World

Saturday

Lawrence Freedman

The US knows the main threat is China

China’s President Xi Jinping opened the CCP’s 20th party congress by doubling down on four key issues: no let up on zero-Covid; no renunciation of force when it comes to Taiwan; a promise to build up China’s military strength; and no tolerance of any opposition to his rule. As he enters his third term, the most important new challenge he has to address are the export controls announced by the US on the eve of the congress that threaten to undercut China’s ability to develop semiconductors and supercomputers. Xi remains defiant: he promised to ‘resolutely win the battle in key core technologies.’ Yet Xi must be worried that the US

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

Africa’s zone of anarchy is getting worse

In the most violent region in the world, the West is realising that it messed up. Protestors in Burkina Faso throw Molotovs at the French, American-trained soldiers overthrow their governments, and Malians wave Russian flags. After a two-decade American deployment in the Sahel in Africa, the Pentagon has finally admitted that the area is getting worse. A paper quietly published last month, and reported on this week, described a ‘deterioration of the security environment’, and said that violence this year had ‘expanded in intensity and geographic reach’. It predicted 2,800 ‘violent events’ in the Sahel in 2022, more than double last year’s number. Some aren’t surprised that the West has failed. Aneliese Bernard,

Norman Davies

What does Russia really want?

The question of ‘why’ Russia invaded Ukraine has been forgotten amid war’s fog. Greed and malice partially explains it. History, geopolitics and culture reveals more. A country which has more land than anyone else on Earth is not grabbing territory for territory’s sake. Logically, Russia should be giving away land to anyone who might manage it better. But that’s not how Putin thinks. He is pursuing a dogged policy of annexations – first in Georgia, then in the Crimea, and now of four further Ukrainian districts. Logically, Russia’s neighbours have more to fear than Russia has. But that’s not how Putin feels Equally, a country which owns the world’s biggest stockpile of

Thursday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

​​France is now more dangerous than Mexico

France is in shock after the brutal killing of a 12-year-old girl in Paris last Friday. The details of how young Lola met her death are too gruesome to describe, but the news that a 24-year-old woman has been charged with the crime has deepened the disbelief. The fact that the woman is an Algerian national, living in France illegally after her student visa expired, has caused uproar. While Emmanuel Macron received Lola’s parents at the l’Élysée on Tuesday, his political opponents blamed his government for the death of the child. ‘Lola lost her life because you did not proceed with the expulsion of this national,’ said centre-right Republican MP

Wednesday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

How bad will the midterms be for the Democrats?

Towards the end of the summer, almost in a spirit of contrarianism, well-informed Americans started talking about President Joe Biden and the Democrats winning again. It had been a bad year, these pundits conceded, but Biden was suddenly on a ‘hot streak’ and, as the November midterms approached, the Democratic party finally had some political momentum. The President had passed the Inflation Reduction Act, they said, which addressed the most pressing issue facing voters. He’d also launched a bold initiative to forgive student debt for low- to middle-income earners. The Republicans, meanwhile, had frightened moderates with their pro-life extremism following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs Wade. And

Noel Malcolm

Will The Parthenon Project seize the Elgin Marbles?

Thirty-five years ago, the late Christopher Hitchens published a book about the Elgin Marbles. Unsurprisingly, it was a polemical work; he was passionately campaigning for the return of the sculptures to Athens. But that was not the reason why I wrote a scathing review of it for The Spectator. Parts of it were plagiarised, as I showed, from the classic book by William St Clair; and in some places Hitchens dealt with the awkward fact that the evidence did not fit his claims by abbreviating the quotations, filtering out the unwanted bits. Hitchens replied with a thunderously disdainful attack on me in the letters page. I said to the then

Lawrence Osborne

The strange inspiration of the Gobi desert

The first time I went to Mongolia was in 2014, when I travelled across the country with the actress Michelle Rodriguez and a group of her friends, courtesy of the Mongolian-American conservationist Jalsa Urubshurow. Driving out of Ulaanbaatar at dawn, we stopped at a market on the outskirts of the city to buy caviar, blinis and crates of Chinggis vodka for the 12-hour drive. Because I was not a follower of the Fast & Furious franchise, I had little idea who Michelle was, but every vendor in that tiny market knew her on sight. The place came to a standstill at 5 a.m. It was clear that the terrifyingly long

