Programmes

Discussion surrounding a potential United States (U.S.) withdrawal from NATO has remained one of the defining debates since the beginning of Donald Trump’s second presidency. In recent months, particularly following the war involving the U.S. and Israel against Iran, tensions within the alliance have intensified, with President Trump openly criticising several European NATO allies and questioning their value to the alliance. As a result, the central question is no longer limited to whether Washington could formally leave NATO. Increasingly, attention should shift toward a more pressing issue: could Europe manage its security independently without substantial American support? What would be the strategic, military, and economic cost of such a shift, and would European states be capable of rebuilding or reorganising their defence capabilities quickly enough to confront emerging threats?   Importantly, despite the significant legal, political, and institutional constraints facing any U.S. president seeking to withdraw from NATO entirely, Washington could still adopt alternative approaches that stop short of formal withdrawal while substantially reducing its role within the alliance. Such measures could include lowering financial contributions, scaling back troop deployments across Europe, or withdrawing critical weapons systems and strategic capabilities currently provided by the U.S. In such a scenario, how vulnerable would Europe become, and how prepared would it be to fill the resulting gaps?

No nation, no people, and no institution has been shielded from the turmoil unleashed by the US-Israel-Iran War. Yet perhaps the most surprising upheaval has unfolded not on the battlefield, but within the ranks of the world's most powerful military. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has launched a sweeping purge of its highest ranks, ousting top officials in a manner more reminiscent of an authoritarian regime consolidating power than a democracy safeguarding its national security.   This restructuring raises unsettling questions about the road ahead. Is Hegseth reshaping the military to serve a political agenda rather than a strategic one? Is Hegseth attempting to protect his position? Is there significant internal resistance to the War? And perhaps most critically — who, ultimately, does this new military answer to?

The 2024 General Election in the United Kingdom saw history being made, as the Labour Party under the direction of Sir Keir Starmer scored a landslide victory over the Conservative Party. Despite this landslide victory and the promise of significant change following years of Conservative Party turmoil, the Premiership of Starmer has not been smooth. Prime Minister Starmer’s term has been littered with major policy U-turns, political scandal, and an increase in support for populist movements. Naturally, this has contributed to a loss in confidence in Starmer’s government and leadership abilities, with many in the House of Commons and the British public questioning the government’s judgment, confidence, and competence.   To add insult to injury, the Labour Party lost the Gorton and Denton byelection (a seat held by the Labour Party for 100 years) and is still suffering from the Mandelson scandal, which further contributed to further loss of trust in the system. As the local elections are fast approaching and Starmer’s approval continues to plummet, the question remains: will a loss in these local elections be the final nail in the coffin for the Labour Party and Starmer?

War is often fought on numerous battlefronts with state of warfare constantly evolving. In the case of the US-Israel-Iran War, drone and economic warfare are primarily tools of battle between the warring sides with the possibility extension to the seas following President Donald Trump’s proclamation of a naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz. Although the primary theater of war in this conflict has been the skies with an impending theater about to open in the seas of the Gulf, there is another more unconventional theater that has been operating since the beginning of the war, the theater of social media. Since the beginning of the war both the US and Iran have used memes and social media platforms such as X and Instagram as propaganda tools to attack each other’s credibility and shift the war narrative in their favor by engaging wider audiences.   The purpose of this analysis is to explore the idea behind how social media and memes opened a new theater of war between the US and Iran since the start of hostilities in February 2026 and its consequences. This exploration is based on the idea the use of social media and memes transforms the individual from a spectator to active participant in the conflict, while also normalizing violence through humor. Moreover, by transforming social media into a theater of war, the belligerents transform the concept of war into an aesthetic, especially through the US military and White House’s use of social media and memes.    

At the outset of 2026, the global natural gas market underwent a profound structural shift that eroded much of the stability built over years of rebalancing in the aftermath of the 2022 European energy crisis. Markets had been advancing towards a phase of relative supply abundance, underpinned by expanding liquefaction capacity in the United States (US) and large-scale Qatari projects. This trajectory was abruptly reversed on Feb. 28, 2026, when Operation Epic Fury triggered the most severe energy shock to confront the international system in decades. The US-Israel-Iran War and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, removed nearly one-fifth of global liquefied natural gas supply from circulation within days.   This paper analyses the structural transformations in the global natural gas market induced by the crisis, tracing supply and demand dynamics before and after the outbreak of the conflict. It further evaluates the implications for key actors within the international energy system, including countries most exposed to global gas market volatility, such as Egypt and Jordan.

