Wednesday 15 July 2026 John Stockwell belonged to a generation of American intelligence officers forged in the furnace of the Cold War, who entered public service convinced that they were defending liberal democracy against totalitarian expansion. Unlike many of his contemporaries, however, he did not retire quietly behind the walls of secrecy that surround intelligence work. Instead, after thirteen years with the Central Intelligence Agency, he chose to expose what he believ

Wednesday 15 July 2026 Western political and legal thought has long tended to distinguish clearly between war and peace. States are either at war or they are not. Armed conflict is declared or acknowledged. Treaties are signed. Ceasefires are monitored. International law, diplomacy and commerce all function more easily when this binary distinction is maintained. Russia has rarely viewed the world in such uncomplicated terms. Instead Russian strategic culture has traditionally

Wednesday 15 July 2026 The phrase “forever war” entered the American political vocabulary as a criticism of the seemingly endless military campaigns that followed the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. Donald Trump rose to political prominence in part by denouncing precisely these interventions. He criticised the invasion of Iraq as a strategic blunder, questioned the utility of prolonged nation-building in Afghanistan and promised American voters that he would end costl

Wednesday 15 July 2026 British politics has always possessed a remarkable capacity for producing insurgents. From the Chartists of the nineteenth century to the Brexit movement of the twenty-first, figures have emerged who have challenged the political consensus by claiming that the established parties no longer represent the interests of ordinary people. Two of the most striking examples, separated by almost a century, are Sir Oswald Mosley and Nigel Farage. Both built polit

Tuesday 14 July 2026 The history of Europe demonstrates that wars rarely end at the moment the shooting stops. They conclude only when political institutions emerge that are capable of replacing violence with predictable administration. The most successful post-conflict settlements have generally depended not merely upon treaties but upon impartial supervisory mechanisms that create confidence among former belligerents while local institutions recover. The question therefore