This year’s Eurovision had it all: geopolitical debates, a boycott threat, great music and a cracking Australian entry. Russia is outraged by Jamala’s winning song about the deportation of Crimean Tartars - but the contest has always had political nuances.
Utopianism is a neglected prism through which to view Africa. It is the space where the intricacies of decolonisation and independence can be properly comprehended.
After more than 20 years of tenuous ceasefire, Nagorno-Karabakh is once again the centre of a violent conflict. And its people haven’t exactly had their say.
Energy empire? A Gazprom facility in Moscow.
imagesbywestfall/flickr
Russia’s energy exports are expanding far beyond oil and gas to include coal, nuclear and refined petroleum products, a trend with far-reaching geopolitical consequences.
There’s an old joke about Brazil that suggests that it’s the country of the future – and it always will be. For a while this looked to be an anachronistic, possibly racist stereotype that had been decisively…
Apartheid South Africa started a war in which it could not maintain a strategic advantage. It misread the quest for national liberation and international opinion that undermined its effectiveness.
The Free Syrian Army standing lookout.
Abdalrhman Ismail/Reuters
On February 11 a Syrian ceasefire was signed in Munich. Few are optimistic it will hold. Why? Because, argues one Middle Eastern scholar, world leaders are ignoring key realities.