On April 7, 2026, the United States (US) and Iran announced a temporary two-week ceasefire, following intensive diplomatic mediation led by Pakistan during a critical window of escalation. The conflict had erupted on Feb. 28, 2026, when the US and Israel launched coordinated military strikes targeting Iranian infrastructure. In response, Tehran moved to close the Strait of Hormuz to international commercial shipping, precipitating the most severe energy supply shock in modern market history.   The closure effectively paralysed approximately 20 million barrels per day that would ordinarily transit the Strait of Hormuz in peacetime, accounting for nearly a quarter of global seaborne oil trade. Under the terms of the ceasefire, Iran announced a conditional reopening of the strait, while the parties agreed to commence diplomatic talks in Islamabad on April 10. This analysis examines the full scope of the crisis and evaluates the prevailing oil price scenarios, drawing on lessons from comparable historical shocks to assess the fragility of the current environment and its potential trajectories.

A defence economy comprises the fiscal, industrial, and budgetary systems through which a state finances, maintains, and adjusts its military capacity. During peacetime, these systems tend to remain stable; in wartime, they become the main mechanism through which conflict transforms a nation’s economic structure. The escalation of Israeli military operations since October 2023 and the broader confrontation with Iran and its regional proxies have caused a defence-economy shift, leading to significant realignments in how the conflicting sides allocate public resources, incur debt, and prioritise expenditure.   This analysis examines how sustained military escalation has reshaped the defence economies of its three key actors: Israel, Iran and the United States. It assesses both short-term fiscal responses and longer-term budget trajectories, arguing that the conflict has not produced a temporary spending spike but a structural transformation, one that has widened deficits, crowded out civilian services, mobilised domestic defence industries, accelerated sovereign credit deterioration, and embedded elevated military spending into national budgets in ways that will persist well beyond any ceasefire. Across the Middle East, the boundaries between battlefield expenditure and national economic health have become increasingly difficult to separate.

President Donald Trump announced that the United States will impose a naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz after weekend talks to end the Iran war collapsed without a settlement. The Islamabad negotiations, which were intended to turn a tenuous ceasefire into a durable peace and reopen Hormuz to safe navigation, broke down over unresolved disputes on nuclear enrichment, sanctions relief, and control of maritime transit. In response, Trump issued an executive order directing the US Navy to interdict any vessel attempting to transit the strait, with particular focus on neutral and commercial ships that have paid Iranian transit tolls, which the White House now characterises as an illegal extortion regime rather than a lawful fee regime.   Trump’s declaration instantly elevates the conflict from a regional shooting war to a global maritime and energy crisis centred on the world’s most critical oil chokepoint, a waterway just twenty‑one nautical miles across at its narrowest. By pledging to enforce a blockade without United Nations Security Council authorisation, the president has pushed the United States into a legally and operationally contested grey zone, framing the move as necessary to dismantle the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ grip over the strait and sever a key stream of cryptocurrency and foreign-exchange revenue to Tehran. The administration’s strategy now hinges on whether US naval power, layered secondary sanctions, and sustained diplomatic pressure can actually sustain a prolonged blockade in the face of Iranian asymmetric deterrence. The following analysis, therefore, centers on Trump’s blockade order itself: its operational viability, Iran’s capacity to erode or break it through asymmetric tactics, and the resulting shockwaves for global energy markets, commercial shipping patterns, and regional economic stability.

