Two Days, One Question Every August 14th and 15th, two nations—Pakistan and India—mark their Independence Days. In theory, these are moments of celebration. Flags rise, anthems echo, and speeches recall the courage of those who fought for liberation. Yet beneath the pageantry lies a harder question: What do we mean by freedom, and have we…
Divergent U.S. and Russian Strategies: Assessing the Scope of High-Level Diplomacy The 15 August 2025 Alaska summit between Presidents Trump and Putin highlighted significant differences between the Trump Administration’s approach and the broader U.S. diplomatic establishment, including the State Department and allied European partners. President Trump’s emphasis on negotiating a “realistic settlement” with Moscow divergesfrom…
Growing Climate Pressures The frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as wildfires, floods, and hurricanes, have dramatically surged in recent decades. The World Meteorological Organization notes a nearly five-fold increase in climate disastersbetween 1970 and 2021, resulting in over two million deaths and US$4.3 trillion in economic losses. Such figures represent an accelerating…
Overlapping existential questions to start with The war in Ukraine is first and foremost a response to what Russia considers as existential threat, in the face of NATO’s continued expansion on its borders. The so-called “denazification” of Ukraine remains a smokescreen with no real substance intended to justify the special military operation against its neighbour,…
Introduction As the G7 recalibrates its global priorities around economic resilience and geopolitical control, a new architecture of fragmentation is emerging, which is one that sidelines multilateral institutions. This piece examines how recent shifts in trade, security, and climate diplomacy reflect not a failure of global coordination, but a deliberate strategy of selective engagement. Drawing…
“Fourteen thousand babies could die in the next 48 hours in Gaza.” – United Nations, May 20, 2025 When I read this line, something ruptured deep inside me. Fourteen thousand babies—not numbers, not statistics, but breathing, crying, nursing newborns—are being consigned to death in the very first hours of life. How does one carry that…
Initially formed as “BRIC” – Brazil, Russia, India, China – and subsequently becoming “BRICS”, with the addition of South Africa,[1] this group of countries constitutes a unique coalition of emerging economies that collectively represent a significant counterbalance to the established economic powers of the West. Despite their collective identity, BRICS members are markedly different in…
After twenty months of multilateral negotiations, the Iran nuclear deal, formally called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was signed in Vienna on 14 July 2015. The signatories were, on one side Iran, and on the other side the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, i.e. China, France, Russia, UK and US, together…
Introduction: The UN, peace and security The quintessential goal of the United Nations, as clearly expressed in its constitutive document, the Charter of the United Nations, is the maintenance of international peace and security. The latter involves not only the management of conflicts, inter- or intra-state, and the absence of violence (negative peace), but also…
