International Affairs Archives

Analyses

International Affairs

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.

International Affairs
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.
International Affairs
Trump’s Board of Unpeace
Pasquale Ferrara 13 February 2026
International Affairs
Of Course the UAE Is Not Preparing To Take Over Gaza
Hussein Ibish 6 February 2026
International Affairs
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.
International Affairs
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.
International Affairs
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.
International Affairs
Iran: Bazaar Merchants’ Protests Shake the Regime
Renzo Guolo 5 January 2026

The protests over Iran’s economic crisis are putting the regime under severe strain. They risk acting as a detonator for an already highly unstable mix: the heavy impact of sanctions, the collapse of the rial to historic lows against the dollar, and an unprecedented energy and water crisis. These factors, compounded by systemic inefficiencies, are driving inflation to around 40 percent year on year. Taking to the streets are Tehran’s bazaar merchants, a group long decisive in determining whether power in Iran holds or collapses.
International Affairs
The Fragile Balance between Justice and Reconciliation in Post-Assad Syria
Emanuele Valenti 2 January 2026

“They arrived without warning and began killing people based on a single question: ‘Are you Sunni or Alawite?’ If you answered Alawite, you were dead.” Nine months on, Samir, 68, still struggles to talk about what happened last March in Baniyas, a town on Syria’s Mediterranean coast where hundreds of people were killed—almost all from the Alawite community, which until a few months earlier had been the Assads’ core base of support. Across the wider region, at least 1,500 people were killed.
International Affairs
Venezuela and the New U.S. National Security Strategy
Andre Diniz Pagliarini 17 December 2025

For months, U.S. naval forces have been gathering off Venezuela’s coast. The warships, the bomber flyovers, and the rising volume from Washington are not incidental. The likelihood of an actual intervention is not incidental. It is in line with the administration’s recently presented geopolitical priorities. The new National Security Strategy, released earlier this month, explicitly elevates the Western Hemisphere as a central arena of U.S. national security, linking migration, narcotics trafficking, and regional instability to the defense of the homeland.