A New World Order?

The End of an Order

The end of containment, the expansion of NATO and the new threat

The White Raven

Carl Schmitt, close to the authoritarians von Schleicher and von Papen, may have thought he would become indispensable in the new Germany as a useful…

Making Russia Great Again

Vladimir Putin has made it clear that he plans to operate through an authoritarian state at home, while abroad he wishes Russia to be felt…

The Russian Troika

The history that played out for Lenin and his commissars, who assumed dictatorial powers, was built on tactical opportunism coupled with simple good luck. One…

The Backward Look

The Russians, according to Svetlana Alexievich, are a people of misfortune and suffering whose best moments have come with war. Following the failed experiment to…

Spiritual Security

To the extent that Russia’s project of joining the Western developed world has failed, and it has failed, its search for a distinctive world stance…

The Wicked Uncle

Stalin learned from Lenin that ruthlessness in pursuit of what might appear an impossible goal could pay off. In addition, the Marxist inheritance deified the…

A Catastrophe Not Foreseen

Russia’s handling of its client Serbia in the run-up to the First World War was an object lesson in how not to do it. While…

End of an Era

The Ukraine crisis has demonstrated, if further demonstration was required, that Russia will pursue its interests aggressively in what it regards as its legitimate sphere…

Epiphanies and Voids

Attention to the apparently insignificant is a particular feature of Japanese art. It is an aspect of Zen’s emphasis on giving attention not to theory…

The Errand-Boys of Europe

There is a strong current of thought in Russia which wishes to see the country assert its complete independence from the West and ‘Western values’…

Neighbours

Germany and Russia have had a relationship over the centuries that has more often been businesslike than hostile. The business being conducted, however, and the…

A Tearless People

The year is 1937 and the place Moscow, one of the key settings in European history and a fault line in the history of civilisation.

When The Roof Fell In

One can say that Gorbachev was not up to the task before him, if only because he did not fully understand it. But, it has…

Neutrality by Ordeal

It was this man [Edmund Veesenmayer, an agent of the German foreign service] that Kerney met in Madrid in August 1942, without instruction, but probably…