade and economics are now essential components of statecraft. The OECD estimates that 60% of foreign direct investment amongst member states is now being screened — largely on national security grounds. Trade has become a zero-sum game.

The New Washington Consensus

The new Washington playbook today involves heavy state-funded industrial policy and defensive economic policy. U.S. tariffs on Chinese EVs are at 100%. The Biden administration is currently planning a 25% tariff on Chinese cranes. Moat-drawing is replacing bridge-making.

But is this a viable long-term strategy? Matt Ferchen argues not: “The U.S. must better balance its coercive economic security measures with constructive policies that underscore the benefits of new and sustainable forms of interdependence”.

The U.S. was right to call out China, and is right to take a more strategic approach to critical technologies and domestic manufacturing. But it must also offer its allies carrots as well as sticks. After all, what won the Cold War for the West — amongst other things — was the positive economic and political vision offered by the United States, not just a defensive trade policy to shut the Soviets out.

Conclusion: The End of Liberalism?

In February 1944 a U.S. State Department memorandum argued that, without an agreement liberalising trade, the postwar period would witness a revival of the economic warfare which had characterised the 1920’s and 1930s. The agreement turned out to be successful: it was called Bretton Woods.

However, this was not simply an economic proposal; it was an ideological one. Its proponents believed that economic integration and liberalism would not just be beneficial for trade, but would also cement ties and reduce the likelihood for conflict in the postwar era.

The rise of economic security and anti-globalisation sentiment is therefore not only important in itself. If we are not careful, it contains within it the seeds for undermining the ideological premises on which the postwar consensus was built — and the Cold War was won.

As Seen in Reaction.life

This is an op-ed. All opinions expressed are the author’s own.

This week marks the Chinese Communist Party's Third Plenum, a major meeting held every five years to set the direction of the country. From a deflationary spiral to mounting debt and a burst property bubble, China's future will demand hard decisions and not just political theatre. In light of this, though, it is worth looking at the past and asking a question which is infrequently asked: what do we actually mean by 'China'?

It is now a cliché to talk of American empire. As one writer put it, “it is time to move beyond statements of the obvious”. Every American state, besides the original thirteen colonies, was integrated through 19th-century westward expansion. But China’s own continental empire may be somewhat less obvious to many.

Just as the thirteen colonies of the early American republic embarked on a project of westward expansion throughout the 19th century, so China’s 20th century was defined by a process of territorial integration. Both amounted to versions of continental expansion and empire.

It is widely forgotten that in 1911 the borders of what we call ‘China’ were far from set after the collapse of China’s Qing dynasty in 1911. Both Tibet and Mongolia declared independence after the 1911 Xinhai revolution. Other areas which are now considered integral parts of China underwent periods of control by foreign imperial powers. The British had taken Hong Kong during China’s ‘century of humiliation’, under the 1842 Treaty of Nanking. Taiwan was for a period of time a Japanese colony, then briefly came under Chinese control between 1945-1949, and finally under the Nationalists’ control after their defeat by the communists in 1949. And the East Turkestan Republic was briefly a satellite state of the Soviets. It is no coincidence that these are the regions which China continues to feel least secure about today. Taiwan and Hong Kong are cases in point.

To call these territories historically ‘Chinese’ is therefore to overlook the reality of colonial expansion. Certainly, many (though not all) of these territories were taken from China by Western or Japanese imperial powers. But these were not all originally ‘Chinese’ territories. After all, many were acquired through conquest by the Qing Empire: beginning with the Junghar Wars in 1636. The difference is significant. James Millward’s polemic makes the point that using the terms “Qing” and “China” interchangeably is equivalent to viewing the Ottoman Empire and Turkey as synonymous.

Despite an endless rota of different regimes — republicanism, nationalism, fascism, and, finally, communism — the underlying 20th-century Chinese project was defined by territorial integration and nation-building. Like America’s westward expansion, this was done through a mixture of diplomacy, conflict, and settler-migration.

The similarities of the US and China’s settler-imperialism are striking. After the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, which doubled the size of the early United States, American politicians realised that they had a problem: almost everyone who lived in Louisiana was French (imagine!). Americans were deeply concerned about this. Without American citizens living in the vast area, it would be susceptible to interference by European powers. The politician Thomas Rodney urged that “the American population must be increased…it must be made to overbalance that of every other description of persons”. So after the Louisiana payment was settled, settlers were sent.

Just so, in 1949 only 6% of Xinjiang was inhabited by Hans — the dominant ethnic race in China. Today, the Uyghurs are very much a minority — and being put in concentration camps. The Hukou system, which prohibits movement within China, was used to ensure that these Han settlers could not leave once they had been forced to move to Xinjiang. Just as 19th-century Americans had seen westward settler migration as essential to ensuring security against foreign imperial powers, so the CCP sought to use a form of settler-migration as a bulwark against a repeat of the ‘century of humiliation’. Both imperial projects were therefore driven by a deep sense of insecurity. In some sense, therefore, the US and China were not originally nation-states but ‘Empire-States’.

Even the rhetoric of their respective continental projects have similarities. Like the US perceived westward expansion as an inevitable “manifest destiny”, so China saw the assimilation of disputed territory as an organic process. One Chinese propaganda book, entitled The Inside Story of Outer Mongolia’s Independence, asserted that Mongolia was “an organic and integral” part of the “Chinese race”.

