Global Politics

Image by Tyler Merber There are many terms being thrown around to describe the events in Washington DC on 6 January: sedition, insurrection, protest, riot, mob, even coup. The most historically accurate term is a putsch, with any number of examples of angry mobs being channelled to overthrow civilian authority. It may have started as […]

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How a new administration in Washington could spell change for Latin America, and why it probably won’t. Image by author: Children play in the sprawling refugee camp in Matamoros, Mexico, on the border with Brownsville, Texas. To say that COVID-19 has become the defining issue of the 2020 US presidential election, and elections around the […]

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“Viruses know no borders and they don’t care about your ethnicity, the colour of your skin or how much money you have in the bank.” The words of WHO official Dr Mike Ryan about Coronavirus (COVID-19) would seem to many of us common sense. What appears ‘common sense’ does not, however, always manifest in the […]

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The deadly impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Iran has given a new focus to the ongoing debate about the purpose, effectiveness and relevance of US sanctions imposed on the country. Many leaders, political figures, and organisations have questioned the continuance of these sanctions. These include the UN Secretary General, the UN Special Rapporteurs on […]

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The withdrawal of the Trump Administration from the Iran nuclear deal was a long time coming. Concluded in 2015 after months of negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 countries (United States, France, United Kingdom, Russia, China and Germany), the agreement seemingly provided a win-win outcome both in terms of the international community’s desire to rein […]

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Donald Trump is correct: The American intelligence community misled us about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. So that means it’s also mistaken about Russian cyberattacks on the United States. Right? Wrong. On New Year’s Eve, Trump called the Central Intelligence Agency’s claims about WMD a “disaster”—his signature slur—and implied that the agency was fibbing […]

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By U.S. Department of State from United States [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Authors: Dr Simon A. Waldman is a Mercator-IPC fellow at the Istanbul Policy Center and a visiting research fellow at King’s College London. Engin Onuk is an intern at the İstanbul Policy Center and a masters student in the International Relations Department in İstanbul […]

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There are few people who can lay claim to having shaped how the world’s only superpower uses modern technology, but Alec Ross is one of those few. Having played a critical role in developing then Senator Barack Obama’s technology and innovation plan during the 2008 presidential campaign, Ross went on to serve as senior innovation advisor to […]

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Who will provide strong and stable leadership on the environment? Following May’s shock election announcement there has only been one issue on the agenda for both the media and political parties themselves: Brexit. One worrying effect of our preoccupation with constitutional issues is that green politics have been ignored. Despite Green Party gains in the […]

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Truth and Democracy have always had a troubled relationship, but perhaps never as troubled as now. From Plato’s Noble Lie to Kellyanne Conway’s Alternative Facts, there has always been a tension between the presentation of an objective truth and the exercise of political power. Michael Ignatieff, himself an academic turned not particularly successful politician, mused […]

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  On the cusp of a war in which millions lost their lives, borders shifted and modern warfare was revolutionized, Winston Churchill made an observation of Russia: “It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.” For decades, Russia has fascinated […]

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