Recent developments point to a discernible shift in U.S. foreign policy, as Washington moves away from traditional international principles towards a more pragmatic, interest-driven approach. Within this evolving framework, islands and narrow maritime chokepoints have gained renewed strategic prominence as critical instruments of influence. No longer viewed as remote geographic outposts, islands are increasingly regarded as pivotal assets for securing energy flows, safeguarding supply lines, and controlling maritime navigation. This shift reflects a broader strategic intent to assert effective control over key geographic positions in order to sustain military presence, expand economic influence, and command the vital corridors through which global trade flows.   This heightened focus on islands in current U.S. policy reflects a strategic mindset that tightly links geography, military presence, and sovereignty. Within this framework, geographic locations are treated as assets that can be leveraged through acquisition or utilised as instruments of pressure and bargaining. In this context, islands are seen as discrete, manageable nodes that can be secured or defended to project influence across wider regions. This approach is evident in the handling of territories such as Greenland, Kharg Island, the Chagos Archipelago, and the Falkland Islands during Donald Trump's presidency. Against this backdrop, the present analysis seeks to unpack the geopolitical foundations and strategic drivers shaping the Trump administration’s approach to islands, positioning them as central instruments in the reconfiguration of American influence.

Hungary has a strong and well-developed agricultural sector. Arable land and permanent crops account for 4.3 million hectares, of which approximately 130,000 hectares are irrigated. The main crops include wheat (0.9 million hectares), corn (0.8 million hectares), and sunflowers (0.7 million hectares). While pastures cover 0.8 million hectares and forests cover 2 million hectares, livestock production includes 2.8 million pigs and 33.8 million poultry.   The country’s economy is export-dependent, so many technological advancements and the easing of financial restrictions, such as VAT, were integrated across various sectors, helping improve products and increase profits. The agricultural sectors benefited greatly from such policies, where crops and livestock exports have increased throughout the years. Agricultural exports constituted 9.1% of Hungary's total exports in 2024, including commodities like grains and grain products (13%), animal feed (12%), meat and meat products (9%), dairy products (5%), and fruits and vegetables (5%). Hungary's pioneering role in the agricultural sector increases its prospects for adopting measures to address food insecurity while increasing the benefits for any country that cooperates with it.  

Modern patterns of armed conflict are shifting from time-limited operations reliant on advanced, low-volume technologies to protracted confrontations driven by industrial attrition and the large-scale deployment of autonomous systems. This transition exposes critical deficiencies in the traditional defence industrial base's production capacity. As munitions stockpiles decline amid ongoing conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, military assessments increasingly identify manufacturing capability, supply chain resilience, and the speed of industrial mobilisation as decisive factors in strategic competition, alongside technological innovation.   In response to these dynamics, national security institutions are moving to reactivate historically grounded models that integrate the commercial manufacturing sector into military production. This approach was notably deployed during the Second World War, when Ford Motor Company redirected its civilian production lines to manufacture bombers, Chrysler Corporation established dedicated facilities for tank production, and General Motors allocated its industrial capacity to the production of aircraft engines and munitions.   The current operational environment demands a sustained supply of conventional mechanical platforms and expendable systems, including unmanned aerial vehicles and sensor-equipped tactical vehicles. As battlefield requirements increasingly outpace the production capacity of defence manufacturers, the automotive sector emerges as a uniquely positioned industrial base, combining large-scale output with advanced mechanical engineering capabilities. This reality necessitates a focused assessment of the structural and technical attributes that make it the most viable sector for rapid conversion to support military production.

Many analysts fall into a recurring methodological error when assessing the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) position amid regional turbulence. They measure the country’s resilience by its geographical distance from centres of risk, overlooking its exceptional capacity for strategic reinvention in the face of crises. This misreading, in particular, lends early credibility to pessimistic narratives of a “decline of the Gulf”, narratives that quickly unravel under the weight of empirical evidence and the firmness of facts. The UAE has not navigated successive regional crises by relying on geographic insulation or external protection. Rather, it has done so through deeper, more enduring foundations: a demonstrated ability to convert shocks into substantive reform, and to elevate those reforms into sustained competitive advantage.   Accordingly, this analysis does not seek to downplay the scale of the challenges posed by a regional war that is casting a heavy shadow over the security of the Strait of Hormuz, maritime insurance markets, and investment flows. Rather, it offers a structured attempt to address three interrelated core questions: how has the UAE historically navigated major crises; how did it anticipate the current crisis by fortifying its infrastructure and economic systems to sustain resilience; and, finally, how should the present moment be understood, not as signalling the end of a development model, but as marking the transition to a more mature and deeply embedded position within the global economy.