Americans and Chinese, however, both saw (and still see) themselves as exceptional. American exceptionalism explains continental empire in the terms of an “empire of liberty”. So too, China’s communist narrative was built upon anti-imperialism, and this still pervades today. Just as Jefferson portrayed America as morally superior to the British empire in the 19th-century, so Mao insisted on China’s international benevolence when compared with “U.S. imperialism”.

So what? Highlighting nations’ imperial pasts can become a fatuous exercise. Empire is morally reprehensible, but it is also historically ubiquitous - and many nations are guilty of its sins. Nevertheless, comparing empires can offer important insights.

The US and China may share similarities with respect to their continental expansion. However, there is one particularly important distinction. Unlike the US, China has become a global superpower whilst still in the process of integrating its perceived territory. In America the ‘western frontier’ had been reached by 1890, well before its rise to superpower status by 1945. This meant that America did not have to juggle being a superpower whilst also battling territory insecurity.

But China is already a colossus and yet territorial insecurity still pervades. That is why Taiwan is such a sensitive issue to Xi. China’s ascendancy has therefore been faster but — territorially speaking — more fragile. China’s territorial security and status as a consolidated ‘nation’ are playing catchup to its economic and international clout. This means that China’s foreign policy is not simply driven (as hawks in Washington might see it) by aggression, but insecurity. What we might see as Chinese aggression towards Taiwan may to the Chinese be a product of insecurity. That raises a fundamental question: is China a ‘revisionist power’ (as it is often labelled) or is it an insecure power?

This question has important policy consequences for how the US must approach China in its foreign policy. There is a trendy argument, recently espoused by Robert O’Brian — former National Security Advisor under Trump — that Trump’s style of aggressive and volatile foreign policy is beneficial, because it helps to deter adversaries. However, this logic only makes sense if one believes that the adversary is being driven purely by greed. If, in actuality, the adversary is motivated by insecurity then aggression — or efforts to explicitly increase the US’s military capabilities (say, in the South China Sea) — will be seen as an act of escalation rather than deterrence.

In the case of China, its peculiar position of being a superpower whilst still in the process of securing what it views as ‘its territory, there is thus a heightened risk of a ‘security dilemma’: whereby everything the US does to increase its security leaves China feeling vulnerable and thereby lashing out. Before you know it, an escalation cycle is created. Right or wrong, China might view the South China Sea just as the Monroe Doctrine proclaimed America’s sphere of influence in the Caribbean.

That is not to say the US should not work on its own security against China, domestically and internationally, but rather that it must be careful about the manner in which it goes about it. China’s recent continental empire makes it especially vulnerable, and therefore especially dangerous.

The promise of the new year rings hollow in Afrin, Syria. The city groans under the weight of displaced families, its iconic olive trees – items of great cultural and financial significance – vanish like forgotten resolutions, and trucks laden with cherished ancient artifacts disappear into the northern horizon.

Critics of the occupation force “disappear”, sexual assaults go unpunished, and families are shaken down for the last remnants of their wealth by aggressive foreign mercenaries. While much of Syria celebrates the fall of Bashar Al-Assad and their new found freedoms, the Kurds of the Northeast watch listlessly from afar. The anniversary of the region’s occupation is nearing seven years – with no end in sight.

The Turkish and “Syrian National Army” (SNA) invasion and occupation of Northeastern Syria in Spring of 2018 has left deep scars across the once autonomous region. Beyond anecdotes of theft, torture, murder, and repression of Kurdish identity, the impacts on the region’s environment, culture, and demographics can even be seen from space, and by you below:

The following sections detail evidence gathered from geospatial analysis

For background on the occupation’s history, click here for a CFR provided overview or here for the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights account of atrocities

Environmental Destruction & Deforestation

According to Kurdish journalists, the SNA have felled an astounding 21 million trees in the region. Alarming reports of mass deforestation are corroborated by archival satellite images which detail the decimation of local olive groves in Afrin and forest along the banks of the Maydanki reservoir among others. As can be seen above, Afrin’s main olive grove has been decimated and is now the site of hundreds of refugee tents of displaced peoples, mainly from other provinces. However, with Assad’s removal, many of these refugees may depart Afrin in the near future to return to Ghouta, Homs, Hama and elsewhere. Nevertheless, the lasting impact of the grove’s destruction, which once served as a fruitful source of local income, pride, and beauty, will continue to haunt the city for decades to come.

Forests across the region have been felled by SNA authorities and collaborators. On the banks of the once idyllic Maydanki, thousands of trees have been cut for profit against the will of local inhabitants. One local stated to a Syrian outlet, “everything in the forest has fallen silent. There is no rustling of trees. The birds have gone. It is as though they uprooted our hearts by cutting down the trees”. Environmental experts warn that the deforestation may alter the local environment permanently.

Archaeological Destruction & Looting

Ain Dara is one of the most important archeological sites in the Levant with iron age artifacts dating as far back as 1300 BCE. Numerous well preserved sphinxs, lions, and intricate Syro-Hittite designs once made the site a top attraction and a source of enormous local pride.

During Operation Olive Branch, the site was reported to have suffered significant damage from Turkish warplanes which bombed the location incessantly. In quite a literal case of adding insult to injury, the site's emblematic lion was looted from the in December 2019. The ancient lion’s whereabouts remain unknown. Since then, as can be seen by the satellite imagery above, massive excavations have taken place. It is quite possible that most — if not all — of Ain Dara’s ancient wonders have been pilfered and sold to the highest bidders.

