Central Asia

The coronavirus slowdown is forcing the Kremlin to confront decisions about its gas sales sooner than it had hoped.

Beijing is making good on threats to retaliate against countries that hold it responsible for the pandemic.

How would we respond differently if another outbreak happened?

A riot broke out in a poor, predominantly Muslim neighborhood north of Paris over the weekend. The immediate cause was a traffic offense and...

Some countries have declared victory over the outbreak.

Tensions are raising as the world reckons with the economic impact of the pandemic.

The U.N. food program released some troubling numbers earlier this week.

It’s perhaps the worse quarter for Beijing since the 1960s.

Bad news comes as tensions rise in the Persian Gulf and South China Sea.

When I began the Thoughts column, I explained that I was using it as a space for thinking about a new book intended to place geopolitics within the framework of the philosophical tradition. The problem with writing this was the systematic nature of writing a book. A book must contain an orderly structure built around a central thesis. It can contain multiple strands of thought, but at a certain point it becomes chaotic. The problem is not so much about books versus short articles but about the tension between two ways of looking at the world and its parts. The systematic imposes an order on the world that may explain it but is insufficient. When the Geopolitical Futures staff members write an article, it is intended to be both self-contained and connected to our broader method. It must explain unfolding events through a single coherent lens. In this, our writing is like that of others, and is intended to clarify and reveal the connections. There is another approach to thinking, which I will call prismatic. Rather than looking through a clarifying lens for the order of things, it looks at the world through a piece of glass that seems to […]

Even medical institutions are political.

(click to enlarge) The World Trade Organization revised its forecast for global trade this year to reflect the impact of the coronavirus pandemic — and...