World

Sunday

Limor Simhony Philpott

How Hamas’s ceasefire gamble backfired

Hamas’s refusal to negotiate the return of the remaining women still in captivity and an early morning missile attack on Israel brought the ceasefire to an abrupt end on Friday. The Israeli government would have continued to put up with minor infractions by Hamas, and carried on with the deal, despite their repeated violations. However, Hamas’s insistence on drastically changing the terms of the agreement pushed Israel to resume assaults in a sign to Hamas that it refuses to be pushed around. Hamas needed the ceasefire, but miscalculated – thinking that it could push the envelope even more without consequence. It went too far. Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has been

Edward Howell

Is opposition to Kim Jong Un growing in North Korea?

North Korea is hardly the first country that comes to mind when you think of elections. Yet since the inception of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in 1948, parliamentary and local polls have, in fact, taken place. The former occur every four to five years and elect members of the Supreme People’s Assembly, the country’s rubber-stamp parliament and highest body of state authority. Since 1999, local elections have also been held, responsible for electing governors, mayors, and local assemblies at municipal, county, and provincial levels. Predictably for a totalitarian regime, local elections – much like the Supreme People’s Assembly – are little more than a mere formality, with voter

Nadim Koteich

Can Hamas really be ‘eliminated’?

The EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell offered a provocative insight into the nature of Hamas this week. Speaking at the Union of the Mediterranean Forum, Borrell said that: ‘Hamas is not merely a group of individuals but an unkillable idea and ideology.’ This view is a worrying one for Israel as it seeks, in the words of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to ‘eliminate’ Hamas. But what if Borell is right that Hamas cannot be destroyed? History suggests that seemingly invincible organisations and ideologies can indeed be defeated, often after military defeat, through thorough socio-economic and political reformations. Take Nazi Germany. While comparisons with the Third Reich are easy to reach

Saturday

Robert Service

Putin’s ‘loyalty cards’ are a new low for his regime

Loyalty cards in the West are used by supermarket chains to influence our shopping habits. They are fortunately absent from our politics, and we can freely speak our minds about public affairs, history and morality. In Russia it is different. The Russian TASS news agency reported on Wednesday that the Ministry of Internal Affairs has prepared a mandatory ‘loyalty agreement’ for all foreigners entering Russia. Our supermarkets do not demand a personal declaration of loyalty, and our governments make no such requirement of visiting foreigners. But travellers to Russian parts will run into as yet unspecified trouble if they are thought to engage in ‘distorting’ the record of Soviet people

Jeremi Suri

Henry Kissinger saw his world fall apart

The leading advocate of world order died at a time when it all appeared to be coming undone. Henry Kissinger spent the last months of his century-long life travelling to China to temper escalating tensions with the United States, pushing for negotiations to end a war begun by Russia in Ukraine (he made his first intervention on this war in The Spectator last year), and watching as Israel and Hamas entered a new death struggle. Even more discouraging, isolationist tendencies were ascendant again in the US, and American democracy seemed crippled by divisions that shut down Congress repeatedly. Kissinger’s last book, co-authored with Google’s Erich Schmidt, warned that artificial intelligence was on

Friday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Ron DeSantis just isn’t presidential material

Sans Trump, the Republican presidential debates of 2023 have mostly been piddling contests in a shallow pool. We’ve seen nasty insults — most aimed at or directed by Vivek Ramaswamy — and that’s fun to watch. But you can catch those bits on social media and the rest hasn’t been worth tuning in for. Maybe the problem isn’t just the lack of the Big Orange on stage. Maybe it’s just that the TV debate format doesn’t really work in the internet age. It’s never a battle of compelling ideas. It’s a clash of off-putting egos, each looking to land the big viral moment. DeSantis is just hard to like: he

Limor Simhony Philpott

Hamas has made a mockery of the ceasefire deal

Early this morning, Hamas fired the first shot that signalled the end of its ceasefire deal with Israel, roughly an hour before the truce was due to expire. Before the ceasefire broke there had been a night of intense negotiations over the next stage of the hostage releases. Hamas, as it has done since negotiations started, tried every trick in the book to buy time and maximise its gains. Last night, it did not agree to Israel’s demand to release the remaining surviving women. Hamas has violated the ceasefire deal on several occasions. It breached some of it terms about separating mothers and children. It also broke the ceasefire in

