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Inching closer to an uneasy peace in Ukraine
The Trump peace plan goes some way towards squaring the circle by providing some guarantees to both sides, albeit far fewer than both would like. As such it is a reasonable compromise and a good starting point for further talks. There will be some hard diplomatic work ahead, but at least the long process of negotiation is finally about to start.
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Germany’s new right: Trading on nostalgia for past prosperity in an age of uncertainty
This long-read offers a different explanation for the hard-right surge in Germany. It shows that German unification in 1990, signalling the triumph of liberal democracy and the onset of neoliberal globalization, unleashed a new form of nationalism—Deutschmark nationalism—which, after mutating into export nationalism for a while, became the ideological seed for the AfD.
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Squatting the master’s house? Lessons in grassroots resistance from Bologna
In an historic victory for grassroots resistance, an Italian court has set a precedent by recognizing moral grounds for defying state violence. On December 12, 2024 a Bologna court ruled that members of Làbas, a social centre in Italy’s most left-wing city, acted out of “particular social and moral value” when they resisted a violent eviction by militarized police in 2017.
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What is the West’s end-goal in Ukraine?
Russia has now fired an experimental hypersonic medium-range ballistic missile at a Ukrainian industrial facility in the city of Dnipro. This raises questions about the West’s policy of incremental escalation in Ukraine, specifically what goals it is meant to achieve, whether those goals are actually achievable, and whether the cost of pursuing those goals may be so high as to render them unwise.
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Ukraine’s ‘victory plan’ faces sobering realities
While Zelensky continues to talk of restoring all of Ukraine’s lost territory he has begun to wake up to the reality that this is impossible by military means. Unable to shift dynamics in his favour, he is hoping instead to shift the political dynamics by refocusing the Ukrainian war effort away from defending its own territory and towards striking the territory of the Russian Federation.
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Serbia’s ‘green transition’ undermining local interests
Serbia’s Jadar region is home to one of Europe’s largest untapped lithium deposits, and President Alexander Vučić recently inked a series of deals with the European Union “granting the EU and European carmakers exclusive access to Serbian lithium and paving the way for the construction of one of the largest lithium mines on the continent.”
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Europe at the ‘hot gates’
Like the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, the West’s distribution to Ukraine of Russia’s $300 billion in assets will not be enough to prevent eventual defeat. The Ukraine war will almost certainly be resolved within the next 12 months—on the ground, not with bank accounts. Like the Spartans at Thermopylae, time may run out for Ukraine even before Europe can buy some more of it.
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Ukraine rolls the dice on Kursk incursion
The Ukrainian attack on Kursk is a considerable gamble, driven perhaps by a sense that Ukraine’s weak military position left few other options other than a slow, grinding retreat. If it does induce the Russian government to negotiate, then it will have succeeded. But it could also end up extending the war rather than bringing it to a quicker end.
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In Ukraine war’s shadow, cracks emerging in European consensus
It may appear that European unity on Ukraine is crumbling. This would be a false conclusion. Hungary and Slovakia are very much outliers. Elsewhere in Europe, political leaders remain utterly committed to the Ukrainian cause, and perhaps rather oblivious to the military realities, continuing to talk of supporting Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”
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Delusions and paranoia in NATOland
What does windfall spending on NATO do for Canada’s national security? As the militarization of the North proceeds against an inflated eastern threat, eroding Canadian sovereignty through Cold War aerospace programs such as NORAD, it remains difficult to portray Canada’s increasingly assertive global deployments as a matter of national defence.