Iran, Trump, and the Imperial Licence to Break the Law
Donald Trump’s war on Iran has done what imperial wars often do. It has stripped the familiar vocabulary to the bone. The old words...
The New Orientalist Order: Trump, Kushner, and the Art of Ungoverned Power
The Promise of a Post-Imperial Age
It is comforting to believe that Orientalism belongs to another century. When Edward Said coined the term, he was...
Equality, History, and the Question of Palestinian Statehood
A thread runs from Christopher Hitchens to Edward Said and straight into Gaza’s present: the fight over who gets to live as a political...
Makers Without Mercy: Frankenstein and the Age of AI
Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro’s new film Frankenstein brings Shelley’s old questions back into sharp focus. Watching it, I wasn’t thinking about the film...
108 Years of Balfour and the Unfinished Question of Palestine
This November marks 108 years since the Balfour Declaration, a promise written in London by men who had never walked the soil of Palestine....
From Anarchy to Etiquette: The UN, IR Theories, and the Politics of Trump’s Ceasefire
When Donald Trump announced a new “ceasefire deal” between Israel, Qatar, Turkey, and the United States, the world reacted with a mixture of fatigue...
The Ghost of ‘We the Peoples’: Trump’s UN Speech and a Strained World Order
“We the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war…”
Those opening words of the UN Charter were...
The Collapse of Restraint: Iran, Israel, and the Fragility of Global Order
The latest Israeli airstrikes on Iran, including reported strikes on the Natanz nuclear facility and the assassination of senior IRGC commanders, have pushed the...
When the Academy Falls: Collapse, and the Marketised Death of Education
“Uncertainty exists towards Coventry University’s ability to continue.” That single sentence — buried in a recent BBC report — should not just make us...
“The Strong Do What They Can”: Trump, Greenland, and the Modern Melian Dialogue
In Thucydides’ The History of the Peloponnesian War, the Melian Dialogue records a chilling encounter between imperial but democratic Athens and the neutral island...