Great Power Competition - Diplomacy & Politics

Spy Who Came In From the Cold — and Ran for Parliament

Jonathan Pollard served 30 years in an American federal prison for selling the United States' most classified secrets to Israel. Israel granted him citizenship, lobbied for his release and sent Netanyahu when he landed. He announced he is running for the Knesset. Nobody in Washington said a word.

By Sunny Peter

/ 8 May 2026

Spy Who Came In From the Cold — and Ran for Parliament

Alliance by Coercion, Racket by Design

The Trump administration’s approach to alliance management has a consistent logic: pay up or we withdraw. NATO members are being billed. Trade partners are being tariffed. The message is transactional and deliberate. What it is not is an alliance. It is a protection racket.

By Sunny Peter

/ 28 Apr 2026

Semiconductor Chessboard: How the US-China AI Race is Redrawing Global Alliances and Diplomatic Strategy

The US-China rivalry has found its sharpest edge in semiconductors. Washington uses export controls to choke Chinese access to advanced chips. Beijing races to build domestic capacity. Every state in between is being forced to choose sides in a contest they did not start.

By Sunny Peter

/ 12 Nov 2025

Semiconductor Chessboard: How the US-China AI Race is Redrawing Global Alliances and Diplomatic Strategy

The New Scramble for Syria: Turkey, Iran, Russia, and the Gulf States Jockey for Power in Post-Assad Syria

Assad is gone. The scramble has begun. Turkey wants buffer zones. Iran wants its corridor. Russia wants its bases. The Gulf states want influence without commitment. Every outside power has a stake and an agenda. The Syrians are, once again, the last consideration.

By Sunny Peter

/ 8 Nov 2025

The New Scramble for Syria: Turkey, Iran, Russia, and the Gulf States Jockey for Power in Post-Assad Syria

The Great Rebalancing: How Multipolarity Is Transforming International Relations in 2025

The liberal international order is not collapsing — it is being renegotiated. The Global South is asserting agency. China and Russia are offering alternatives. The United States is retracting. What emerges will be less Western, less institutionalised and harder to predict.

By Sunny Peter

/ 8 Nov 2025

The Great Rebalancing: How Multipolarity Is Transforming International Relations in 2025

New Cold War in the Arctic: Military Buildup, Territorial Claims, and the Fight for the North

Russia has been militarising the Arctic for a decade. China has declared itself a near-Arctic state. NATO is scrambling to respond. The far north — once a strategic afterthought — is the next contested frontier of great power competition. The ice is melting. The tensions are not.

By Sunny Peter

/ 30 Sep 2025

New Cold War in the Arctic: Military Buildup, Territorial Claims, and the Fight for the North

A Beginner's Guide to Political Realism for the 21st Century Reader

Political realism is the most influential tradition in international relations — and the most misunderstood. It is not cynicism. It is not the belief that might makes right. It is the attempt to understand state behaviour as it is, rather than as we might wish it to be.

By Sunny Peter

/ 26 Sep 2025

A Beginner's Guide to Political Realism for the 21st Century Reader

Myth of Perpetual Dominance: What 500 Years Teaches About Multipolarity

No power has held global dominance forever. The Spanish empire, the British empire, the American unipolar moment — each peaked, overreached and declined. Five hundred years of history teach one consistent lesson: dominance is always temporary. The question is what comes after.

By Sunny Peter

/ 23 Sep 2025

Myth of Perpetual Dominance: What 500 Years Teaches About Multipolarity

15 Timeless Books That Define International Relations and Geopolitics

Some books define a field. Others define how practitioners think about power long after they were written. This list identifies 15 works — from Thucydides to Mearsheimer — that remain essential for anyone seeking to understand why states behave as they do.

By Sunny Peter

/ 18 Sep 2025

15 Timeless Books That Define International Relations and Geopolitics

China's Massive Military Parade Unites Xi, Putin, and Kim Jong Un in Historic Display of Anti-Western Alliance

Xi Jinping flanked by Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un sent a message requiring no translation. Three authoritarian leaders, three nuclear states, one parade. The image is not merely symbolic — it reflects a convergence that Western strategic planning cannot afford to dismiss.

By Sunny Peter

/ 3 Sep 2025

China's Massive Military Parade Unites Xi, Putin, and Kim Jong Un in Historic Display of Anti-Western Alliance

Moral Courage of Limits: How Hans Morgenthau's Political Realism Reveals the Deepest Ethics of Power

Morgenthau is read as the theorist who stripped ethics from foreign policy. He is better understood as the thinker who insisted that power without moral limits destroys itself. His realism is not amorality — it is a different, harder ethics that the current moment demands.

By Sunny Peter

/ 31 Aug 2025

Moral Courage of Limits: How Hans Morgenthau's Political Realism Reveals the Deepest Ethics of Power

AI as Power: Can Diplomacy Keep Up With the Technology Race?

Artificial intelligence is developing faster than the diplomatic frameworks designed to govern it. Autonomous weapons, AI-enabled surveillance and algorithmic decision-making are already deployed. The institutions meant to regulate them are still in committee.

By Sunny Peter

/ 19 Aug 2025

AI as Power: Can Diplomacy Keep Up With the Technology Race?