David Patrikarakos is the author of 'War in 140 Characters: How Social Media Is Reshaping Conflict in the Twenty-First Century' and 'Nuclear Iran: The Birth of an Atomic State'
Yet again the news from Pyongyang is both disconcerting and vague. Yet again North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is rumoured to be seriously ill or dead. Kim went missing from public view on 11 April and has not yet reappeared. It was an abrupt disappearance after several public engagements and ample news coverage at the
They said we were going to uncouple from the Middle East. Barack Obama, they said, was going to pivot to Asia. Donald Trump was, finally, going to get the United States the hell out of there. Intellectually, politically and, most importantly of all, militarily, we were going to put this most vexatious of regions behind
The Great Game of the 21st century is upon us and as ever it’s a scramble for resources. This time, though, the thirst is not for land or diamonds or gold. Personal protective equipment has become the oil of the contemporary moment: desperately needed by a world that is strafed by coronavirus. Britain has its own
These are discombobulating times. A deadly pandemic; the United States at sea, China belligerent and the EU at war with itself. British politics was in flux before the virus hit. Now it is vertiginous. The Tory party, long seen as the guardian of the status quo, has been forced to change tack as it deals
It’s over then. After almost five years, Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as Labour leader has come to a close. Corbyn ended as he led: with the petulance and ill grace that has characterised his political career. As Corbyn slopes to the backbenches to resume a life of fruitless campaigning, Keir Starmer steps up to replace him.
History has not usually been kind to the Jews. But even by its low and morbid standards, the 14th century was a time of chaos. From 1348 to 1351 between 30 and 60 per cent of Europe’s population died from the Black Death, a plague that strafed continents. Hundreds of Jewish communities perished too, their inhabitants slaughtered
‘How do you deal toughly with your banker?’ This was the not quite rhetorical question that Hillary Clinton asked Australia’s then-prime minister Kevin Rudd at a lunch back in 2010. In the prophylactic language of the diplomat she was then, Clinton was asking how the world should deal with an ever more aggressive China, and
In the name of God. These words define the Islamic Republic of Iran. They stretch across its official paperwork and correspondence; they drive its constitution; they drop from the lips of its Ayatollahs leading Friday prayers; and they imprison its people. In Iran, the Velayat-e Faqih, the ‘rule of the jurists,’ holds that those best
Few words have as great a hold on the contemporary imagination as ‘disinformation.’ Few words are as ubiquitous in contemporary discourse or as pervasive in political mud-slinging. Donald Trump castigates the ‘fake news’ media for perceived bias against him; Hillary Clinton blames foreign influence operations for her election loss. Disinformation, propaganda, lies: whatever you wish
A.D. Miller’s gripping new book is set largely during Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution, which Miller covered as a journalist. Ten years later, I reported on the aftermath of the country’s 2014 Euromaidan Revolution. Independence Square details the first event and prefigures the second. It is several things: a thriller, a political novel and a statement
Drama and tragedy continue to envelop Iran. Just hours after the regime struck two US bases in Iraq on Wednesday, Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 crashed after taking off from Tehran en route to Kyiv. All 176 passengers and crew members on board were killed. Iran almost immediately claimed that the plane had suffered a
So it happened. Iran has just struck back against the United States for its killing of Quds force chief Qassem Soleimani on 3 January. The Iranians had vowed to retaliate from almost the moment that their most potent – and famous – commander was killed. Iran’s leader Ali Khamenei had vowed a “severe revenge.” Now
It has been 24 hours since America droned Qasem Soleimani near Baghdad airport. Now both Iran and the United States are getting ready to deal with a new reality in the Middle East that has (quite literally) exploded into being. There is a mutual recognition that when Soleimani died, the old rules of the game died alongside
In the early hours of the morning, Iraqi State television reported that the leader of Iran’s Qud’s Force, Qasem Soleimani had – along with six other people including Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis – been killed in a US strike near Baghdad airport. Make no mistake: this is the most significant military assassination in
A Russian ship has just rammed a Ukrainian vessel, opened fire on it and captured its sailors. Ukraine has called it an act of war, and legally it may be right. But more than this the act reveals the nature of the true Russia. At this year’s Helsinki summit, some were aghast at how subservient Donald
‘Myshkin’ wants ‘a tiding ending’ to his life and has settled down to write his will. An ageing Indian horticulturalist, his childhood nickname (after Dostoevsky’s protagonist in The Idiot) remains. It is the first sign that this is a novel about people out of sync with their times and their surroundings. Abandoned by his mother
Erbil They like the British here in Iraqi Kurdistan. You hear it from people everywhere in Erbil, the region’s capital. And there were a great many of them out in the streets. It was hot and crowded on 25 September; the polls opened early for the Kurds to vote. The question was simple: did they
A CIA agent, a naive young filmmaker, a dilettante heir and a lost Mayan temple form the basis of Ned Beauman’s latest, and arguably most impressive, novel. Two rival expeditions set off from the United States to the jungles of Honduras to find the temple — one with the intention of using it as a
Spain, Finland, Russia: in the space of a few days, Europe is reminded, yet again, that terrorism – like the virus it is – kills brutally, indiscriminately and, critically, transnationally. On Thursday, August 17, a van rammed into crowds of people in Barcelona’s Las Ramblas boulevard – a hub of tourism and social life. Thirteen were
The French philosopher Jean-Pierre Faye’s career has encompassed everything from fiction to prose poetry, but he will best be remembered for his contribution to political science: Horseshoe Theory. This maxim holds that the far left and far right, rather than being at opposite ends of a linear political spectrum, in fact closely resemble each other.