The images above depict one of more than a dozen documented sites which appears to have been excavated and looted.

Human Displacement

Daily life in Afrin has changed dramatically over the last six years following Olive Branch and the exodus of 300,000 Kurds from the region. The remaining Kurds have had their identity and language suppressed in schools and public life, citizens have been arbitrarily arrested and abused, and the city’s demographics have been rapidly altered.

Afrin’s population has reportedly more than doubled from 200,000 to 500,000. Kurdish rights groups believe this is a deliberate and cynical attempt by Turkey to “Arabize” or restructure the demographics of the region to favor Arabs over Kurds. Turkey has deflected those claims, insisting that the removal of tens of thousands of displaced Syrians to the region has been a necessity to alleviate domestic pressure. (Turkey took in roughly 3.2 million Syrian refugees displaced by the war, several hundred thousand have since returned). Whether or not the refugees are a pawn in a demographic game, their presence in the city has been overwhelming and has dramatically reshaped it’s borders, public spaces, and infrastructure. For residents and refugees, daily life appears to be very challenging.

The fall of Assad and the potentially stabilizing effect of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rule has spurred a large number of these refugees to leave Afrin for their original homes. However, as the satellite imagery depicts, over the years many of these tents have become tiny homes equipped with walls, courtyards, roads, and perhaps even sewage systems. Many of these refugees may come to find their homes in other provinces have been destroyed or are occupied by others and may ultimately opt to remain in Afrin. Kurds who have sought refuge elsewhere and wish to return to Afrin will face similar obstacles, and are unlikely to garner any sympathy from SNA authorities.

2025: A Year of Consequence for Rojava

The plight of Afrin and the surrounding area under SNA occupation is extremely relevant in this moment. The fall of Assad, the posturing of Erdogan, and the rise of Trump indicate that a massive offensive — dwarfing Operation Olive Branch — may come to fruition in early 2025.

Last week, Turkey’s Foreign Minister provided an ultimatum and threatened a large “military operation” against Rojava (the Kurdish region of Syria) if their demands were not met. The comments were made in the wake of Turkish forces assisting the SNA in December in a flash offensive to capture the city of Manbij from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Numerous atrocities have been reported in this recent onslaught including rape, arbitrary killings, and torture.

Although the SDF have launched a successful counter offensive to recapture the crucial Tishreen Dam above the Euphrates, the situation is far from stabilized and Manbij remains under occupation. While the SNA engages in daily battles against the SDF within Syria, Turkey has amassed troops and vehicles near Kobane, a border city which gained worldwide attention due its heroic stand against ISIS in 2015.

More interesting reads: Guy Ward Jackson pinpoints a dangerous new trend in American industrial policy. Check out below.

The Lookout Report

Biden’s Blocking of Nippon Steel: Economic Security or Bad Industrial Strategy?

This is an op-ed. All opinions expressed are the author’s own…

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a year ago · 1 like · Guy Ward Jackson

Without a hasty union of the leading Syrian factions — the HTS and the Kurdish SDF — which could deter invasion, renewed Turkish incursion appears imminent. Syrian solidarity appears quite unlikely for the time being as the HTS has stated that autonomous regions like Rojava must bend to their new Syria and the SDF have raised alarm over submitting to what they consider a patriarchal and extremist state in Damascus.

“With the same mentality that governs Syria once again, it is clear that we are facing another extermination. The path for women is self-defense. As the Women’s Protection Units and the SDF, if we cannot protect ourselves, we will face the most dangerous attacks. Every woman whose heart beats for freedom must fight and protect her region and homeland.” - Rohilat Afrin, General Command of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ)

Trump, whose wavering support of the Kurds and attempt to withdraw from Syria is credited with inspiring Operation Olive Branch back in 2018, appears very unlikely to stand up to Turkey. In past days, Trump has hailed Erdogan’s leadership saying:

Nobody knows what the final outcome is gonna be in the region. Nobody knows who will rule in the final. I believe it is Turkey. Turkey (Erdogan) is very smart, he is a very smart guy and he’s very tough.

If Trump’s prophecy is accurate, and Turkish forces invade and occupy Rojava as they did in Afrin, one can expect numerous atrocities. Kurds will be oppressed, their culture will be banned and diluted, their olive groves will be wiped out, and their cherished cultural artifacts plundered.

Explore the World Imagery Wayback Here

This is an op-ed. All opinions expressed are the author’s own.

The Monongahela River meanders through a state which is not only at the nucleus of American politics, but also the fulcrum of America’s industrial base. Pennsylvanian coal and steel have pulsated through the veins of the American economy since the 19th-century: steel that was used to build everything from the iconic Golden Gate Bridge to U.S. aircraft carriers during WW2. But it has now reached a fork in the road.

In practically his final act as president, Biden has blocked the attempted acquisition of U.S. Steel by Nippon - the Japanese steel manufacturing company. He has done so on the grounds of "national security".

But Biden’s ban of Nippon, when put under an X-ray scan, comes out as protectionism under the guise of national security. Industrial strategy, not ‘economic security’ — and bad industrial strategy at that.