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The EU is in denial about stopping the boats

The Global Alliance to Counter Migrant Smuggling is the latest EU initiative to address the continent’s migrant crisis. Unveiled in Brussels on Tuesday, the aim of the alliance is, in the words of the EU, ‘to close the loopholes in national legislation and international systems and prevent this criminal trade in human lives.’  Europe should brace itself for a fresh migrant surge in 2024 The EU president, Ursula von der Leyen, used social media to boast that the Global Alliance will, among other things, ‘Intensify cooperation with partner countries to tackle this issue globally’ and ‘strengthen the role of Europol’, the EU’s agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation.  Forgive the cynicism but haven’t

Sean Rayment

Does a political solution to the Israel-Gaza conflict exist?

Is there a political solution to the Gaza conflict? Earlier this morning, the seven-day ceasefire between Israel and Hamas broke down, with the IDF reporting that it had intercepted rocket fire from the Gaza strip. Israel then resumed hostilities, with air strikes in northern and southern Gaza against Hamas. Almost from the moment of its inception, 73-years ago, Israel has been in a state of perpetual war. This is not something of Israel’s own choosing. No other country in the modern era has fought so many wars of national survival against adversaries whose sole ambition was the complete annihilation of  a people. If there was an opportunity for a prolonged

Thursday

Charles Lipson

The remarkable life of Henry Kissinger

The next few weeks will be filled with remembrances, fulsome appreciations, and harsh criticism of Henry Alfred Kissinger, who died on Wednesday at 100. His prominence is well deserved. The only modern secretaries of state who rank with him are George C. Marshall and Dean Acheson, who constructed the architecture of Cold War containment in the late 1940s. Kissinger’s central achievement was updating that architecture to include China, less as an American ally than as a Russian adversary. Until the late 1960s, Washington and Beijing had seen each other as bitter foes, not only because they had fought each other in the Korean War but because they represented the era’s two

Wednesday

Seth J. Frantzman

Has Israel learned the lessons of Ukraine’s war with Russia?

Israel’s ceasefire with Hamas – which has allowed for the release of dozens of hostages – looks set to continue. But make no mistake: this war is far from over. Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas, a mission that he will not back down from any time soon. The fight against an estimated 30,000 Hamas soldiers will be a long and difficult one. While Israel’s firepower vastly outmatches that of Hamas, defeating an insurgent army will prove a difficult endeavour for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Israel could find itself in a situation comparable to Ukraine – another country with state-of-the-art weaponry that struggles to deliver

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

How China cornered the green market

When Rishi Sunak announced that the 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel cars would be delayed by five years, he framed it as a common-sense move. What he didn’t say is that he had been advised that, had the original deadline stuck, Britain’s electric vehicle (EV) market would have been handed over to China. Going green, Sunak was told, would mean going Chinese. At the COP climate summit in Dubai starting this weekend, other leaders will have reached the same conclusion. They’re all a bit late. With little fanfare and a lot of state help, Chinese companies are now world leaders in wind, solar, hydro, lithium batteries and electric cars

Margaret Mitchell

Can I stay in Britain?

Brexit Britain, for all its flaws, has been welcoming to me. When the UK was a member of the European Union, the only way to control immigration was to crack down on non-EU visas. Ten years ago, Americans like me who studied in Britain and wanted to stay needed to earn £35,000 a year (which would be £47,000 now). That was unrealistic for a recent graduate. After Brexit, Boris Johnson brought back the old post-study visa, giving us two years to find work and requiring a more achievable minimum salary of £26,000. Finally, international students who won places at British universities could meet their EU equals as, well, equals. We

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

The deep affinity between Japan and Israel

Tokyo Japan and Israel have a curious bond, which recent events have highlighted. A video showing a group of Japanese senior citizens singing ‘Japan loves Israel, and Israel loves Japan’ (in Hebrew) while waving Japanese and Israeli flags has received more than 900,000 views. The group, believed to be Christians, may be at the extreme end of Japanese philo-Semitism but their passion is generally shared. A crowd of 1,200 (big for Japan and probably greater than the number of Jews in the entire country) demonstrated in support of Israel in Tokyo earlier this month, just one of several similar events. The philosophy of the kibbutzim chimed with Japan’s collectivist culture

