Ukraine, Israel, Azerbaijan: the three conflicts highlight energy vulnerability.
Tag: war
Even as the borders close and the siege tightens, most of the Palestinians also deeply fear leaving, convinced that (like their forebears) they’ll never return.
Since Saturday’s bloody Hamas assault began, Ashkelon, a city located 20 kilometers from Gaza, has become the front line in what is shaping up to be Israel’s most dangerous war in a generation.
October 16 – October 22, 2023
From preparing for the complexity of urban warfare to addressing technological vulnerabilities and gaining self-reliance in military production, the unfolding crisis in Israel has a number of critical messages for Ukraine.
The Oct. 7 Hamas attacks are as devastating on Israel as the Sep. 11 were on the U.S. But like it did 20 years ago, such an attack also has the power to reshape politics inside Israel and around the region in a way that risks making everything worse.
The widely believed inability of Lebanon to control Hezbollah has sparked fears among Lebanese that the Iranian-backed group will join Hamas’ war against Israel and dragged their troubled nation back to a dark chapter in history.
The vast majority of newspapers around the world are dedicating their front pages to the sudden escalation of violence in the Middle East.
There will be a before and after to October 7, 2023, so unprecedented and traumatic have the events of the last 48 hours been for Israel, followed by massive retaliation. We can already draw several lessons from this.
The history of war shows that the losing side tend to lose ground as they are cut off from supply lines to replenish troops with weapons, food and material. Independent Russian publication Important Stories reports why this appears to be the dynamic at play right now for Russian troops in southern regions of Ukraine.
Europe’s foreign ministers traveled together to Kyiv yesterday to reaffirm their support for Ukraine. It is necessary after the first signs of “fatigue” in Western support, from a Polish about-face to the victory of a pro-Russian prime minister in Slovakia.
In a few days’ time, there will probably be no Armenians left in Nagorno-Karabakh, part of a long history of ethnic cleansing. The self-proclaimed Republic, defeated by Azerbaijan, has announced its dissolution, signaling its historic failure. But it also has much wider geopolitical implications.
October 2 – October 8, 2023
Poland has taken President Zelensky’s criticism at the UN very badly, and has decided to not supply new arms to Ukraine. One man in the Kremlin couldn’t be more pleased.
Hundreds of sexual crimes have been officially reported in Ukraine following the full-scale invasion by the Russian army, though the actual number is likely 10 times higher. Ukrainian news website Livy Bereg explores how the nation is documenting the crimes and responding to support victims and bring perpetrators to justice.
Retired Major-General Alexander Vladimirov wrote the Russian “war bible.” His words have weight. Now he has declared that the use of nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine is inevitable, citing a justification that consigns the principle of deterrence to the history books.
September 18 – September 24, 2023
The signing of the Oslo Accords 30 years ago was followed by a failure that set back the very idea of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. A look back at this historic episode and the lessons we can learn from it today.
In Warsaw-based daily Gazeta Wyborcza, Polish writer Szczepan Twardoch poses a crucial question on the front lines of the war in Ukraine: “What will you do when the war ends?” One answer struck him more than any other…
It has been almost 12 years since the author left his hometown, which was at the center of the Syrian uprising. He’s made an academic career studying the impact of war on architecture and cities and researching acts of deliberate destruction.
In recent months, Moscow has intensified its attacks on Ukrainian grain export routes that are dangerously close to NATO member Romania. Is Putin playing with fire?
The Ukraine war is not just physical — it’s also being fought on a psychological front. Russian soldiers are subjected to complex psychological pressures at home and abroad.
There is a long history of mining in Egypt that goes back thousands of years, but has largely been dormant over the past century. But it’s picking up now, with troubling ramifications.
The war in Ukraine has become globalized, with its effects being felt from Africa to China. The only hope of de-escalation is in a potential diplomatic summit between the U.S. and China this autumn.
War can unify a nation, but it can also contribute to the deepening of social tensions — especially when times get tough on the front line. A reflection forward, and back, including the experience of George Orwell calling out the bad Brits during World War II.
Three women who were victims of sexual violence during the Colombian Civil War recount their stories of struggle and survival. They speak up in the hopes that the judiciary will open a new case to bring justice to them and many more survivors of sexual abuse perpetrated during the conflict.
Though Russia’s intentions to take over Ukraine on the ground have failed, they are winning in the field of cartography. Maps seen in respected books and periodicals around the world offer a distorted view of who has the right to territory — and who is the aggressor. A campaign is underway to change maps to change perception of reality.
Illegal punishment through the use of torture is increasingly common in Mongolia’s military, where 44 soldiers have died and 468 violations have been reported in the last decade, according to a 2022 report. Many former soldiers have been physically abused and harassed. After hearing recent reports of torture, the commission has begun training mental health professionals to serve in the military to help.
In the Kakhovka Reservoir region, life used to revolve around the community’s direct access to water – until the dam was attacked two months ago. Locals are now trying to build a new life, carrying with them hope for the end of the war and the return of their precious reserves.
Beijing is obsessed with absorbing the “rebel island,” but a peaceful reintegration seems more and more unlikely. Despite the risk of an economic, and maybe military, confrontation with the U.S. and allies, an attempt by China to take Taiwan by force is probable, sometime between 2027 and 2049.
July 31 – August 6, 2023
World War I started on this day in 1914, with the outbreak of hostilities following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary. What event triggered the start of World War I? The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie by a Bosnian Serb nationalist in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on June 28, 1914, served […]
The Korean War armistice agreement at Panmunjom was signed on this day in 1953, ending three years of fighting. What led to the signing of the Korean War Armistice in Panmunjom? The armistice was the result of negotiations between the United Nations Command, representing the forces supporting South Korea, and the Korean People’s Army and […]
From her local cinema in northeast Ukraine, the author reflects on how watching Christopher Nolan’s biopic, about the father of the atomic bomb, takes a very ominous and actual tone.
July 24 – July 30, 2023
A year after scientific academies called for rebuilding the country’s intellectual infrastructure, not much has changed, as many researchers fled the country and still aren’t planning on coming back to a landscape of destroyed equipment and underfunded programs.
From the work of Dostoevsky, all the way to modern-day psychology’s concept of resilience, the idea that human beings can adapt to any event or situation persists in popular thought. But biology and history itself show it’s not quite the case.
The prospect of Ukraine joining NATO has been postponed. Vladimir Putin will be pleased, knowing that Russia’s best hope is for a long war.
Former Director for European Affairs for the U.S. National Security Council, Alexander Vindman is the Ukrainian native who got ensnared in Donald Trump’s first impeachment investigation. Since the Russian invasion of his native Ukraine, he has been urging more Western support for Kyiv. The coming NATO summit is key, but so to are the 2024 U.S. elections.
Though the U.S. and Ukraine haven’t signed onto the arms convention banning the dangerous weapon, many of their closest allies have. Thus both Washington and Kyiv are coming under fire for the announcement of new U.S. supplies of cluster bombs.