The history of warfare shows that conflicts end either with a clear victory by one side or through negotiations when both face the exhaustion of resources and the will to continue sacrificing lives. There is also a third way: a silent ending of hostilities, the...

Sitting in a lively room in the University of Amsterdam, I ask a question about the respect accorded by students to their former Prime Minister and now head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), Mark Rutte. The room is animated and funny. No-one seems...

Like every U.S. administration since the Cold War, the Trump administration has released a document titled the National Security Strategy (NSS). I use the word “titled” deliberately, for if this text were not stamped with the official seal of the United States, it would...

It is entirely understandable that, after such a long and bloody conflict—not to mention the ongoing genocide now entering its ‘final phase‘—the hastily arranged Trump–Putin summit in Alaska has caught many off guard. Public opinion in nearly every country in the world (except, tragically,

By the end of the annual meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in The Hague in June 2025, it became clear that everything was about money. In fact, the final communiqué was perhaps the shortest of any NATO meeting – only five...

In 2022, I was invited to participate in a book project that gathered leading scientists worldwide to address a topic that already seemed critically urgent: managing the nuclear order. In this context, we organised several online debates. As one of the few participants from...

The past few days have felt like a decisive chapter in the Ukrainian conflict – a time of mounting tensions, sudden twists, and a game of diplomatic ping-pong between Moscow and the West. The apparently divided and squabbling West now appears united in its support...

As we approach a major anniversary – 80 years since the defeat of fascism – a strange silence hangs over my country, Macedonia, and the broader region we now call the territory of former Yugoslavia. National authorities have been under sustained external (Western) pressure for...

On 22 April, the 155th birthday of Vladimir Lenin, 164 delegations from 91 countries gathered at Red Square, each with a red carnation in hand. One by one, the delegations, representing communist and workers’ parties from around the world, laid these flowers at the Tomb...

In January 2025, Indonesia – the world’s fourth-largest country by population (282 million) with the seventh-largest Gross Domestic Product by purchasing power parity – joined the BRICS+ bloc.  Eleven countries are now in this expanded grouping. The original...