June, 2022

• 5 June

  Tesla’s China Game

  

  It has not been a great spring for Tesla. As the American electric vehicle manufacturer’s stock led the recent market nosedive and its provocative CEO Elon Musk obsessed over his bid to buy Twitter, his beefs with the Biden administration and an allegation of misconduct by a private jet flight …

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• 5 June

  As Ukraine loses troops, how long can it keep up the fight?

  

  As soon as they had finished burying a veteran colonel killed by Russian shelling, the cemetery workers readied the next hole. Inevitably, given how quickly death is felling Ukrainian troops on the front lines, the empty grave won’t stay that way for long. Col. Oleksandr Makhachek left behind a widow, …

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• 5 June

  Central banks are embracing digital currencies. Will the US lead or follow?

  

  Last week, the new vice chair of the US Federal Reserve, Lael Brainard, testified before Congress that the United States was at risk of falling behind in the race for the future of money. Judging by the number of countries that have embraced fiat-based digital assets, she’s right. Two years …

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• 5 June

  Russia vs NATO: How Mali Became Another Front for the Ukraine War

  

  The distance between Ukraine and Mali is measured in thousands of kilometers. But the geopolitical distance is much closer to the point that it appears as if the ongoing conflicts in both countries are the direct outcomes of the same geopolitical currents and transformation underway around the world. The Malian …

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• 5 June

  On Iran, Biden should reverse Trump’s imaginary statecraft

  After countless ups, downs and near-death scrapes, the negotiations to restart the Iran nuclear deal appear to be hung up on one final disagreement: an end-of-game demand by Tehran to have the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps removed from the U.S. list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. On this question likely hangs …

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• 5 June

  Lebanon just had an election. Its result? Curb the optimism.

  There’s little to celebrate about the outcome of Lebanon’s parliamentary elections on May 15. While the results demonstrate that an active minority are angry, the low voter turnout—41 percent—in an election billed as “decisive” for Lebanon’s future reveals that the country’s citizens are largely apathetic or disillusioned about the prospects …

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• 5 June

  Israeli troops kill 2 Palestinians amid West Bank violence

  

  Israeli forces shot and killed two Palestinians in the occupied West Bank during what the army described as violent confrontations on Thursday. They are among four Palestinians who have been killed in the last two days at a time of heightened Mideast tensions. The Israeli military said forces operating in …

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• 5 June

  The impact of the war in Ukraine on Russian-Turkish relations and Black Sea security: Three potential scenarios

  

  Russian-Turkish relations are in large part based on the personal chemistry, affinity, and trust between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put these personal ties to the test. While President Erdoğan also maintains a close working relationship with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Turkish-Ukrainian …

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• 5 June

  Higher oil prices are giving Algeria’s regime breathing room

  

  Until recently, it seemed as though Algeria’s generals were running out of options. After the 2014 oil price crash, the country experienced years of budgetary constraints and a collapsing currency, followed by the rise of a national protest movement, known as the Hirak, in 2019 that led to the removal …

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• 5 June

  Egypt and India: Time to rebuild relations

  

  Asia is undergoing a world-historical geopolitical transformation. The rise of the Indo-Pacific as a coherent geoeconomic and geopolitical system coincides with the rise of what this author has previously termed the “Indo-Abrahamic,” an emerging transregional order connecting India to West Asia and the eastern Mediterranean. Until now, the geographic vastness …

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