Ukraine, EU, and Values: A Drama in Three Acts

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is recreating the bases of continental and transatlantic politics, but it is also helping to lay the foundation of a new system of values and traditions that unite more than yesterday a part of the world. Act I, Germany One of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s goals at the outset of the […]

From Peter the Great to Vladimir the Small?

The mobilization announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin on September 21 is not sure to bring a victory from the battered fields of Ukraine. Still, it declares loudly what a growing number of observers have been saying for months: that the “special operation” against Kyiv has failed and that Moscow has been defeated. Against this […]

Better call Trump

There is a strong China angle in the whole Donald Trump affair[1], the growing controversy engulfing America about the ex-president’s behavior during the January 6, 2021 tumult, and his insistence on rejecting the results of the election that brought Joseph Biden to the presidency. The Chinese political system is consistently vertical, unitary, and rational. It […]

Save Russia before it’s too late

On the night of August 20, the old Russian tradition of terrorism came back. Darya Dugin, daughter of Alexander, top ideologist and advisor to Russian president Vladimir Putin, was killed by a bomb while speeding with her car on a highway out of Moscow. The father was supposed to be with her but changed the […]

An Italian Postmodern Coup

The resignation of Mario Draghi as Prime Minister of Italy, to be officially tendered next Wednesday, could trigger a chain of events going well beyond Italian borders. They could engulf the whole continent and give Russia a badly needed political win, something that so far has escaped it on the battlefields of Ukraine. One scenario […]

What is Trumping America?

The issue of ex-president Donald Trump and his claims of a “stolen election” is no longer a mere US domestic issue with some limited impact abroad. It must be a significant question of America’s “soft power” and legitimacy as the US main competitor; China strongly uses it to argue against Washington’s sincerity in its defense […]

American Crisis and China

One year after what amounted to a botched attempted coup in America, the January 6, 2021 supporters perhaps should have been arrested. They haven’t been for many reasons, mainly in hopes of not deepening the great divide of American society and trying conversely to bring the political movement behind it back into the mainstream. One […]