Geostrategic Media Political Commentary, Analysis, Security, Defense
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, …
August, 2025
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13 August
First Real Peace Scenario in CIS: Washington’s South Caucasus Reset
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 …
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6 August
Raw Power: How the Global South Can Leverage the Critical Minerals Race
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 …
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6 August
Why is the UAE Positioning Itself as a Hub for International Diplomacy?
On July 2nd 2025, the London-based online news outlet Middle East Eye reported that the heads of state of arch-foes Armenia and Azerbaijan were set to meet each other imminently in Dubai for normalization talks. Sure enough, this came to pass a mere eight days later – albeit …
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6 August
When Silence Becomes Complicity: Europe, Israel, and the Gaza Dilemma
Brian Hudson In a world where the foundations of international law are being eroded under the weight of geopolitical interests and strategic calculations, the European Union finds itself at a historic crossroads: Are the values it claims to champion—human rights, justice, and multilateralism—truly guiding its foreign policy, or …
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6 August
Redrawing the Middle East: Scenarios for 2026
By Dr. Shehab Al-Makahleh In a private meeting with geopolitical analyst George Friedman in 2022, and during an earlier conversation with the late Henry Kissinger in 2021, both thinkers alluded to the strategic inevitabilities of conflict in the Middle East. Strategist Friedman warned that the region was heading …
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2 August
What Will Syria Do with Its Foreign Militants?
Rany Ballout Unifying and deradicalizing Syria’s armed forces will be the regime’s most formidable challenge. The United States has now lifted all sanctions on Syria, except on some individuals and entities associated with the former Assad regime. Additionally, the United States has revoked the foreign terrorist organization designation …
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2 August
Central Asia: The Great Game 2.0
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, …
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2 August
It’s Time for the Semiconductor Industry to Step Up
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 …
