Boris Johnson’s political survival strategy then would be to demonize the EU as treacherous and anti-British, poisoning the well for any future cooperation. The grown-ups really need to get their act together, because Jo

Taking the Great Barrington Declaration’s advice could cost half a million lives. Horses for courses.

Evo Morales' time is up, but the MAS under Luis Arce’s leadership could still win this election, and if it doesn’t then Carlos Mesa will probably become president, which would not be a disaster either. Democracy is not d

Outcome C: Donald Trump recovers, and is back out campaigning within a week. Probability: more than 70 per cent. Consequence: he still loses the election (just look at the numbers), but he is fit and able to build on the foundations he has already laid and lead a campaign from the White House (not necessarily non-violent) to dispute the postal vote.

It makes perfectly good sense for a New Caledonian or a Réunionnais to trade in the doubtful blessings of impoverished small-state nationhood for the citizenship of a First-World country and access to all its benefits.

When post-Soviet Russia brokered a ceasefire between the exhausted parties, Armenia wound up holding Nagorno-Karabakh and a large amount of other territory (now emptied of Azerbaijanis).

Going through +2° higher average global temperature means that some tropical and sub-tropical areas will become lethally hot outdoors in the summertime for weeks at a time.

Peaceful protest was drowned in blood in China in 1989, but it kept notching up victories elsewhere.

We are asked to believe that Boris Johnson has belatedly realized there will be a crisis in the Irish Sea next January, and decided to push through a highly controversial law right now.

The agreements signed are just documents involving an exchange of ambassadors, trade deals, and the like.

What Donald Trump has triggered—and somebody was bound to trigger it around now, because every political niche, like every evolutionary niche, is always filled—is a final reckoning on the ‘race problem.'

Donald Trump's bet on a vaccine moonshot could deliver a pre-election payoff, but it mustn't kill voters first

What Trump has triggered—and somebody was bound to trigger it around now, because every political niche, like every evolutionary niche, is always filled—is a final reckoning on the 'race problem.'

China's ruling elite have become impatient to stamp out differences and deviations from the norm.

A collection of West African countries, each with their own problems, have banded together to protect human and civil rights. They succeed more than they fail.

Putin’s position is rather similar to that of England’s King Henry II, who ordered the assassination of that martyred cleric by accident, so to speak, and was then covered by shame and regret for his murder.

Winning an election is now the only way of achieving political legitimacy almost anywhere in the world.

Very few of today’s Muslims in India (or Pakistan or Bangladesh, for that matter) are descended from Central Asian conquerors. Most are descended from native-born Hindus who were forcibly converted to Islam, or changed their religion later to escape the Hindu caste system or the higher taxes paid by non-Muslims, or even sometimes for genuinely religious reasons. In a truly secular India, it wouldn’t matter, which is why the country’s founders insisted that it should be secular. But that’s not what Narendi Modi wants, and Modi is winning.

Popular anger was great even before the 2.75-kilotonne explosion last week. The currency has collapsed, most people’s savings have been wiped out, the country has defaulted on its debt, and there are no jobs for youth.

Donald Trump will need a fake crisis because otherwise the coronavirus is going to kill him politically.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya is not demanding to become president if she wins. She just wants the 700 opposition supporters and activists arrested since May, according to the Belarus human rights group Vyasna, to be released.

There is the same constant tug-of-war between the rational actors and the ultra-hawks in Tehran as there is in Washington, Moscow, and Beijing, but most of the time the grown-ups are in charge.

The idea that China is 'the central threat of our times,' as Mike Pompeo put it on July 21, is laughable. It’s a formidable competitor economically, although demographically speaking it has feet of clay.

So what relevance could Polish politics have for the forthcoming election in the United States? Quite a lot, actually, starting with the very similar ways in which the two countries are polarized politically.