Analyses
International Affairs
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.
  • The Paradox of Trump’s War: Against Iran and Common Sense
    Ramin Jahanbegloo 12 March 2026
    What, then, can humanity do in the face of this lack of common sense on both sides? Perhaps the only way to stop this war and the spread of violence across the Middle East is a shared commitment to peace and to the value of human life, whether Muslim, Jewish, or Christian. We need a minimal morality that could inspire opposition to Iranian tyranny, alongside a strong turn toward common sense—on that recalls the American tradition of civic virtue: the dedication of citizens to the common good and placing public duty above self-interest. Believe it or not, Iranian civil society today is closer to some of the values of the American Revolution than some of those who work in Washington, D.C. and wage wars to expand their capacity to make war. If the 2003 war in Iraq was unjust, the war against Iran is a war against common sense—and against the civic virtues of the Iranian people.
  • Shifting the Geopolitical Narrative to World-Minus-One
    Seán Golden 19 February 2026
    While Vladimir Putin’s regime and Donald Trump’s illiberal regression gallop backward toward a nineteenth-century narrative of Great Power empire-building, and the Global South tentatively lays the foundation for a twenty-first-century alternative, Europe seems mired in nostalgia for mid-twentieth-century neoliberal obsolescence. This year’s World Economic Forum in Davos might mark a point of inflection in this process.
  • Mass Deaths Amid Nationwide Protest Mark a Turning Point in Iran
    Pegah Zohouri 21 January 2026
    The current wave of protests in Iran began on December 27, 2025, in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, where shopkeepers demonstrated against the collapse of the rial, the soaring value of the US dollar, and the rapidly rising cost of living. What initially appeared as economically driven unrest quickly expanded beyond the capital. Universities emerged as early hubs of mobilization, but more significantly, protests spread to provincial towns and smaller cities, where inflationary pressures are most acutely felt. Within weeks, the unrest had assumed a truly national character, encompassing a growing number of provinces and cutting across social classes.
  • Can International Law Withstand Trump’s “Realism”?
    Gaetano Pentassuglia 19 January 2026
    That U.S. intervention in Venezuela runs contrary to international law, or that Donald Trump’s claims to control Greenland are legally specious, is evident to any student of the subject (and not only to academics). The territorial integrity and political independence of a State, the right of peoples to self-determination, the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of States, the absence of any right to use force aimed at coercively changing a State’s government, the fight against drug trafficking through cooperation among States as established by the relevant treaties, the rules on diplomatic immunity and so on, are all elements of a minimal normative and institutional architecture that is widely consolidated and shared by the international community—especially, for some of those principles, starting from the years following the Second World War.
  • Rift Between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi: Yemen at Risk of a New War
    Mario Boffo 7 January 2026
    The world seems to have taken notice of Yemen—and of the strategic importance of the Red Sea—only after the outbreak of the Gaza crisis, when the Houthis began targeting commercial shipping transiting the area. Yet the events that have unfolded over the past months show that the Houthis are now a deeply rooted reality in Yemen’s own history: a force that controls roughly a quarter of the country, administers its territory efficiently, extracts resources from available fields, manufactures its own missiles and drones with reduced reliance on Iranian supplies, and continues to indoctrinate and recruit in order to expand its ranks and advance its political vision.
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