Coming into 2025, the state of the deal was in deadlock. Three CFIUS agencies — the Treasury, Pentagon, and State Department — concluded that the acquisition posed no security risk. However, the problem is that “national security” has become a political tool. Biden and Harris campaigned on blocking Nippon in an attempt to win blue collar voters in Pennsylvania — not because it posed a security threat. Back in 1993, the American steel company Armco successfully merged with Kawasaki Steel Corporation of Japan, to become AK Steel. But that was, of course, in the days of peak globalisation – before the ‘small yards and high fences’ of the 21st-century were erected.

U.S. Steel is a classic example of a legacy company which could do with an injection of capital, scaling laws, and a dose of innovation. J.P. Morgan created U.S. Steel in a merger back in 1901. It grew to be an American behemoth, employing more than 340,000 people at its peak during the Second World War. Today, it is a beleaguered, tired legacy company — only employing 14,000 Americans.

Yet Nippon was offering precisely the right dose of medicine. It had plans to invest $1 billion into a new U.S. Steel base in Pennsylvania, as well as an extra $300m into the Indiana plant. This was on top of a pledge for $1.4 bn in U.S. Steel facility upgrades — underpinned with guarantees for no plant closures, no layoffs, and cooperation with United Steelworkers (USW) labour union. That is why, despite the labour unions’ opposition to the deal, some American steelworkers held rallies at U.S. Steel facilities in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Minnesota, and Alabama — in support of the acquisition.

There was also a clear geostrategic advantage to the Nippon acquisition. Firstly, it was a test of Biden’s so-called “friendshoring strategy”: the idea that — in an era of geoeconomic competition with China — the U.S. should prioritise supply chains with its allies. And not only is Japan the United States’s most important ally in the Indo-Pacific, it has long held the position of being one of the United States’ most important economic partners since the 1990s. Japan holds more foreign direct investment in the United States than any other country ($800bn) and employs over a million Americans. Investment from Japan has been critical to other industries, like U.S. auto-manufacturing, and has been central to the industrial revival of states like Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Texas. If Biden was serious about “friendshoring”, he would have allowed the deal to go ahead.

Catch up on our interview on the status of Artsakh/Nagorno Karabakh with Arman Tatoyan, former Ombudsperson of Armenia, by Felipe Branner

The Lookout Report

The Forgotten Exodus of 100,000 People

A few weeks ago, Josh Schlicht, Co-Founder and fellow writer here at The Lookout Report, wrote in his excellent analysis of the shock early-December uprising in Syria: “There are decades where nothing happens, and weeks where decades happen”. That old quote of Vladimir Lenin, seemingly ever-more applicable in our current turbulent, fast-moving times, ca…

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a year ago · 1 like · Felipe Branner

More importantly, if Biden had been earnest about competition with China, he would have thought again. Beijing produces over half of the world’s steel, and the United States cannot compete with that unless it remains open to competition, new technology (which Nippon offers - especially with green tech), foreign investment, and scaling of capacity. If the United States is not very careful, it will lose the steel manufacturing race just as it lost out on the solar race to China — dismally, and unnecessarily. China now has an 80% global market share of Photovoltaic Cells (PVs) — the critical components of solar panels — partly because of bad protectionist U.S. industrial strategy in the early 2010s in allowing a handful of monopolistic companies to stumble on in an uncompetitive market.

The blocked deal is to be yet another instance in a rising trend of economic security measures in the United States. In an age of geopolitical competition, brittle supply chains, dual use technology (consumer tech which can be repurposed for military use), and economic interdependence, the economy itself has become a national security issue.

Before Nippon, early in 2024, a law was passed banning TikTok unless it is sold by the Chinese parent company — ByteDance — to the U.S. before the 19th January 2025. This was also on the grounds of protecting “the national security of the United States from the threat posed by foreign adversary controlled applications”. But whilst a ban of Nippon is sheer sugar-coated protectionism, TikTok’s ban by CFIUS – which Trump will make a final decision on in late January – was done under justifiable concerns of national security. The social media app extracts vast amounts of data from its users — and TikTok is now a major source of news for an unsettling number of people (40% of those who have TikTok only get their news from it). A distinction thus has to be made between justifiable national security concerns, and sugar-coated mercantilism.

The danger, therefore, is that the over-use of the ‘national security’ card will breed a ‘boy who cried wolf scenario’: creating a kind of national security inflation which undermines the currency of a genuine security concern further down the line.

And yet this rise of economic security — from concerns with supply chains to heavy supply-side industrial strategy — is not unique to the United States. Countries around the world, admittedly under pressure from the United States, prevented the Chinese company Huawei from sinking its teeth into Western 5G infrastructure back in 2018. By the late 2010s 60% of global foreign direct investment (FDI) — including M&A deals — were going to countries which apply screening on national security grounds; two times more than was being screened in the 1990s. The OECD estimates that the share of FDI subject to screening on national security grounds has increased by 60% since 2010 amongst its 38 member states. There is, therefore, a real danger that if the United States treats ‘national security’ as a political tool for protectionist purposes, other countries will follow.

If anything, allowing the Nippon acquisition to go ahead would have been the best decision for U.S. national and economic security: tightening the relationship of the United States with a key ally in Japan, expanding the U.S.’s industrial base, producing more American jobs, catalysing the green transition, and staying competitive with China’s steel manufacturing dominance.

As it stands, U.S. politics has trumped national security; and U.S. industrial strategy has become unstrategic.

