Geopolitics & international affairs
President Donald Trump announced at the NATO summit in Ankara that the United States will grant Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriot air defense systems on its own soil. It is the first time Washington has authorized an ally to domestically produce its most advanced anti-ballistic missile technology. “We’ll give them the right to make […]
Beijing is rolling out a new layer of legal weapons designed to hit back at US and European sanctions, and foreign companies operating in China are the ones who will feel the squeeze. The latest package builds on three pieces of legislation enacted or drafted since March 2026. Taken together, they give China the most […]
The United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve is running out. As of mid-June, it held 340.3 million barrels, the lowest level since July 1983. The Iran war has burned through it at a rate not seen since the 2022 Ukraine crisis, and there is no plan to refill it. The SPR was created after the 1973 […]
The United States has renamed its Indo-Pacific Command back to Pacific Command, reversing a 2018 decision that signaled strategic focus on the region. The change is not merely bureaucratic. It reflects a deeper shift: the second Trump administration is less interested in the “Indo-Pacific” construct than its predecessor was, and America’s Asian allies are starting […]
The fragile ceasefire between the United States and Iran collapsed on July 8, triggering the heaviest exchanges of fire since the June 17 truce, with U.S. warplanes striking some 90 Iranian military targets and Tehran responding by firing missiles at three Gulf Arab states hosting American bases. U.S. Central Command confirmed strikes on Iranian air […]
Donald Trump fired the remaining members of the Election Assistance Commission on Thursday, July 9, reducing the four-member agency to zero and triggering fears that the 2026 midterm elections will be run without federal oversight. The EAC is an independent, bipartisan agency created by the Help America Vote Act of 2002, after the contested 2000 […]
A series of loud explosions shook southern Iran on July 9, striking near the Bushehr nuclear power plant and sending a familiar question across the region: who is bombing Iran now? Iranian media reported blasts in multiple locations. Mehr news agency recorded six explosions across Bushehr, Choghadak and the port city of Konarak. Ehsan Jahanian, […]
Mama Regina lives in Douala, Cameroon, wedged between the container port and the city’s slums. Her son Moses was fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine when he was shot running toward the trenches. She has been waiting for more than a year, not for her son to come home, but for his body. “He left […]
The NATO summit in Ankara ended on July 8 with the usual communiques about unity and burden-sharing. But the two wars that dominated the room, Ukraine and Iran, are moving in opposite directions, and the alliance is only really steering one of them. On Ukraine, the alliance found something close to consensus. NATO leaders confirmed […]
Andy Burnham, the man about to become Britain’s next prime minister, has done something his predecessor never did: apologized for Labour’s response to the war in Gaza. In a video posted to social media on July 9, Burnham said the party “didn’t get it right” at the start of Israel’s military operations, and that its […]
