As the Ukraine disaster shows, an internally undisputed autocrat’s words have to be taken seriously. This goes for Putin – the demise of the USSR as ‘the biggest disaster of the 20th Century’, thus his fight to restore it – as it does for Xi Jinping. The latter’s rhetoric, political initiatives and actions since his…

Throughout 2023, India will play a prominent role in world politics. It will be chairing the G-20, the grouping of the world’s 20 largest economies. The G-20 is not an international organisation, nor a group sharing common values, and even less an alliance, but it is a setting in which the world’s most important economic,…

Mutual agreements between the UK and Switzerland are an attempt to overcome the evident disadvantage of not being a formal participant in the European single market. But the Swiss case cannot be a template for the UK to overcome its Brexit woes. A mutual recognition agreement (MRA) in the financial sector, ‘aimed at facilitating or…

India’s refusal to adhere to Western sanctions against Russia as a consequence of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is in stark contrast to its recent repeated confirmations of unequivocally siding with its QUAD partners US, Japan and Australia against China’s expansion and its joining the newly created quadrilateral forum I2U2, a grouping comprising India,…

Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine has had another opposite effect of his stated intention to divide Europe: the four former neutrals – Finland, Sweden, Austria and Switzerland – are changing their traditional non-alignment policy. Irland might, too. Ukraine, Moldova but also a clear popular majority in Belarus want to become EU members to put…

India abstained, when the UN Security Council voted a resolution condemning Russia for its unsolicited war of aggression against the Ukraine. For some in the West, this positioning may have come as a surprise and certainly as a disappointment. A deeper look into the historic background, however, reveals some logic for Prime Minister Modi’s position.…

With the historical resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, dated 11 November, China accelerates the trajectory towards its Maoist past. Xi’s one leader, one country, one thought doctrine becomes a menace to the rest of the world. Europe, thus the EU is directly challenged. Strategic reliance on the US will no longer…