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Joy Division: Belarus
Here is how to play great-power politics when you are the dictator of a country with a population of 9 million. First, lock up a lot of people, attracting attention and creating leverage. Second, make...
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Awake Now? The US and Europe
In an ideal, imagined world, the US is a wise, friendly, and eternal mentor to its European allies. It uncomplainingly shoulders the burden of military and diplomatic leadership. It does not push its...
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Stoppardian Genius: RIP
A British academic crosses the Iron Curtain to speak at an official conference, with an ulterior motive. In hindsight’s rosy light, you might guess that Professor Anderson (we never learn his first...
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The 29th Point: Cognitive Control
Badly drafted, one-sided, and machine-translated from Russian, the supposed 28-point peace plan should have been a laughing stock. Instead, it prompted anguish in Ukraine, panic in Europe, and frantic...
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Fogbound: Narrative Wars
Corruption scandals in Kyiv, devastating attacks on infrastructure, the looming loss of Pokrovsk, and newly effective Russian innovation in drone warfare — the bad news from Ukraine keeps coming. Put...
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Aesthetics: Border Control
One of the pleasures of my annual visit to Venice is seeing how the countries that I know best present themselves at the Biennale, the international summer-to-autumn cultural festival that features...
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Punchlines: Wagner and Narva
Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries are not the kind of people you want to see on your doorstep. So it was unwelcome news in Estonia this Sunday when border guards spotted the group’s distinctive flag...
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Toy Story: Grounded
At great cost, in tight secrecy and with considerable risk, Russia is developing a nuclear-powered missile. Given NATO’s flimsy air defences, the latest test flight (reported but not confirmed) of the...
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Unmuzzled: German Spies
Penetrated by the opposition, paralysed by legal obstacles and subject to political interference, Germany’s intelligence services were for decades seen as at best useless, and at worst outright...
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Boot Camp: Scare Stories
The thick forest of the Saatse Boot protrudes sharply but pointlessly into Estonian territory. The dented oblong is crossed by a quiet single-track lane, about 800m long, which is not connected to the...
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Magic Weapons: Drones
From Munich to Lviv is 12 hours by car. But the distance from the Bavarian to the Galician capital is far greater when it comes to Russian attacks. Mere reports of mystery drones at Munich airport...
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False Alarms: and Real Ones
A Russian land grab in Estonia in 2028 would destroy NATO, argues the newly published, best-selling, and widely reviewed“If Russia Wins” by Professor Carlo Masala. I share his vividly depicted...
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Test: Found Wanting
Europe’s gravest security crisis in decades is heading to disaster. Russia’s intrusions into Polish, Romanian and Estonian airspace cannot be dismissed as accidents or trivialities. They are a direct...
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Tip-toeing to Defeat: NATO’s Doom
Violating Polish airspace could turn out to be Vladimir Putin’s worst mistake. Imagine that it leads to the instant seizure of Russia’s frozen central bank assets and to the transfer of $300 billion...
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Stress Test: Fail
If frontline states cannot cope with the strains and stresses of peacetime, how will they manage in a war? That is the conclusion the Kremlin will be drawing from the past week’s news. The...
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Fog of War: Defeat and Victory
In war, argued Carl von Clausewitz, “the result is never final”. Carthaginians would doubtless disagree: the Roman empire’s victory in 146 BC brought their enslavement and the complete physical...
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Swedish Infrastructure: Nightfall
Keeping the lights on should be a matter of course in a well-run country. But a two-hour power cut on the Swedish island of Gotland on August 23rd was not just embarrassing, but sinister. Observers...
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Dirty Deals: Borders
Remember Goa? The last fragment of Portugal’s Indian empire was annexed after a brief military operation in 1961. Few raised even token protests at this exercise of raw power politics. Gained by force...
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Baked Alaska: Pricey
Speculation swirls around the US-Russia meeting in Anchorage planned for Friday. Will Ukraine be at the table, or on the menu? What leverage (if any) will the US apply to Russia to extract concessions...
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Reliquary: The Helsinki Process
Cold War hawks loathed the East-West discussions in Helsinki in the early 1970s, and the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) was signed in the Finnish capital this...
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