For much of the post-Cold-War era, Greenland existed at the margins of strategic thought. Immense in scale yet negligible in population, the island appeared to confirm the 1990s prevailing assumption: geography had been eclipsed by markets, institutions, and technology as the primary drivers of power. Ice-covered landmasses seemed more symbolic than consequential.
For decades, Ghana has cultivated a reputation as one of Africa’s most stable democracies, characterized by political continuity paired with a pragmatic, restrained, and morally credible foreign policy. Accra’s standing now has garnered an unusual global spotlight following a brief but highly charged diplomatic fallout with Israel.
Iran has entered its fifth day of an effective nationwide internet blackout as anti-government protests, born of deep economic grievances, spread across several cities. While independent verification of casualties and overall scale remains constrained by the telecommunications lockdown, activists and monitoring groups using Starlink and shortwave radio report significant violence and mass arrests.
President Trump’s military raid that removed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro may have been tactically impressive. Yet his promise that the US will reap billions from a Venezuelan oil bonanza runs up against harsh economic realities. Venezuela’s oil industry has collapsed after decades of mismanagement.
For the first time since the Cold War, the US explicitly seeks to influence Europe’s internal political order. The Trump administration’s 2025 NSS does not merely criticize European policies or institutions but openly endorses nationalist parties as preferred partners. It thus reframes Europe’s conflicts as matters of strategic alignment.
The world just witnessed another high-intensity, live-fire Chinese military exercise around Taiwan. The dispute over the island represents one of the most serious risks of another great-power war. Even if unsuccessful, a Chinese attack against Taiwan would risk nuclear escalation, global economic shock, and long-term degradation of international relations.
On November 27, 2025, China released its latest arms control white paper titled “China’s Arms Control, Disarmament, and Nonproliferation in the New Era” for the first time since 2005. The new white paper marked a critical policy divergence from its 2005 predecessor by omitting China’s long-standing commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
For two decades, Berlin treated China less as a geopolitical problem than as an economic solution. German carmakers sold more vehicles in China than in Germany. Machinery firms supplied the tools for the world’s most spectacular manufacturing boom. Politicians wrapped this symbiosis in a comforting doctrine: Wandel durch Handel or “change through trade”.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has actively reshaped Europe’s deterrence landscape. The political uncertainty surrounding Donald Trump’s return to the White House has renewed calls for European strategic autonomy and intensified doubts about the long-term reliability of US extended nuclear deterrence in European capitals.
Western governments have increasingly adopted policy tools that would have seemed unconventional a decade ago, aiming to counter Beijing’s industrial depth and strengthen the West’s capacity to compete in critical strategic sectors.
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