India’s foreign policy diplomacy in the 1990s and 2000s focused majorly in trying to delineate India from being hyphenated with Pakistan. From India’s strong presence in Davos in 2006 and 2015 and in between, it marked a renewed confidence that India was an economic might in its own right. But commentators, including former Foreign Secretary … Continued

The appeal to science to strengthen racist ideologies is on the rise - and increasingly part of the public discourse on politics, migration, education, sport and intelligence. Stereotypes and myths about race are expressed not just by overt racists, but also by well-intentioned people whose experience and cultural baggage steers them towards views that are … Continued

On 27 October 2018, Bari Weiss's childhood synagogue in Pittsburgh became the site of the deadliest attack on Jews in American history. For most of us, the massacre came as a total shock. But to those who have been paying attention, it was only a more violent, extreme expression of the broader trend that has … Continued

In 1993, a newly-appointed CIA director warned that Western powers might have ‘slain a large dragon’ with the fall of the USSR, but now faced a ‘bewildering variety of poisonous snakes’. Since then, both dragons (state enemies like Russia and China) and snakes (terrorist and guerrilla organisations) have watched the US struggle in Iraq and … Continued

Psychologists have long understood that social environments profoundly shape our behavior, sometimes for the better, often for the worse. But social influence is a two-way street—our environments are themselves products of our behavior. Under the Influence explains how to unlock the latent power of social context. It reveals how our environments encourage smoking, bullying, tax … Continued

The United Kingdom is one of the world’s largest contributors to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which provides services such as education, healthcare and shelter to millions of Palestinian “refugees”. However, UNRWA is not a beacon of stability in the Middle East. Incitement to violence … Continued

  A long-standing BBC Correspondent, Bridget Kendall MBE was appointed the first female Master of Peterhouse, the University of Cambridge’s oldest College, in 2016. Educated at Oxford and Harvard as well as two Russian Universities, she joined the BBC World Service as a trainee in 1983 and became the BBC's Moscow correspondent in 1989, covering the … Continued

  Con Coughlin, one of Britain's leading journalists, is the executive foreign editor of The Daily Telegraph and a world-renowned expert on the Middle East. He is the critically acclaimed author of The New York Times bestseller Saddam: His Rise and Fall. He appears regularly on television and radio in the United States, and has … Continued

In a world in which internet troll farms attempt to influence foreign elections, can we afford to ignore the power of viral stories to affect economies? In this groundbreaking book, Nobel Prize–winning economist and New York Times bestselling author Robert Shiller offers a new way to think about the economy and economic change. Using a rich array … Continued

Lebanon stands at political crossroads. As heightened tensions and border clashes with Israel threaten a repeat of the 2006 conflict, the growing strength of Hezbollah as a state within a state is a source of concern for the security of the wider region. Indeed, Lebanon currently faces a multitude of threats from within and without, as Iran continues … Continued

When Volodymyr Zelensky was elected as Ukraine’s president in May 2019 he had been a politician for little more than four months. Even during his election campaign, he remained a professional comedian and a fixture on television shows, many of which aired on TV channels owned by the billionaire oligarch Igor Kolomoisky. Since becoming president, Zelensky … Continued

Popular consensus says that the US rose over two centuries to Cold War victory and world domination, and is now in slow decline. But is this right? History’s great civilisations have always lasted much longer, and for all its colossal power, the US was overshadowed by Europe until recently. What if this isn’t the end? … Continued

  Aliide Naylor is the author of The Shadow in the East: Vladimir Putin and the New Baltic Front (I.B. Tauris, 2020). A freelance journalist focusing on Russia and eastern Europe, her writing has appeared in The Guardian, New Statesman, POLITICO Europe, frieze, Vice, among others. Naylor has travelled to all corners of the Baltic … Continued

In recent times, issues such as multiculturalism, immigration, and integration have established themselves as major features of political discourse in a number of Western countries – including the UK. Muslim migrant communities have been at the heart of these debates, which are often framed as a clash of cultures and values between Western liberal democratic … Continued

          Miri Eisin began her career in the IDF as part of the Israeli intelligence community. For over twenty years she served as the head of the combat intelligence corps, the assistant to the director of Military Intelligence, and as the Intel officer in combat units and research departments. After retiring … Continued