Europe’s forgotten frontiers are where the next crisis is already beginning. Hannah Lucinda Smith’s Hinterlands (Profile Books, 2026, 288 pages) begins from a proposition that western European governments have spent decades trying to avoid: Europe’s periphery is central to Europe’s
Keir Giles’s Who Will Defend Europe? An Awakened Russia and a Sleeping Continent argues that Europe has spent three decades behaving as if history had ended, while Russia did the opposite. The Sleeping Continent is a verdict on political leadership,
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die shows how democracies are dismantled legally, incrementally, and often with public approval, by leaders who come to power through elections and then hollow the system out from within. The authors’ central argument
Russian influence operations against the United States are not a relic of the 2016 election cycle, nor a closed chapter in the history of hybrid warfare. They are active, adaptive and, in the view of Finnish investigative journalist Jessikka Aro,
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Indifference or half-measures in the face of aggression embolden autocracies, reminds Carlo Masala, professor of international politics at Bundeswehr University Munich. Masala delivers a chilling geopolitical case study in his compact but sharply focused book Wenn Russland gewinnt. Ein Szenario (2025).
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A Blueprint for European Backbone? Charles de Gaulle’s War Memoirs are not easy reading. They are grandiose, deliberate, and unmistakably self-serving. Yet in the brittle geopolitical moment we now find ourselves in—2025, with the United States shifting inward and unpredictable—Europe’s
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Ghost Fleet by P.W. Singer and August Cole is a speculative military thriller that envisions a near-future conflict where a technologically advanced China, allied with Russia, launches a surprise attack on the United States, leading to the occupation of Hawaii
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Originally published in 2008, Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World stands as a prescient analysis of the evolving global order. While the book does not predict the collapse of the United States as a global power, it does forecast the relative
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While Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Art of War may not enjoy the same renown as The Prince, its insights into the nexus of military organization and political stability have influenced subsequent military leaders and strategists over the centuries. Machiavelli’s The Art
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Annie Jacobsen’s “Nuclear War: A Scenario,” published by Torva Books, offers a harrowing exploration of the catastrophic consequences of nuclear conflict. Through meticulous research and compelling storytelling, Jacobsen presents a minute-by-minute account of a hypothetical nuclear war, blending factual information
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