Guy Ward Jackson is a Science & Tech Policy Analyst at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, and holds a MA in intelligence & international security from King's College London: Check out his Linkedin here

A few weeks ago, Josh Schlicht, Co-Founder and fellow writer here at The Lookout Report, wrote in his excellent analysis of the shock early-December uprising in Syria: “There are decades where nothing happens, and weeks where decades happen”. That old quote of Vladimir Lenin, seemingly ever-more applicable in our current turbulent, fast-moving times, can serve as a point of reflection on the events of yesteryear. Wars, shock-elections results, rapid technological advancements: last year was packed with them. It is hardly incomprehensible then that in these times, some events fall through the cracks, and are either not covered, or too quickly forgotten. At TLR, the coverage of topics such as these is our mission - which we will vigorously continue to pursue in the new year.

On this day, exactly one year ago, in the opening hours of 2024, one topic, great in its importance, was over-looked; the year’s first victim of the exasperating pace life seems to move at in these times. A few strokes on a piece of paper came into effect, heralding a new reality for the denizens of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh in Azerbaijani). After a shock-offensive by Azerbaijani forces in the fall of 2023, the region was captured and the Republic forced to dissolve all its institutions, entering into force on that cold winter morning of January 1st.

Catch up on our recap of Romania’s Presidential Crisis by Mihnea Turcitu

The Lookout Report

The Failure Dilemma: What’s gone wrong in the Romanian presidential elections of 2024?

“First of all, it was a failure. The fact that we, as a state, reached the point of cancelling elections, it was a failure of certain institutions: The Permanent Electoral Authority (Autoritatea Electorala Permanenta), the Intelligence Services. It was certainly a failure…

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a year ago · Mihnea Turcitu

Nestled in a mountainous border-region caught between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the region has been caught in a tug-of-war since the dissolution of the USSR, with major clashes breaking out in the early 90’s and 2020. Internationally recognized by the UN as a part of Azerbaijan, the area has been populated by ethnic Armenians for over 2000 years, who claim it as part of their ancestral lands. With the surrender of the Republic of Artsakh, almost its entire population of ethnic Armenians, more than a 100,000-150,000, fled to Armenia, a minor country of 2,7 million. Today, at least one in every 30 people now living in Armenia is a refugee from Nagorno Karabakh. What consequences does such a huge influx of refugees have on a country’s domestic politics? What happened to those who stayed behind in Artsakh? And what is the current status of the Azerbaijan-Armenia relationship, post-Nagorno Karabakh?

Wanting to know more about this issue, seemingly forgotten, and seeking answers to these questions, TLR has spoken to Prof. Arman Tatoyan, former Ombudsperson of Armenia from 2016-2022, tasked with upholding human rights. Previously Prof. Tatoyan also served as the Deputy Minister of Justice of Armenia, and as advisor to the President of the Constitutional Court of Armenia. In the international arena, Prof. Tatoyan is a permanent international advisor to the Council of Europe, and has been the Deputy Representative of the Government of Armenia before the European Court of Human Rights.

Privately, Prof. Tatoyan heads the Foundation, "Tatoyan" Center for Law and Justice and holds a Master of Laws from University of Pennsylvania Law School.

When visiting Yerevan last year, I was struck by the murals of Armenian soldiers that lost their lives during the 2020 Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. If you were to connect a few words to what the war meant for Armenia and yourself what would they be?

Well the 2020 war, the 44 day war, was of course a very disastrous war. It was a bloody, full large-scale conflict covering the entire line of contact between Artsakh or Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan, including also border regions of Armenia. Throughout it, massive destruction of civilian communities of Armenia took place, casualties, beheadings, torture, mutilations. All of these crimes remain unpunished of course. There was a huge flow of hatred and violence. Azeris soldiers were filming tortures, atrocities, publishing them on different social media accounts on purpose, to spread this horror to Armenian society and, of course, to become heroes of their own society. Because, unfortunately, Armenophobia has been the main policy and racism based on ethnic belonging of the Azerbaijani authorities. But the war also was significant for its engagement of jihadists and terrorists, mercenaries, because there were credible evidence, and there is also a report of the UN Special Working Group confirming that on the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh or Artsakh, there were mercenaries, terrorists, invited or collected from the northern parts of Syria, from Libya, and elsewhere. They also participated in the war. This is one of the factors that contributed to the very high scale of cruelties in this war. And of course, it resulted in the occupation of a big part of Artsakh and even some part of Armenia, as following the war in subsequent years, Azerbaijan also occupied some territories of Armenia proper.

On the Tatoyan Foundation website, you repeatedly mention the Gekhar Kunik, Vayots, Dezor and Syunik regions. Are those some of the regions that have been subject to posterior incursions by Azeri troops or what is the relevance of these regions today?

Yes, these incursions still happen there and Azerbaijan keeps occupying parts of these lands. We are talking about 200 square kilometers. But this is not just about the territory, the size. They control heights, strategic objects such as hydroelectric power plants, dams, and water reservoirs etc. These are critical objects for the security of Armenia and in these areas, in many places, Azerbaijan also controls roads and they keep targeting them. Roads are vital to Armenia and in 2022, for example, Azerbaijan attacked Armenia from September 13th to 14th, and the first thing they did was hitting a road and targeting an ambulance. They hit this car and they blocked the road which was connecting villages of Armenia with the main part of the community. That is why these occupations also causes huge problems to Armenian society.

In these villages, in these communities, people are deprived of pastures, arable lands, grasslands, water, their gardens, houses, the roads are in danger, freedom of movement. So there is an entire bunch of rights, fundamental rights internationally recognized that are right now being violated.

