Economics

Dimitra Staikou On August 5, 2025, Nobel laureate and interim leader Mohammed Yunus announced that Bangladesh would hold parliamentary elections in February 2026. The Election Commission quickly confirmed the plan, promising an exact date later this year. At first glance, this may look like the return of democracy …

Christina Vangerbhen As the European Union faces growing geopolitical instability, it remains woefully underprepared to engage with one of its most significant strategic partners—and rivals: China. If a crisis involving China were to erupt tomorrow – over Taiwan, trade, or technology – Europe would lack the expertise needed …

For all the controversy that trails him, Donald Trump has a record of inserting himself into geopolitical standoffs and sometimes lowering the temperature. During his first term, he broke decades of taboo by meeting Kim Jong Un in Singapore in 2018 and again at the DMZ in 2019, …

On August 8, a historic summit took place in Washington, D.C., with the participation of the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, and the Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, attracting global attention. In the U.S. capital, Aliyev, Pashinyan, and Trump …

The confluence of two accelerating trends augurs poorly for critical mineral-rich economies in the Global South: the rise of economic nationalism in advanced economies and the return of territorial conquest as a normalized—if not yet fully legitimized—tool of statecraft. The United States and the European Union are aggressively …

A new “Great Game” is unfolding in the Caucasus and Central Asia, echoing the nineteenth-century rivalry between empires, with a modern, multipolar twist. The term “Great Game” refers to the nineteenth-century strategic rivalry between the British and Russian Empires over influence in Central Asia, particularly in Afghanistan, Persia, …

Semiconductor firms have a lot to learn from America’s banks; investing in compliance is the price of entry in a critical industry. Earlier this week, the Trump administration narrowed export controls on advanced semiconductors ahead of US-China trade negotiations. The administration is increasingly relying on export licenses to …

Robert Ellis Europe needs Turkey to shore up its defense. But is Ankara committed to European security? The European Union is caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, it faces an onslaught from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which is determined to overturn the rules-based …

John Calabrese The recent Israel-Iran crisis could catalyze an expanded role for the Gulf states in maintaining regional security. The June eruption of hostilities between Israel and Iran once again exposed the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries to the acute dangers of regional instability. Yet it also raises …