Nobody wants to die for Donetsk, but much more is at stake for the West than just Ukraine’s borders. In the face of Vladimir Putin’s ambitions, it’s time to ask the hard questions.
Category: Geopolitics
WUPPERTAL — The god you’ll discover if you become a Salafist is not a god who will coddle you. That’s a message zealot Pierre Vogel sends out loud and clear over the microphone when he’s doing his village tours to promote the “perfect sharia.” Germany’s best-known convert to Islam used to be a professional boxer […]
Compared to radical Sunni terrorist organizations like ISIS, the regime in Tehran can seem relatively tame. But don’t be fooled.
Will Divine Providence, or “Bible roulette,” play a role in the outcome of next month’s Brazilian elections?
The news, quantified.
Driven by the belief that Russia is the last bastion against liberal globalization, a small band of French fighters, some of them former military officers, have taken up arms against Ukraine.
Their economic philosophies may differ, but Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa and Colombia’s arch-conservative former president Alvaro Uribe, share a taste for the perpetuation of power.
RAFAH — When the wound eases, the real pain begins … This Arab proverb expresses well the profound disillusionment of the inhabitants of Gaza, a week since an open-ended ceasefire came into force. The end of fighting presented by Hamas as a “victory” after 51 days of conflict with Israel has up to now brought […]
The words in the news from around the world.
The Russian President is again one step ahead of the U.S. and Europe, and many have begun to wonder if sanctions are even worth it. And then there is the question: where to after Ukraine?
TEL AVIV — With Israeli students returning to school this week, Calcalist decided to ask a few how they spent what turned out to be an unusual summer holiday, given the fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Seven weeks of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza and Hamas rocket attacks aimed at targets in Israel have […]
CAIRO — Since the group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) declared a caliphate, much has been written about the movement — but still more remains unclear. How seriously should we take their rise? How does ISIS define Islamic law, and how would it be implemented? There are also more basic […]
Not the same imminent threat as Vladimir Putin, but the Hungarian prime minister is posing a bold challenge to the West, with a troubling speech in Romania that flew below the radar.
Motivations and expectations of Russian volunteers in Eastern Ukraine are nothing like those who were sent to fight in Chechnya and Afghanistan. Maybe even more is at stake now.
GAZA — Days after Israel’s “elimination” of four senior Hamas commanders, the “hunt for traitors” is in full swing inside the Islamic organization. At least 24 suspected “collaborators with Israel” have already been executed, but the hunt continues. The same happened for several weeks in 2009, immediately after Operation Cast Lead. It led to the […]
BERLIN — For many in Ukraine the city of Enerhodar is known simply as “Atomic City.” It was founded a couple of decades ago to accommodate a power station, and the city with its 50,000 inhabitants in southeastern Ukraine is known today as one of the country’s main energy suppliers. The six reactor blocks of […]
-Analysis- PARIS — What can Europe do after Kiev’s desperate call for help in dealing with the invasion of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine, where separatists are gaining control? Let’s leave aside for the moment the hypothesis of military aid. European defense doesn’t exist. What’s more, we run the risk of escalation — an imbalance […]
GAZA — Palestinian human rights organizations have used the truce in Gaza to begin their difficult investigation work on a war that has already killed more than 2,000 people. They are among the few NGOs on the ground while global organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, await permission to enter the enclave, which […]
His name is Axel Kicillof, but they call him “Kicilove.”
Just how should the West deal with terrorists as ruthless as ISIS? Hunt them down, ally with their enemies, mess with their minds? Some concrete options, but there’s no time to waste.
Muslim Seleka and Christian anti-Balaka militiamen have squared off for the Central African Republic’s so-called blood diamonds. Some call the wartorn nation a ‘gemocracy’.
While Erdogan rises to the presidency, his ally and foreign minister Davutoglu is set to be the new Turkish prime minister. His intellectual gifts are matched only by his political failures.
