Introduction: Why the United States Is Competing with China Recent disruptions to critical undersea communication lines such as the 2025 cable cuts in the Red Sea, damage to Baltic Sea networks, and interference near Taiwan, have highlighted the fragility of the world’s data arteries. These incidents underscore how undersea fiber-optic cables, which transmit over 95 percent of global data traffic, are increasingly contested assets in a broader geopolitical struggle. Once view

In this connective logic, taking public action or contributing to a common good becomes an act of personal expression and recognition or self-validation achieved by sharing ideas and actions in trusted relationships. Sometimes the people in these exchanges may be on opposite ends of the world, but they do not require a club, a party or a shared ideological frame to make the connection. [...] The linchpins of connective action are the formative elements of sharing and co-produ

In September 2025, Nepal was rocked by a wave of protests sparked by the government’s sudden decision to ban social media platforms across the country. The frustration quickly spilled into the streets, with thousands of young people, many from Generation Z, demanding not only the restoration of online freedoms but also an end to corruption, political stagnation, and unemployment. This attempt to restrict the digital sphere reflected more than just domestic control: it highlig

State sovereignty and the moral need to protect citizens are at odds at a time of growing transnational crises including war, humanitarian catastrophes, state collapse, and mass displacement. Concepts like the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), human security, and human-centric ideas of duty of care are challenging traditional ideas of sovereignty (complete territorial control, non-interference). This essay adopts a comparative normative approach, drawing on UN and NGO case stu

The term “fire sale” has been around since the nineteenth century to describe firms selling smoke-damaged merchandise at cut-rate prices in the aftermath of a fire. But what are fire sales in broad financial markets with hundreds of participants? How can fire sales matter for generic goods, such as airplanes or financial securities? In modern financial research, the term “fire sale” has acquired a different meaning. [...] a fire sale is essentially a forced sale of an asset a

Introduction Power today no longer moves only through armies or alliances. It moves through capital. In a fragmented world where energy, technology, and supply chains have become battlefields, sovereign wealth has turned from a financial instrument into a strategic one. What was once passive accumulation is now deliberate direction. Across the United States, Europe, the Gulf, and Asia, states are rediscovering their role as investors of last resort, and first movers of power.

Weaponized interdependence (WI) is defined as a condition under which an actor can exploit its position in an embedded network to gain a bargaining advantage over others in a contained system. In their 2019 International Security paper, Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman argue that WI challenges long-standing ways that international relations experts think about globalization. States with political authority over central economic nodes “can weaponize networks to gather informat

The American National Style in 2025: How can Europe respond? Tariffs, shattered alliances, and one crisis ‘solved’ each month: Donald Trump’s second term is American foreign policy in its rawest form. To help us understand this moment in history, few can help us as much as Stanley Hoffmann, who theorized that American foreign policy is guided by a clear National Style. President Trump’s second term magnifies enduring features of the National Style but has thus far applied the

The youth bulge is a common phenomenon in many developing countries, and in particular, in the least developed countries. It is often due to a stage of development where a country achieves success in reducing infant mortality but mothers still have a high fertility rate. The result is that a large share of the population is comprised of children and young adults, and today’s children are tomorrow’s young adults. In a country with a youth bulge, as the young adults enter the

Every empire and order has believed that power rests in weapons, wealth, or will. Yet history's longest and quietest force has invariably been demographic. The rise and fall of civilizations -- Rome, the Ottoman Empire, or the Soviet Union -- has been determined as much by age structures and fertility rates, as by military or ideological vigor. Today, as great-power competition intensifies and the liberal international order is increasingly subject to revision, demography

In public discourse and commentary, terms such as entrapment, entanglement, roping in, and chain-ganging are often used interchangeably....

Part 2: A Country-Level Analysis: Impacts and Responses Along the Schengen-Eastern Frontier As outlined in the first part of this...

Economic diversification denotes a shift from a dependence on traditional sectors, such as agriculture and extractives (oil and mining),...

In December 1971, just before Bangladesh declared independence, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Ural Alexis Johnson...

Climate diplomacy does not have a universal definition. Nevertheless, it generally refers to the use of diplomatic tools to support the...

On Senegal’s northern coast, where the Senegal River meets the Atlantic, the city of Saint-Louis has long charmed visitors with its...

Secondary sanctions put pressure on third parties to stop their activities with the sanctioned country by threatening to cut-off the...

Multipolarity is the historical norm as it describes a system with multiple competing powers. The last defined multipolar system ended...

Europe Wants Strategic Autonomy - But Cant't Rely on Itself Since the end of the Cold War, European countries have relied on the US-led...

Venezuela’s Resource Wealth: From Potential to Decline Venezuela possesses some of the most abundant resources in the Western Hemisphere...