Orban has already faced divine justice
Viktor Orban has not aged well. When I met him in Budapest two months before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 he was a typical hyper-ambitious student leader. Anybody who ...
Inadequate responses by Europe to the impact of Iran war
As the war with Iran, involving Israel and the US, escalates, governments in Europe appear to be underestimating its ongoing and future damaging economic impact. Already, the war has triggered ...
Cyprus: an ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ no longer
Cyprus has long been regarded in strategic thinking as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” in the Eastern Mediterranean. The phrase captures a hard reality. Today it carries a more troubling implication: ...
The war on Iran: A series of miscalculations
Still not four full weeks into the war, and already Donald Trump’s “short-term excursion” – decapitate the Iranian regime with a surprise attack and impose harsh terms on the defeated ...
Energy security in southeast Europe and the East Med
Undoubtedly the war in Iran has upended the way we view energy security and its impact is global, including on southeast Europe and the East Med. That was the subject ...
War in the Middle East and its impact on the global economy
Recently, the global economy has faced severe challenges, notably the pandemic, the Ukraine war and disruptions in global trade. Currently, it is once again confronted with a new and rapidly ...
A perfect storm is brewing of Trump’s own making
While the war in Iran shows no immediate signs of ending, the world’s attention rightly remains focused on developments in the Gulf. That, however, does not mean that time ...
The UN Charter on self-defence has been conducive to maintaining relative peace
History repeated itself as farce at the White House last Thursday during the visit of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi for talks with President Trump at the Oval Office.
As ...
In war, the ordinary people always pay the piper
Lebanon’s 1975 war saw refugees enter Cyprus; chaos in Syria saw more people seeking asylum. Another influx followed the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza. Cyprus had no involvement in these battles, ...
Iran war only exacerbates Cyprus’ underlying economic challenges
Even before the outbreak of the war on Iran the Cyprus government faced profound challenges including the need to protect the living conditions of lower income households, to undertake investments ...
Iran: the paradoxical logic of victory in an asymmetric war
Wars do not all share the same definition of victory. In what are commonly called asymmetric wars – conflicts between opponents of vastly unequal power and resources – the logic is almost ...
NATO illusions and the reality of Cyprus’ deterrence strategies
In the wake of the March 2, 2026, drone strike on the British Sovereign Base at Akrotiri, President Nikos Christodoulides has moved to reorient the Republic of Cyprus’s grand strategy. His ...
Energy policy that leaves consumers paying more
In a damning finding, the report published at the end of February by the auditor general presenting the results of his audit of the Electricity Authority of Cyprus (EAC) concluded ...
Trump’s war may well come back to bite him
The events in Iran last week mark another milestone in the US presidency of Donald Trump. Once again, the pursuit of causes that appear on the surface to resonate with ...
Iran and the limits of force
The United States and Israel continue to strike Iran. Tehran is responding largely on its own, targeting Israeli and American positions as well as installations across the Gulf. Military deployments ...
The lesser-known challenges of public debt
As the EU attempts to balance fiscal discipline with the need for increased investment, public debt remains a key indicator of macroeconomic stability. Eurozone total debt stands at 88.5 per cent ...
How lawful is the Iran war?
No one believes that Iran was planning to attack the US and Israel imminently on Saturday a week ago, justifying the pre-emptive attack on Iran while negotiations were in progress ...
Take a breath in silence
I often find myself saying to stressed, overworked, younger friends, ‘Take a breath; take time for yourself.’ It’s an old saying – take a breather, and it’s one of ...
Impact of Iran conflict on oil and LNG
With senior US officials estimating that a war with Iran is now expected to last weeks, not days, and Iran’s declaration of war on Israel and the US, the ...
Wily Netanyahu, Simple Trump
Donald Trump is not just Binyamin Netanyahu’s glove puppet, but it is remarkable how much influence the Israeli prime minister has over the American president. If you are seeking ...
When power increasingly ceases to recognise legality
More than two millennia ago, Thucydides captured the essence of power in international affairs.
In the Melian Dialogue, when Athens demanded submission from the neutral island of Melos, its envoys ...
Arrests linked to Epstein fail to touch America’s powerful
“It’s amazing how the arrest of a 66-year-old man in Norfolk has raised the spirits of the entire country,” remarked a reader on the letters page of the Guardian ...
We have to ensure no ‘weepie’ end to the Cyprus movie
I have previously written about how, for Turkish Cypriots, the tragic events of 1963 to 1964 marked a profound rupture, during which their political equality, as enshrined in the Cyprus constitution, was ...
US-Israel attack on Iran was inevitable
As the US and Israel attack Iran and many of its people are conflicted about what should happen to their government, no patriotic Iranian welcomes the bombing of their country ...