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Tsar Vladimir brings in martial law

Martial law can arrive with a bang: tanks on the streets, Swan Lake on the TV. It can also creep up on a country in the guise of a presidential edict with the title ‘The Decree On Measures taken in the Constituent Entities of the Russian Federation in Connection with the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation of October 19, 2022 No. 756’. Either way, Vladimir Putin has just moved Russia one step closer to totalitarianism. What is interesting is just how long and half-hearted a process this has been. When Putin invaded Ukraine in February, the sharpest-beaked hawks in his entourage were urging total war, and with

Nicholas Farrell

Giorgia Meloni shows Silvio Berlusconi who’s boss

Giorgia Meloni, who is about to become Italy’s first female prime minister, has won her first major battle. It was fought, not against her countless enemies, but against her ally Silvio Berlusconi. In a crucial victory, Meloni has forced Berlusconi, the four-time prime minister, to concede unequivocally that she – not he – is the boss of the right-wing coalition that won such a large majority at the general election last month. The 86-year-old rogue may well look these days like a waxwork model that has somehow come alive, but he remains a classic macho Italian man who finds it virtually impossible to take orders from women. Yet he has

Tom Miller

We love you, Uncle Xi!

In 2015, I had lunch with an old chum of Xi Jinping. He described how China’s most powerful leader since Chairman Mao was born into the Communist party’s ‘red aristocracy’ but had to toughen up fast when his father was jailed in the Cultural Revolution. The young Xi briefly became a street hoodlum who swore like a trooper, smoked like a chimney and drank like a fish. He survived by turning ‘redder than red’, climbing the party ladder from a branch secretary in a lowly village all the way up to the top job in Beijing. ‘I am fond of Xi, but he is isolated from his old friends and

Andrew Tettenborn

Poland wants reparations from Germany

If you think British politics is cracked, spare a thought for Europe. A spat between Germany and Poland is rapidly developing into a full-scale row involving not only those countries but the EU as a whole. Just a couple of weeks ago, Polish foreign minister Zbigniew Rau of the ruling PiS (Law and Justice) party handed an explosive diplomatic note to his German equivalent, Annalena Baerbock, on a visit to Warsaw to discuss security. In it was a formal legal demand that Berlin pay a cool €1.3 trillion in reparations for damage done to the Polish state during world war two. Ms Baerbock instantly made it clear that in the view

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

The murder of Lola and the failure of Macronism

Last Friday, a beautiful 12-year-old Paris girl named Lola failed to come home from middle school. Later that evening, her raped, strangled and mutilated body was found near her home in a suitcase. The police quickly arrested a female suspect, ‘Dahbia B’, aged 24, whom they initially described as mentally ill. It then emerged that she was Algerian and was in an ‘irregular situation’ in France. And then that other Algerian migrants had also been arrested. As far as can be determined, on the day of the killing, ‘Dahbia B’ apparently waited for Lola to return home from school, seized her and took her to her sister’s apartment. The killing

Kara Kennedy

Meghan Markle’s meeting of minds with Paris Hilton

‘I am kind, I have a big heart, I’m an Aquarius. I love animals and I’m shy. I’m a tomboy. I’m an undercover nerd. I love cartoons and I’m a girl’s girl,’ says Paris Hilton at the start of Archetypes, Meghan Markle’s podcast about ‘dissecting labels’. This time the label is ‘bimbo,’ and with an intro like that, it’s good to see that Paris doesn’t feel the need to play into the bimbo trope. Meghan helpfully adds that ‘you may not have quite picked up on my voice. It’s Paris Hilton, the real Paris Hilton, not the archetype that you’ve come to know for so long.’ Thanks, Meghan! Paris Hilton