In your view, what do Azerbaijani armed forces pretend to obtain from controlling these strategic locations and resources. Do they use it as a type of blackmail against the Armenian community?

Yes, we could say so yes, because, for example, in several villages there is no water at all, as Azerbaijan control nearby water sources. There are places where people simply do not even have drinking water.

You served as ombudsman for the Republic of Armenia, in the preceding and succeeding years of the 2020 war, what do you view as the most severe human rights violations committed by Azerbaijan in the past years?

Of course the biggest violation, has to be last year’s events of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity that Azerbaijan commited in Nagorno-Karabakh or Artsakh. When the Republic of Artsakh was disbanded in September of 2023, 120,000 people subsequently left their territories. Taken together with about 30- to 40,000 people that fled as a result of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, or 44-day war, we are talking about 150,000 people that have left their territories permanently. In Artskah there is also Armenian culture, heritage, churches, monasteries, khachkars, etc. All of them right now are being erased and destroyed by Azerbaijan because they seek to destroy the Armenian identity and want to erase anything that can remind people that “Armenians used to live here”. In reality, these territories are indigenous territories for Armenians and Armenians are the indigenous people. These territories are the indigenous homeland of Armenians. And the people that fled were not just some kind of national minority, it was their homeland. They are indigenous people, living in the homeland of their ancestors, having lived there for centuries. So this would be of course the biggest, most horrible violation, combined with massive, massive, forced deportations.

I believe that one of the most underreported subjects in wake of the dissolution of Artsakh, has been the effects or the consequences for domestic Armenian society, that comes with incorporating all these refugees into a relatively small country. How have you handled this and what consequences has it had for Armenian society?

Well, these people of course, as you rightly said, they all moved to Armenia. They had to move to Armenia. Some of them, however, have already left to other countries. According to some non-official statistics; 15- 20,000 of these refugees have left Armenia. Some of them have gone to Russia some to the US, some to Europe. I think the biggest part of them went to Russia because there is no language barrier, etc. as most Armenians know Russian.

Most of them right now, nonetheless, are in Armenia. And there are certain projects, programs that are being implemented right now by the Armenian government, but these are not fair. There was recently even mass demonstrations of Artsakh Armenians who are here against these government programs.

What are these programs, if I may ask?

These programs are about social assistance for these people, related to monthly payments. There are also some programs related to housing issues etc. But the Armenians from Artsakh, keep saying that the programs are unfair and a violation of the rights of Artsakh Armenians.

How come they feel they are unfair?

Because, for example, when it comes to the newly established housing support program that is implemented by the Armenian government, this is not a special program designed for Artsakh Armenians, but for all Armenians, including Armenians who live in Armenia. And Artsakh Armenians claim that this program does not reflect their needs, special needs, and because they are absolutely deprived of anything. They left everything in Artsakh, in Nagorno-Karabakh, so they claim they should have had a special program just for them, whereas this is for all Armenians. If they want, they can benefit, but it does not reflect their real needs.

Has that had any consequences for Armenian domestic politics? Where does this bloc of Artsakh Armenians find themselves politically or do they not have voting rights on par with regular Armenians?

They don't have voting rights because they had to change their passport. So they have three types of status. We can divide their status into three kind of forms. Three groups based on their status. The first group, are people who hold the passport of Artsakh. They are not citizens of Armenia. The second group are people who accepted Armenian citizenship, applied and received Armenian passports, the passport of the Republic of Armenia. They are full citizens. They have all the rights, including the right to vote. The third group, are people who received refugee status so they applied to UNHCR and they received travel documents and other ID documents certifying that they're refugees.

How has these people been received by regular Armenian citizens? Given that they undoubtedly must have arrived in Armenia, with traumas and other phycological scars?

As these were our people, I mean Armenians, same ethnicity, when it comes to regular Armenians, everyone tried to help. Yes, there were certain areas and cases when people were targeted, Artsakh Armenians, by some Armenians of Armenia, who live here, but in general it was okay. We had problems with the government, with government policies, because the current government refuses to use, for example, the word Artsakh - they call it Nagorno-Karabakh.

That seems like a break with tradition. Why is that?

They have announced, that it is due to some security ruling because they have recognized Artsakh as part of Azerbaijan. And Azerbaijan claims that there is no Artsakh in Azerbaijan. That is why they don't use it. In the beginning there was also some hatred, let's say, I would say intolerance, towards Armenians of Artsakh. The main issue is that these people, many of them want to return but unfortunately the Armenian government does not push this agenda forward.

Do you know of any Artsakh Armenians that have stayed behind in Artsakh or Nagorno Karabakh?

Yes, there are 14, as we know, only 14 Armenians, 14, one four, Armenians left….

One four, okay, that little?

Yes, 14 out of 150,000. These people, they remained, and yes, we have no information about them. Recently there was a little snippet of information in the news that one of them died. A civilian, an elderly. But we have no information basically about the status of these people. Nothing.

For this next question I have conflicting prior information. On one hand, I have heard of Azerbaijani official sources saying that Armenians would be free to stay after the takeover. On the other I have heard they would be persecuted. What has the experiences been of the Armenians that had contact with the Azerbaijani authorities? Were there any sort of policy in place, giving them a road to Azerbaijani citizensship?

