Analyses
International Affairs
Israel: The Vote That Will Shape the Post-October 7 Future
Claudia De Martino 23 October 2026
The 27 October Israeli election is widely seen as a verdict on October 7th, 2023, a date that profoundly reshaped the country’s identity and outlook. But what kind of verdict will it be? Israel is caught in a paradoxical solipsism. There has been no soul-searching over the 70,000 to 80,000 dead in Gaza, nor over the debate that documentaries such as Naza (2026) and The Voice of Hind Rajab (2025) have sparked abroad. Instead, there is a broad consensus that Israel must emerge from the war with more secure borders, which in practice means that its presence in 70 percent of the Strip is there to stay.
  • U.S.-China Relations: Beyond the Thucydides Trap—Toward Strategic Stability?
    Seán Golden 15 October 2026
    When Donald Trump visited Beijing in May of this year, Xi Jinping promoted a new definition of Chinese foreign policy, a “constructive strategic and stable relationship” that both the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the White House defined as “a constructive China-U.S. relationship of strategic stability on the basis of respect, fairness, and reciprocity.” Xi’s follow-up visit to Washington last September reiterated this definition
  • Sudan: Civilian Sieges and the Slow Descent into an Africa Mega-War
    Ruth Hanau Santini 7 August 2026
    Since April 2023, Sudan has entered a brutal war with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) fighting the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), both hitting civilians across the country, manipulating and weaponizing pre-existing communal tensions. The power struggle between the two former allies, which removed the Al Bashir regime in 2019, was in the making since 2021, when they derailed the civilian-led transition. While the two sides cooperated in the past, after more than three years of all-out war and intense violence within a zero-sum game logic between their elites, their reciprocal demonization and their transformation into existential enemies seems hard to reverse.
  • Lebanon and the Shadow of Permanent Occupation
    Claudia De Martino 19 July 2026
    On Friday, June 26, Israel and Lebanon signed an agreement—mediated by the United States—ending the conflict that began last March. The agreement covers several decisive points, including active US involvement in its implementation and in financing Lebanon’s armed forces (LAF), while also accommodating firm positions held by both sides.  The Lebanese government emerges politically legitimized, while Israel retains considerable room to maneuver in Lebanon. Yet Israel itself is among the parties that may prove an unreliable partner when it comes to the agreement holding.
  • The End of the Hezbollah Ambiguity? Lebanon’s Negotiating Moment
    Riccardo Cristiano 25 June 2026
    Small, economically hollowed out by years of devastating crisis and torn apart by a war that is slowly erasing its southern flank, Lebanon has never mattered more to the world than it does right now. With only weeks left to settle their accounts, the Americans and Iranians opened their Swiss negotiations with a bitter, hours-long quarrel—over Lebanon. Only once Iran had extracted something on the Lebanese front—a tacit acknowledgment of its role as the country’s patron—did the two sides find a way to get to the matters that were really theirs to discuss. Tehran clearly sees Lebanon as an extension of itself: proof of its regional reach, recognition of which it is determined to secure—and to some degree, it has.
  • Gaza Stuck in a Limbo of Trump’s New Personalist Global Order
    Claudia De Martino 31 March 2026
    In an article published in January in Foreign Affairs, two researchers analyze the extreme volatility of the current global order, arguing that in the age of personalist politics key foreign policy decisions—especially those involving great powers and nuclear-armed states—depend largely on the whims and obsessions of individual leaders, rather than on stable institutions or long-term strategies. In this new global order, instability is the norm, because decisions no longer correspond to long-term strategic expectations and interests, but are the result of impulsive choices unconstrained by institutional considerations and commitments. This dynamic is illustrated by what is not happening in Gaza, which has officially entered the ‘phase two’ of the twenty-point peace plan launched by US President Donald Trump—a plan that was supposed to ensure the Strip’s demilitarization, a technocratic government, and the long-awaited beginning of reconstruction.
  • War with Pakistan Marks the Taliban’s Weakest Moment Since 2021
    Vittorio Sandalli 27 March 2026
    While international attention is focused on the war with Iran—due to its implications for the global energy market and the threat of a potentially devastating escalation—fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan has resumed with unprecedented intensity in the adjacent region. Such a clash would have been unthinkable when the Taliban returned to power on August 15, 2021, reestablishing the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, in part thanks to Islamabad’s support.
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