Essays

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

The front cover of 'The Iron Man' by Ted Hughes.
essays

Will AI really turn us into paperclips?

Thought experiments such as Nick Bostrom's 'paperclip maximiser' tell us less about artificial intelligence than about our own intuitions and fears.

Erik J. Larson October 7, 2026
A motorcycle travels in front of a graffiti with the Venezuelan flag. Credit: ZUMA Press, Inc.
essays

Hezbollah’s Venezuelan money machine

Drug trafficking, money laundering and a compliant regime have sustained Hezbollah's presence in Venezuela for two decades. Since Maduro's fall, that haven is no longer secure.

Magnus Ranstorp September 30, 2026
Empty highway in the direction of Munich on a car-free Sunday during the oil crisis.
essays

The wrong prescription for liberal democracy’s ills

Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu’s call for a ‘working-class liberalism’ fails to address the underlying cause of liberal democracy’s woes: a lack of productivity.

Marc Levinson September 25, 2026
A stamp printed by Russian 2009 showing the nuclear icebreaker, Lenin.
essays

SMRs: a short history of a nuclear pipe dream

Small modular reactors (SMRs) were first conceived for military use and deployed on polar bases. Seventy years on, their record remains dismal.

Paul Josephson September 23, 2026
The Old Manse at Concord, Massachusetts.
essays

Concord’s second revolution

Transcendentalism, the visionary philosophy championed by figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, is the yin of the American Revolution.

Richard Marranca September 18, 2026
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

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