No of course not. All of these things are just games that Azerbaijani authorities play. Of course, this is not realistic and this is not honest. They are trying to be seen as peace building, as people who want peace, but in reality, Azerbaijan does not want peace and they wanted Artsakh, always wanted Artsakh without Armenians. Because there is a deeply rooted, highly sponsored hatred and racist policy against Armenians. If any Armenians stayed there under Azerbaijani authority, it would have been the same as pushing a Jewish community to live under a Nazi regime. This is the same situation.

In a video for the Tatoyan Foundation, you claim that Armenophobia, this practice you mentioned before, is essentially necessary for the Azeri government to keep itself in power. As a way of creating an exterior enemy that you can galvanize the population around. Could you elaborate on why this is the case?

Yes, because this is the only survival factor for Azerbaijani authorities. Thanks to Armenophobia or due to Armenophobia and racist xenophobic policies against Armenians, they distract the attention of their population from their own problems. Without xenophobia and racism and Armenophobia, what would they do? They would have to speak about reforms, human rights, I don't know, anti-corruption initiatives, etc., many things. So what is their main narrative? The main narrative is anti-Armenianism. That is why they need it for the reproduction of their power, to stay in power, on their posts, etc.

This sounds like bleak prospects for the region going forward. Do you not see any way that you could create a sustainable path to peace in the future of the region? You mentioned briefly before that the current government, as the result of a new policy, has recognized Nagorno Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan. Could removing the conflict around Artsakh or Nagorno Karabakh be a first step on the road to a sustainable peace?

This is not the way. Because, Azerbaijan after having received a Nagorno Karabakh or Artsakh, without Armenians, they have not calmed down and they continue claiming, already again, that Armenia belongs to Azerbaijan and that Armenia is so-called Western Azerbaijan. So that is why the purpose of Azerbaijan is anti-Armenianism in general and their policies against Armenians in general. That is why, they keep continuing and always bring an endless list of requirements related to this. So Azerbaijan will definitely not stop. These authorities will not stop. You know, it's the same as, imagine what would happen after World War Two, if no one punishes Hitler and his regime, but instead they start praising him. What would happen? This man would never want peace, right? It is like the story of Chamberlain who went to sign the infamous Peace-In-Our-Time document before World War Two. He came home and said: “I signed the peace, everything will be okay”. And then what happened? This is the same.

So you see no viable sustainable way to lasting peace in the Caucasus?

With the current Azerbaijani authorities no. Because it is not possible for them. They need Armenians tortured, dead, ethnically cleansed, to cleanse themselves of their own crimes.

What happened in Romania is concerning. It is concerning not only because of the cancellation of the election in itself, but due to the circumstances which led to the cancelling of the election process in one of NATO’s frontier democracies. The events witnessed in Romania ought to be put into the broader perspective of democratic resilience in the Euro-Atlantic, when the countries forming it can be one election away from falling under the far-reaching blanket of subversive power.

What started on the 22nd of November as the true hope of the Romanian people in choosing their future, has ended on the 6th of December with complete disdain and confusion. The two-round presidential election was filled with ad hoc responses to the underdog, the candidate who flew beneath the radar, Calin Georgescu.

2024 was the election year around the globe, and Romania got to close this sequence with, by the judgement of pollsters, strong Euro-Atalantic candidates like Mircea Geoana (ex-NATO Deputy SG), Elena Lasconi (transformative mayor of Campulung Muscel) and Nicolae Ciuca (General in the Romania armed forces and strong advocate for US-Romanian collaboration). All these candidates were presented in the media articles as having 10s of percentage point, while scrolling down, Calin Georgescu was somewhere, down there with the obscure, holding only 5.4%.

When the election result emerged in the first round, people were bewildered, wondering how a man few have heard of can win more than 2 million votes? Those who voted for him only then learned about his past, with each newspaper scrambling before the second round to tell everyone how dangerous he is. Yet his appeal remained as millions of hits on social media provided the public a glimpse of the mysterious candidate.

In the words of former president of Romania, Traian Basescu:

“We were about to elect a president without ever seeing him, a president created by robots. We are on the verge of making a robot president. This individual has not met with citizens, has not traveled across the country, and has not held the traditional meetings. Some messages fabricated by Artificial Intelligence have positioned him as the leader in the first round.

It is unacceptable that someone could become the President of Romania without being seen, without being known, simply because money was spent on... messages.”

In short, the presidential election in Romania was a failure of both democracy itself and the institutions which were ought to protect it, as a major lack of oversight led to a sudden cancellation of the election due to the controversial, successful candidacy of Calin Georgescu, the man with 0 EUR in declared spending for his campaign.

Institutions which were supposed to put a stop to the malicious and non-constitutional behavior of Calin Georgescu’s campaigning strategies seemed dormant right until the very minute the second round was supposed to start. Meanwhile, democracy itself failed as the many decisions made by the Constitutional Court were severely deprived of transparency.

The overwhelming majority of Calin Georgescu voters’ reasoning behind choosing him lay in the fact that they wanted someone else, a person different from the system. Romania serves as a test tube example of every extremist/populist trend in the Western world. What many don’t understand is that people feel betrayed by the system they have so long believed in.

