Rare Earth’s New Middlemen: Why Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Vietnam and Morocco Can’t Escape Dependency
On 1 July, China's Ministry of Commerce quietly turned rare earth export control from paperwork into something closer to a criminal exposure. MOFCOM Announcement...
Inside the Sahel’s War Economy: How Juntas and Jihadists Tax the Same Fuel Trucks
Ten months into al-Qaeda's blockade of Bamako, the fuel still arrives. Since JNIM's spokesman announced the campaign on 3 September 2025, the group has...
Nauru Built the Only Door Into Deep-Sea Mining — Washington Just Opened a Second One
On 19 November, the United States plans to auction two seabed blocks off American Samoa — more than 31 million acres combined — for...
Canada Backs $116 Billion Global Defence Bank to Finance Allied Rearmament
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney supports a new global defense bank called the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB), which aims to help allied...
NATO Has No Article for This: What Greenland Reveals About Alliance Law’s Blind Spot
On 11 February, NATO launched Arctic Sentry — Swedish Gripen jets patrolling Greenlandic airspace, German Eurofighters overhead, nine flags behind a single new command....
Sovereign Wealth Comes Home: Why Jakarta, Riyadh and Kuwait Are Pulling Their Money Back
TODAY'S NUMBERS: $6.8bn (Danantara's remittance to Jakarta's budget) · 20% (Saudi PIF's new overseas-investment ceiling, down from 30%) · 5.65% (Danantara's average bond yield)....
BRICS Pay vs. the Dollar: What the IMF’s Own Reserve Data Actually Shows
On 6 July 2026, standing in Jakarta, Narendra Modi and Indonesian officials operationalised a framework letting India and Indonesia settle bilateral trade directly in...
Frozen Russian Assets, Take Two: What Europe’s Revived €210 Billion Plan Means for Ukraine, Belgium and the Euro
TODAY'S NUMBERS
€210bn (frozen Russian assets Brussels wants to mobilize) · €90bn (fallback EU loan already agreed) · €23.1bn (Ukraine's funding gap even with that...
There’s No Neutral Sensor Left in the Arctic — Here’s What That Means for NATO and China
On 6 June 2026, the NATO research vessel Alliance slipped out of La Spezia, Italy, bound for the High North. Its mission, Task Force...
The Patriot Problem: America Can’t Build Missiles Fast Enough
On July 23, Volodymyr Zelensky told Ukrainians that Raytheon wanted to help produce Patriot interceptors on Ukrainian-linked lines. Five days later, Lockheed Martin signed...