World - Katoikos

Shanghai Cooperation Organisation – Stronger regional integration or a tool for bigger geopolitical and geoeconomic games?

Manan Shah
Russia , World , India , China , Analysis , Foreign Affairs
6 September, 2025

The 25th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit was held in Tianjin, China from August 31 to September 1, 2025. Coming at a major historical juncture, this summit arguably grabbed the global limelight more than ever before, bringing together the main non-Western powers and emphasizing their commitment to establishing a “more just, equitable and representative multipolar…

After the Funeral: Why the Rules-Based Order Will Survive Without the WTO

The WTO’s decline and Its limits The global trading system, as we know it, has lost its central referee. On April 2, 2025, the United States announced sweeping new reciprocal tariffs on imports ranging from steel to semiconductors, with duties reaching as high as 50% on some goods. The move was met with predictable disappointment…

Curry, Ice Cream, and Diplomacy: How a Small Chinese City Is Serving Up the Shanghai Spirit

Keyu Guo
Multiculturalism , World , China , Analysis
1 September, 2025

As the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) prepares to hold its summit in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, one phrase is back in focus: the “Shanghai Spirit.” This regional bloc was founded in 2001 by China, Russia, and several Central Asian nations to promote regional security and mutual trust. Today, with 10 member countries that…

Unrealized Freedoms: Reflections on Independence, South Asia, and the Future of Global Peace

Sudha S. Reddy
World , India , Peace & Security , Analysis
29 August, 2025

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…

The 2025 Alaska Summit: Strategic Dynamics in the U.S.–Russia–China Triangle and the Ukraine Crisis

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…

Iran’s water predicament: national, regional and global dimensions

Iran has often made headlines over the years due to its theocratic governance, its nuclear program, and its longstanding geopolitical tensions with the United States, Israel, and Western powers. While these issues dominate global narratives, they can obscure the lived reality of nearly 90 million people who inhabit a country with a civilization dating back millennia. Iran is home to…

The Bubbles or the Boiling Water? Ways to regenerate the Earth and Humanity

There is a dissonance between the international and national legal frameworks on the protection of the environment and the practices of political and economic groups that endorse the abuse of nature. The latter result in the devastation of huge areas through logging, mining, industrial chemical production and industrial agriculture, leading to the severe environmental problems…

Fragmentation as Strategy: Why the New Global Order May Leave the UN Behind

Yunis Gurbanov
World , UN , Peace & Security , Economy , Analysis
10 July, 2025

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…

In the Garden of Limits: Student Visas and the Decline of U.S. Educational Appeal

I was reading Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts when I came across the line: “This isn’t America and you can’t say all the things you think,” said by an officer to a United States ambassador’s daughter in Nazi Germany. I warn against drawing too many comparisons between that time and place and our…

What is a Sadistic State and how can it be countered?

A new kind of state is born Reflecting on what is happening in the US since the (second) Trump inauguration on 20 January 2025, people say it is becoming an authoritarian state, a corrupt state, an anti-immigrant state, a human rights crushing state, a white nationalist state, an oligarch-controlled state, and a state that is…