Phoebe Hennell

Why Argentina is turning its back on Brics

‘Today, the rebuilding of Argentina begins’, Javier Milei declared in his first speech as the new president-elect. The anarcho-capitalist is wasting no time in his mission.  Milei has already pulled the plug on what was set to be current president Fernandez’s career-defining achievement: Argentina’s historic admittance to Brics (a loose alliance of economies led by Brazil, Russia, India and China). Argentina’s new leader intends instead to swivel westwards, prioritising trade and relations with ‘the liberal democracies of the world’, while casting a backwards glance at China. Is Milei right to reorient Argentina, or is he biting the hand that feeds him? Beijing has declared it a ‘grave error’ if Argentina

Nicholas Farrell

The Italian left wants to blame Giorgia Meloni for the patriarchy

This weekend, demonstrations took place in major Italian cities to mark the UN’s international day for the elimination of violence against women. Many on the Italian left used the opportunity to suggest Giorgia Meloni is aiding and abetting the murder of Italian women – even though she is Italy’s first female Prime Minister.    The largest protest was in Rome where demonstrators, mainly women – 500,000 according to the organisers – brandished placards saying ‘The Patriarchy Kills’, ‘We Support Female Fury Against The Fascist Meloni Government’ and ‘Meloni Fascist Zionist Collaborator’. Palestinian flags fluttered surreally alongside LGBTQIA2-S rainbow flags, as I think they are now called. Elly Schlein, leader of the main left-wing opposition Partito Democratico, was there and told journalists: the only way to stop ‘the

Tuesday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Dialect and identity: is Mandarin bad for China?

44 min listen

Across the span of China, a country as big as Europe, there are countless regional dialects and accents – perhaps even languages. Often, they’re mutually unintelligible. The Chinese call these ‘fangyan’, and each Chinese person will likely be able to speak at least one fangyan, while also understanding Standard Mandarin, the official language of the People’s Republic. It means that the Chinese are more multilingual than you might think. But it also means that the question of language is inherently a political one. Standard Mandarin has a relatively short history, created by the country’s founding fathers to unify the spoken word in a huge country. But with the ubiquity of

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron’s France is trapped in a cycle of violence

On Monday, the spokesman for Emmanuel Macron’s government, Olivier Véran, visited the village of Crépol in south-eastern France. A fortnight ago few people had heard of Crépol, but on the evening of Saturday 18 November a gang of youths from an inner city a few miles away gatecrashed the village dance.   In the maelstrom of violence that ensued, a 16-year-old local called Thomas was fatally stabbed. Several other young partygoers were wounded and one eye-witness told reporters their attackers had stormed the venue vowing to ‘kill a white’.   The bitter truth is that few people in France have any confidence left in Macron and his government For 24

Limor Simhony Philpott

Can Israel’s ceasefire in Gaza hold?

Originally meant to expire on Monday, the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has been extended by at least two days. During the first four days of the ceasefire, 69 hostages abducted on 7 October, including 50 Israelis and 19 foreign nationals were freed by Hamas. In return, Israel freed 120 Palestinian prisoners, many incarcerated for terrorism offences. The deal also included a substantial increase in humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. Across the two added days of ceasefire, Hamas has agreed to release 20 additional hostages. It is likely that, following this extension, with about 170 hostages remaining in Gaza, the sides will agree to prolong the ceasefire. It seems

Sunday

Ian O’Doherty

Dublin is a city on the edge

At 1.30 p.m. last Thursday, a horrific knife attack was perpetrated outside a school on Parnell Street in Dublin’s north inner city. Three children and an adult female were viciously stabbed by the attacker who has now been confirmed to be an Algerian male who acquired Irish citizenship and has been living in the country for the last 20 years. Both the attacker and his four victims have been hospitalised. One of those victims, a 5 year old girl, remains in a critical condition, while her female carer, who tried to stop the knifeman, remains in the Mater hospital. If it wasn’t the horrifying knife attack on Thursday that set