When it comes to sowing – and profiting – from division, Erdogan’s Turkey is quite the superstar. Under the delightfully named Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), the Trump administration duly slapped sanctions on Ankara for daring to buy Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile defence systems. The sanctions focused on Turkey’s defence procurement agency, the…
Material need usually wins out against ideological creed. Necessity over dogma. Twice this week, the European Union demonstrated that maxim in practice when it rebuffed Washington over the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline with Russia; and then again over a major investment pact with China. Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas pointedly stated this week that…
Although Donald Trump had previously assured everyone that all the talk about his plans for a third presidential term was just a joke, on the eve of the elections, not for the first time he voiced this idea. At the same time, he emphasized that, given the way he was treated during his presidency, after…
When we founded the Voltaire Network in 1994, our first concern was to defend freedom of expression in France, and then around the world. Today, however, this concept is, in our view, distorted and fought against. We will therefore try to define this ideal further. The circulation of ideas experienced a considerable boom with the…
Who could have predicted how dreadful a year 2020 would be. By this New Year’s Eve, 19 million to 20 million Americans will have contracted a deadly virus in a pandemic that exploded out of China to carry off 333,000 Americans, one of every 1,000 of us. As 2021 begins, Americans will be dying at…
There is a major effort underway to convince and coerce African and Asian nations to “normalize” relations with the State of Israel in exchange for promised United States financial, military and diplomatic assistance. The Kingdom of Morocco is the latest state in the Maghreb and West Asia to recognize Tel Aviv. In the case of…