The electoral horizon looks unsympathetic for disaffected Brazilian voters after the death of a charismatic presidential aspirant. Will Rousseff win again, despite politics-as-usual fatigue?
Images that made news around the world.
Though Belarus is part of a Customs Union with Russia and Kazakhstan, it is cooling toward Moscow. As Minsk hosts Russia-Ukraine talks, much is at stake in the old Soviet orbit.
Thanks to a hidden supply of weapons seized from a Russian arms trafficker 20 years ago, Italy may be able to quickly help Kurdish fighters as they battle against the ISIS jihadist terrorists.
A year after a chemical attack killed nearly 1,000 civilians in the Syrian rebel stronghold of eastern Ghouta, new fears that the Islamist radical group is building its own chemical stockpile.
Defying U.S. and NATO pressure to cancel its $1.6 billion sale of two Mistral warships to Russia, French President François Hollande has said that the first will be delivered in October, while the delivery of the second would “depend on Russia’s attitude.” -OpEd- PARIS — France simply cannot deliver two Mistral warships to Russia. Doing […]
-OpEd- BERLIN — American Foreign Policy magazine’s home page is a little bit like a quotation board for security policy strategies. Here you see not only how various players evaluate the world’s conflicts but also how much support there is for their point of view, because the number of times the article has been shared […]
The Russian hacking community is as ambigious as the country itself: admired and feared, all at once. A reformed hacker takes us into the bowels of the criminal Deep Web.
Russia may be officially forbidding Western food on grocery shelves, but facing skyrocketing prices and shortages, it’s allowing Belarus and Kazakhstan to act as intermediaries.
India and Pakistan are arch enemies whose ongoing Kashmir conflict shows no signs of ending. So will the film kiss between a beloved Pakistani actress and an India heartthrob be censored?
-Editorial- PARIS — On the Iraq crisis as well as on the others around the world, the European Union is in disarray, hiding its divisions behind a discreet veil of consensus. At an Aug. 15 emergency meeting called by France and Italy, the 28 foreign ministers congratulated themselves … for each other’s stubbornness. Because a […]
ANSAN — It’s been over three months since the South Korean Sewol ferry capsized, killing 300 passengers onboard. It was a tragedy that sparked government reforms and national soul searching. But understandably, it’s been much more challenging for the families of the victims, almost all of whom attended the same high school. The temporary memorial that was created after the April 16 ferry disaster is a giant, air-conditioned tent with an enormous alter that holds framed pictures of the high school students who died when the ship went down. Flowers have been laid out in front of them, and there […]
COMRAT — In Comrat, the capital of the autonomous Gagauzia region in southern Moldova, time has stopped. Mud houses and damaged roads, some of which have never been touched by asphalt, make this town of 26,000 residents feel like something from the 19th century. To get closer to what resembles an urban atmosphere, visitors must […]
TEL AVIV — A summer of fighting in Gaza has reignited a wave of global protests against Israel. Companies operating in Israel — such as maritime cargo giant Zim and major food producers — are finding themselves under attack. But they are fighting back. “The move to a sweeping boycott of anything Israeli, the violence […]
Looking for family members who have emigrated to Europe, or in search of better opportunities, Congolese girls instead find themselves prey at the hands of human traffickers.
MOSCOW — The war in eastern Ukraine is being fought on several fronts — with deathly weapons and munitions on the one hand, and with competing interpretations of reality on the other. As the conflict drags on, it’s increasingly becoming a propaganda war. From the beginning, the Russian media has taken an active part in […]
MYITKYINA — This is a sacred place for all Burmese people. The confluence of the Mali and N’Mai rivers, known as Myitsone in Burmese, forms here in Burma’s northernmost state of Kachin. The converging rivers form the Irrawaddy river, which flows north to south over more than 2,000 kilometers. It’s a vital artery that the […]
Many countries agree that the U.S. politicizes the dollar by punishing nations who don’t abide by U.S. sanctions. With this American approach comes isolation, and the risk of the dollar being replaced as global currency.