Clear geopolitical analysis
Why the 1995 Murayama Statement Could Not Solve East Asia’s History Problem Author: Finley Southall In November 2025, after a diplomatic row between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan escalated, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning posted a video on social media recalling the 1995 Murayama Statement, Japan’s most comprehensive wartime apology, saying it was “high … Read more
Author: Liza Dzanashvili “I am Georgian, and therefore I am European.” In 1999, speaking at the European Parliament, Georgia’s then Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania offered a sentence that would become on of the most recognizable expressions of Georgia’s European identity. It was more than a diplomatic declaration. For a country emerging from the collapse of … Read more
Author: Robert Saudelli In 2025, the European Commission designated The Rovina Valley Project of Euro Sun Mining as strategically important to Europe’s raw materials supply. It was among the first batch of companies to receive such a designation. However, that assigned designation only means something if Romania actually acts on it. Now, as the Rovina … Read more
Why China May Not Need to Invade Taiwan to Defeat It An island does not have to be conquered to be defeated. That proposition has appeared repeatedly throughout modern history. From the naval blockade of Cuba in 1898 to Germany’s submarine campaign against Britain in the First World War, from the strangulation of Japan in … Read more
Subtitle: A Democratic Blueprint for Reforming the European Union Europe’s Real Problem Is Not Federalization The debate surrounding the future of the European Union has long been dominated by a familiar question: should Europe become a federation, or should it remain primarily a union of sovereign states? While this discussion continues to shape political discourse … Read more
History offers many examples of military victories that failed to deliver lasting political gains. One of the most famous comes from the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748), when France won important battles and occupied significant territories, only to return most of its conquests in the peace settlement. Many contemporaries felt that French military achievements had been squandered by diplomacy, giving rise to the expression “bête comme la paix” (“stupid as the peace”). While France had often prevailed on the battlefield, it was Prussia that emerged as the conflict’s principal beneficiary by retaining the rich province of Silesia. Nearly three centuries later, a similar question is being asked about the confrontation between the United States and Iran: did Washington achieve a military victory only to discover that winning the peace may prove far more difficult than winning the war?
The war between Russia and Ukraine has revived one of the most dangerous questions in modern geopolitics: what happens when a nuclear power risks losing a conventional war against a non-nuclear state? For decades, nuclear strategy was built around the assumption that nuclear-armed states would rarely face existential military defeat. Nuclear weapons themselves were supposed … Read more