Oliver Wiseman, City Journal
For decades, Britain hasn’t built enough houses. In the 1970s, U.K. buyers, on average, could buy a home for less than three times their gross salary; today, they need more than seven times that sum. Since that period, the average inflation-adjusted price of a house has more than quadrupled. No other OECD country has seen such a steep rise.
Jalel Harchaoui, Clingendael
Then, in September, hundreds of Russian mercenaries arrived to support Haftar and shifted the battlefield momentum in his direction. Since 2015, Moscow has been gradually ramping up its engagement in Libya, where it sees economic opportunities and a chance to expand its influence at the expense of Western powers. It now supplies Haftar’s forces with antitank missiles and laser-guided artillery and supports them with paramilitary fighters from the Wagner Group... Читать дальше...
Stratfor Worldview
Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen's landslide victory in elections Jan. 11 will extend her term by four years, setting the island nation on a course for an extended period of cross-strait tensions with mainland China if, as expected, Beijing maintains its hard-line approach to her administration. Tsai's ruling party also captured a majority in Taiwan's 113-member parliament. The strength of...
Colby Cosh, National Post
As long as people use airplanes for war and travel, there will always be a nervous human in the air defence decision loop.
Thomas Graham, Yale Global
A nation is most powerful when its ability to influence others is sustainable. Systems that place power in the hands of a single individual are vulnerable. Vladimir Putin has led his country for two decades through daunting challenges. “During the 1990s, Russia endured a profound systemic crisis and national humiliation unprecedented for a major power not defeated in a great war,” explains Thomas Graham,...
R. Tracinski, Bulwark
Following the U.S. military’s killing of Iranian terror master Qassem Soleimani, a lot of people have been trying to make sense of President Trump’s Iran policy and the support for it among the otherwise isolationist nationalists. The New York Times sums up the sense of confusion: “Mr. Trump has yet to resolve the two conflicting instincts on national security that emerge from his speeches and his Twitter feed: bellicosity and...
Mario Loyola, The Atlantic
David Bell, New York Review of Books
Historians have traditionally considered Western Europe the epicenter of early modern globalization. But in the late eighteenth century, no place had a thicker web of connections to other parts of the globe than the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue—now called Haiti. This small but intensely fertile piece of tropical real estate produced 40 percent of the sugar and half the coffee consumed in the world, as well as enormous quantities of cotton, chocolate, and textile dyes. Читать дальше...
Kasra Aarabi, Times of Israel
The debate on Iran has reached a crossroads, with evermore voices joining Europe’s position in arguing that the US “maximum pressure” policy towards Tehran is failing. Advocates of this position point to the surge in Iranian-sponsored attacks since the US pulled out of the nuclear deal as evidence of policy failure. In recent weeks, even hawks in Washington appear to be losing faith in President Trump’s policy, not least following the restrained and calculated... Читать дальше...
Judy Dempsey, Carn. Eur.
The Europeans have neither the political will nor military means to contain the fallout of the assassination of Iranian Quds Force leader Qassem Soleimani.
Tomoyuki Tachikawa, Japan Times
Fears are growing in Taipei that Japan, a key trading partner of free and democratic Taiwan, might agree with Beijing on a new political document effectively expressing its support for China’s strategy toward what it regards as a wayward province.
Caroline Rose, Geopolitical Futures
Turkey and Greece, two of the Mediterranean’s greatest rivals, have long sparred over dominance of the region. The center of gravity of this competition has been Cyprus, an island split between its Greek and Turkish occupants. The island has immense geostrategic value, sitting at the crossing of the Eastern Mediterranean’s main sea lanes, regional energy markets and trade routes. Control of Cyprus would give a country access to the island’s valuable natural... Читать дальше...
Christopher Sabatini, Miami Herald
While the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei pledged that any response by the revolutionary government of Iran to the killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani would be direct, the threat of an indirect, proxy attack by Iran or forces loyal to it in Latin America hangs particularly heavily in some countries in the region.
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Amara Thiha, The Diplomat
With Xi Jinping’s visit, China is on the verge of realizing a 10-year plan: gaining a back door to the Indian Ocean.
Colin Dueck, Foreign Policy Research Institute
The Berlin republic’s overall foreign policy since the end of the Cold War has centered on an admirably skillful promotion of specifically German economic interests, cocooned within a smothering verbal commitment to multilateral conflict resolution. There’s no doubt this verbal commitment is heartfelt. Still, for Berlin’s Western allies, that’s...