Essays

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

Ely Cathedral.
essays

What the Vatican gets right, and wrong, about AI

The Catholic Magisterium has long illuminated the unbridgeable gulf between man and any other intelligent being. In the age of AI, its rejection of utility as the measure of human ..

Joshua Treviño June 24, 2026
J.M.W. Turner's 'The Fighting Temeraire'.
essays

How Britain lost the art of economic warfare

As Europe and the United States take economic security seriously, Britain remains wedded to an out-of-date 'just-in-time' attitude to supply chains and energy.

Oliver Harvey and Sahil Mahtani June 24, 2026
A Ukrainian stamp commemorating the sinking of the Moskva, a Russian warship.
essays

Ukraine and the fight for freedom of navigation

Ukraine's resistance to Russian maritime coercion offers a template for how states committed to freedom of navigation can deter those who threaten it.

Oleksii Reznikov and Dalibor Rohac June 19, 2026
Trump gold card souvenir.
essays

How Trump’s America is remaking global trade

In his drive to compete with China, President Trump has used bilateral trade deals to pursue geopolitical goals, accelerating the World Trade Organization's slide into irrelevance.

Marc Levinson June 17, 2026
An engraving of George Washington with Lafayette at Valley Forge.
essays

The America of the French imagination

French attitudes to the American republic were shaped by the culture of Enlightenment and Revolution, and gave way to a sense of disillusionment as the decades took their course.

Jeremy Jennings June 12, 2026
Tage Erlander (centre), Prime Minister of Sweden between 1946-1969, meets US President John F. Kennedy.
essays

Sweden’s Cold War tightrope

Throughout the Cold War, Sweden pursued a shrewd diplomatic strategy in the Baltic, calming tensions between the superpowers while quietly aligning itself with the democratic West.

Magnus Petersson June 11, 2026
Leo Tolstoy on Vacation in the Woods by Ilya Repin (1891).
essays

A summer of reading

Contributors to Engelsberg Ideas share the books they’ve enjoyed in the summers of their lives.

Engelsberg Ideas June 11, 2026
Lee Kuan Yew, the Prime Minister of Singapore, gives a press conference.
essays

What small states can learn from Singapore

Singapore's survival in an increasingly tricky neighbourhood holds pointed lessons for Europe's smaller states.

Floris van Berckel Smit and Deborah Koh June 10, 2026
A digitally colourised engraving based on 'Peter the Great in a Storm on Lake Ladoga' by Charles Auguste, Baron de Steuben.
essays

Peter the Great put Russia in a Swedish uniform

The Russian tsar's quest to westernise his country took inspiration from Swedish institutions while dismissing the notion of a literate civil society that animated and sustained th..

Kristian Gerner June 5, 2026

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