Essays

Long-form writing from leading scholars and commentators on history, statecraft, warfare, philosophy and culture.

Aerial sunset view of a coal-fired power plant in Ordos, China.
essays

The case for climate realism in an age of soaring energy demand

The conventional narrative assumes economies can grow while using less energy. The opposite is happening. It is time for climate realism.

Dieter Helm September 16, 2026
Chancellor Friedrich Merz meets with generals from the German Bundeswehr, on 28 June 2026.
essays

Germany must relearn the language of power-politics

To protect Europe from Russian aggression, Germans must resolve a tension that lies at the heart of their modern national identity: a clash between the ideals of ‘Never Again Fasci..

Peter Sies September 9, 2026
Scene showing Simon Abkarian as Charles de Gaulle and Simon Russell Beale as Winston Churchill in Antonin Baudry's 'De Gaulle: Résistance'.
essays

The battle to bring General de Gaulle to the screen

Antonin Baudry's imaginative adaptation of my biography of de Gaulle, ‘A Certain Idea of France’, raises questions about which liberties film-makers may take when depicting the pas..

Julian Jackson September 4, 2026
The port of Kaliningrad.
essays

Kaliningrad: the slow retreat from Russia’s burden

For a declining Russia, the Baltic exclave is a bridge too far.

Daniel Peris September 2, 2026
Russian servicemen carry a banner with the inscription "Ukrainian Front" during a rehearsal for the Victory Day Parade on Palace Square in St. Petersburg, on 17 January 2025.
essays

Revisionism reconsidered: grand strategy in a post-imperial age

In the postwar period, the US-led world order succeeded in taming efforts to redraw international boundaries by force, but eliminating such impulses entirely is not a realistic bas..

Francis J. Gavin August 26, 2026
Watercolour of David Hume (1711-1776) by Louis Carrogis Carmontelle. Credit: Granger
essays

The last days of David Hume

As death approached, the titan of the Scottish Enlightenment found solace in the company of close friends rather than in the hope of religious redemption.

Max Skjönsberg August 25, 2026
The assembly line at China's largest production base for robots of Shanghai PartnerX Robotics Co., Ltd. in Changzhou. Credit: Imaginechina Limited
essays

The real risk of AI: we stop trying

Financial Times columnist Sarah O'Connor speaks to EI's Caitlin Allen about her book, 'We Are Not Machines: The Fight for the Future of Work', and why we still have control over ho..

Engelsberg Ideas August 21, 2026
A Soviet May Day postcard.
essays

The Global South: the 21st century’s great utopia

The notion of a new world order shaped by the Global South, a reincarnation of the Third World, is a chimera. Middle-power dynamism is the surest way to preserve the Global West in..

Stephen Kotkin August 19, 2026
Print depicting Custer's Last Stand with the US 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876
essays

250 years of the American berserk

Throughout the United States' history, an undercurrent of political violence has competed with the pastoral idealism of the Founding Fathers. It still shapes its national myths.

Phil Tinline August 12, 2026

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