Here are a few quotes of the Calin Georgescu voters:

So…People feel betrayed. Supporters did not (at least most of them) vote for Calin Georgescu’s views and sympathies of leaders of the fascist Iron Guard, but they still found out about him, discovered his less controversial speeches, and he clearly gained popularity with the help of social media, as one voter said. In Romania there are two primary debates. One is why is Calin Georgescu not inquired further by the relevant institutions regarding his statements. The Second one, which led to the cancelling of elections, was regarding the rather dubious campaigning strategy of Calin Georgescu. Down below is a summary of the reasoning for why the CCR court has decided to cancel the election:

1. Irregularities and flaws in the electoral process

2. Vote manipulation

3. Undeclared funding

4. Voter misinformation

5. Violation of equal electoral opportunities

6. Non-transparency of electoral promotion

7. External interference

The Constitutional Court based its decision on the Romanian Security Council’s revelation of foreign interference in the election’s process, including thousands of Russian-linked TikTok and other social media accounts, the personal undeclared funding of Calin Georgescu’s campaign, and the lack of compliance with the electoral code were compelling cases for prohibiting the electoral process from taking place.

The Security Council clearly stated that we are talking about a state actor, with millions of Euros involved in hiring influencers and paying social media sites like TikTok to distribute videos of Calin Georgescu. Over 25,000 accounts have been identified as propagators of the candidate. After tracking the origins of the accounts, clear ties to Russia and other interest groups could be concluded, ultimately, a clear image of classic subversion techniques of the hybrid warfare similarly unleashed upon countries like Moldova.

The CCR’s (Romanian Constitutional Court) decision can be seen as a rescue mission, but it was also attacked by different political figures and Calin Georgescu voters for stalling the democratic process. It was proof that at moments of clear uncertainty, democracy can be held up until the next storm is about to arrive. But why so close-called? Where were the intelligence services which were supposed to signal the irregularities of this situation in advance? Why was this unveiled so late? Why does it seem that there is little investigative effort to be conducted on this candidate regarding the controversial statements and figures he has surrounded himself with?

Again, the reason many Romanians went against the decision was because of the lack of transparency in previous decisions, like the recounting scandal. In Romania, the constitutional court is also highly politicized, so the decision allowed the fueling of the exact electorate of the the far-right, that some form of the deep state, of the SYSTEM, is pursuant of undemocratic behaviour.

Romania must be a lesson. In every European university, you will hear about hybrid warfare, you will hear about populism, you will hear about the extremist wave. Yet we have never seen so clearly and so well depicted the mechanisms employed by malign actors in a European Union country. There is now a resurgence of slight fears about the discontent of the pro-Calin Georgescu voters that they could turn violent, ultimately, instigating a further destabilization and trust in the health of our democracy.

I believe that accountability is crucial. I believe that in the end, the intelligence community stepped up, and the Constitutional Court pursued its tasks. But we need to now analyze retrospectively what could have been done differently and what should be done better. Maybe a greater oversight on each individual candidate’s campaign should be approached more vehemently, and maybe the intelligence services should be offered the stage to update and inform the citizens about the risks and ties of certain candidates to certain interest groups. This was an intelligence failure, a democratic failure, and a broader institutional failure due to how the election was cancelled, with more than 53,000 people in the diaspora having already voted.

One more personal note: it is important to remember that, like Georgescu, most populist figures are just opportunists combining different parts of society and administering the right pill to the right audience. Calin Georgescu, one day, was in the church preaching about the Second Coming, and on another igniting striking resemblances of some of the darkest periods in Romanian history.

Much of the analysis right after the cancellation revolved around the parliamentary elections, and the government to be formed. As an update, there is a pro-European coalition, there is a pro-European government, what we should be paying close attention to is how the recent fringe and extremist parties which recently entered the parliament will behave and will shape the public discourse in the coming year. For now, Romania maintains a somewhat ironic atmosphere, as each established political party avoids taking on ministerial roles in the government, knowing that budget cuts and tax hikes are on the horizon. The irony lies in how, despite the ominous mood within the political establishment, the familiar and time-tested fear of raising costs for the electorate still dominates their decision-making. It seems that Romania has always dealt with short term memory, and the promises of a strong-European coalition, have ultimately encountered the age old tell tale stories of cyclical elections. I have a highly optimistic view on the future, and I think that we should look at what happened as a lesson learned, a sticky note which we shall never peel off from the edge of our computer screen.

There is much talk of a universal nature regarding a resilient Europe, a resilient NATO….Well, we need to pivot a bit from overarching critical infrastructure to think introspectively about where each member’s democracy is really at. That’s what needs to be said. There are plenty of well-trained cyber teams in our alliance, so with the right spirit risks can be analyzed in time, voters and institutions can be informed, democracy can thrive in a transparent setting and anything can be achieved. The rescheduled elections are said to take place in either mid-spring or early summer, but for now we have to maintain the incumbent president, and look eagerly at what this newly formed parliament will do in the coming years. It is a shame, because as much as the horrific acts of war in Ukraine are worth of continuous mourning, Romania had a great opportunity to step up and be the bigger brother in the region, had and still has the chance to carry the weight, however it remains to be seen how it will carry its own.

Mihnea Turcitu is a third-year Honors Political Science student at Leiden University, specializing in Intelligence Studies and International Relations. He is passionate about NATO and international security, his work includes analyzing EU foreign policy effectiveness and the long-term security impact of migration. Being the Europe director for EPIS ThinkTank, Mihnea has led teams to deliver insights on European security. Mihnea has been recognized as a Future Leader at the Euro Atlantic Resilience Forum, and has also won accolades for policy proposals on transatlantic security.