Tuesday

Ian Williams Ian Williams

The threat of Chinese headhunters

It is hard to say what is more shocking, dozens of former British military pilots lured by vast salaries to work for China’s People’s Liberation Army or the fact there appears to be no law to stop it. At least 30 experienced pilots, who have flown Typhoon, Jaguar, Harrier and Tornado fighters, as well as piloting advanced helicopters used for anti-submarine warfare, have been lured to China on packages worth as much as $270,000 dollars, according to the Ministry of Defence. The information they are passing on will be especially important should there be a conflict over Taiwan, and the PLA comes face to face with western military aircraft. It

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

Cancelled Kanye West buys cancelled free speech platform Parler

Hear Ye Hear Ye! The news today has broken that Kanye West – who calls himself Ye – has bought Parler, the Trumpist social media platform. The news was announced earlier by Parler CEO George Farmer, the son of Lord Farmer, the Conservative peer. ‘This deal will change the world and change the way the world thinks about free speech,’ said George. Farmer is also the husband of Candace Owens, the American MAGA celebrity, who appears to have been an important influence – is muse the right word? – in Ye’s conversion away from Hollywood La La Land and towards Trump-infused right-nationalist populism. Candace and Kanye both recently appeared together wearing ‘White

James Snell

Did Putin use Iranian martyr drones on Kyiv?

As Iranian munitions have hurtled through the air at the front line in the Donbas, and as Iranian suicide drones have smashed into Ukrainian cities, Tehran has denied everything – unconvincingly. The most recent was Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, who said on Saturday: ‘The Islamic Republic of Iran has not and will not provide any weapon to be used in the war in Ukraine’. With the piety beloved of hypocrites everywhere, he went on: ‘We believe that the arming of each side of the crisis will prolong the war’. This is part of a pattern. For most of the last few weeks, Iran has officially denied that its weapons and

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Censorship and sexuality: being gay in China

31 min listen

I recently caught a rare viewing of a 2001 Chinese film, Lan Yu. It tells the story of two gay men falling in love and finding domestic life throughout the reform and opening years of China. The filmmakers never bothered to apply for approval from the censors, knowing that its homosexual storyline would never make it past the moralistic Communist censors.   On this episode, I take a look at the place of homosexuality in the traditional Chinese mindset and under these years of Communism. My guests are Zhang Yongning, the producer of Lan Yu, and Liu Yiling, a a writer covering Chinese society, technology and internet culture who has written about the the

Ian Williams Ian Williams

Joe Biden has jolted China

The chip war between China and America is heating up, with an increasingly assertive Joe Biden battling with Xi Jinping as he enters his third term as Chinese leader. The US last week further restricted China’s access to advanced American know-how, in what were some of the most stringent export controls for decades. Xi didn’t mention semiconductors in a speech on Sunday marking the opening of the Communist party’s twice-a-decade congress in Beijing, but he did pledge that China would ‘resolutely win the battle in key core technologies’. To compete with the US, China will need better tech. These new export controls will make Xi’s vision much harder to achieve. Joe

Saturday

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

The misconception about Putin’s big red nuclear button

There is a common misconception that the leaders of nuclear states have a ‘red button’ that can unleash Armageddon. As Vladimir Putin continues to hint at the use of non-strategic (‘tactical’) nuclear weapons in Ukraine, there is some comfort in the knowledge that it is not so easy. Ironically, launching the kind of strategic nuclear missiles whose use would likely spiral into global destruction is somewhat easier than deploying the smaller weapons which – however vastly unlikely – could conceivably be used in Ukraine. These lower-yield warheads would need to be reconditioned in one of the 12 ‘Object S’ arsenals across Russia holding them, and then transported to one of

Robin Ashenden

‘In Russia, there’s just emptiness’: An interview with a Putin draft dodger

Thousands of Russians are fleeing from Putin’s forced mobilisation. To escape from a call-up – and probable death sentence – on the frontlines of Ukraine, men and women are leaving behind their friends, families and possessions. They must dodge patrols and mobile check points at the borders to catch those trying to evade the call up. The lucky ones make it out. But even once these people have escaped Putin’s clutches, the terror and fear endures. I met one of these men, Maxim, in a bar in Tbilisi, Georgia. He and his wife had just fled from Russia, after Putin’s ‘partial mobilisation’ order of 21 September. Though it is now well into October,