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Takaichi and Trumpt
Analysis

A Year of Confrontation: China-Japan Relations following Takaichi’s Remarks about Taiwan

Almost one year ago, when asked at the Japanese National Diet, what an attack on Taiwan would entail for Japan, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi asserted that any contingency involving the use of force or naval blockade could constitute “a survival-threatening situation” (存立危機事態, sonritsu kiki jitai).

France student protest
Analysis News

“Paris is burning” – A French feeling of “Ras-le-bol du Macronisme”

Throughout history, the French have shown that they know how to protest. Yet, this cultural tendency is insufficient to explain the combustible atmosphere in France. How did a spontaneous student protest snowball into nationwide riots? To understand what happened, it is essential to look behind the country’s political curtain.

Analysis

Straw Polls of Power? The Secretary-General Election and the Exclusion of States Outside the UN Security Council

The race for the next UN Secretary-General has highlighted the outsized role the Security Council plays in selecting the organization’s top official. Security Council membership constitutes a form of influence over the SG selection process, yet fifty-nine UN Member States have never served on Council.

Opinion

Champagne in the Knesset

Still under the shadow of a war. Still burying the dead. Sirens still split the night, and soldiers still move between shattered fronts. Yet there is champagne in the Knesset.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Israeli Minister of National Security, celebrated as lawmakers passed  one of the most radical pieces of legislation in the state’s history: the expansion of the death penalty.

Analysis News

Sudan’s Unseen Collapse: Salam’s Story and the Forces Tearing a Nation Apart

In 2017 Salam, a MINT student at the Graduate Institute, travelled  to Khartoum to enroll in university in Sudan. Despite Sudan’s evident challenges, he quickly grew fond of the country and imagined building a future there, perhaps working for one of the local NGOs. But the sense of normalcy that surrounded daily life would prove alarmingly fragile.