Opinion

I have spent most of this war as the person at the table who says economic pressure doesn't end wars. Sanctions didn't break Russia. The price cap leaked. The frozen reserves sat frozen while Moscow found new banks, new tankers, new shell companies in new jurisdictions. Every time someone told me the ruble was about to collapse, it didn't. So when Kyiv started burning down … [Read more...] about Ukraine Picked the Right Target in Wildberries, and the Kremlin’s Reaction Proves It

The joke writes itself, so let's get it out of the way. Tim Burton made a film thirty years ago in which a president keeps accepting the invaders' assurances of peace right up to the moment they vaporize his cabinet, and the gag lands because the audience sees the con in the first frame while the man with the launch codes never does. Cancel the strike. They say they want a … [Read more...] about Trump, Iran, and the Mars Attacks Problem: Five Months of Cancelled Strikes

On Thursday 30 July, thousands of people crossed from Morocco into Ceuta. Most came by sea, swimming or paddling inflatables the five kilometres from Fnideq and the shorter run from Belyounech, then walking around the Tarajal breakwaters onto local roads. Others breached the fence. Spain's government delegation in Ceuta put the dead at nine and declined to describe the … [Read more...] about Ceuta Border Surge Strips Sánchez of His Last Lever and Revives Spain’s Enclave Problem

I've spent years arguing that Chinese antitrust enforcement is a political instrument wearing a legal costume — that SAMR investigations open when a founder says the wrong thing and close when the right concessions are made, and that the competition analysis is reverse-engineered from a decision already taken upstairs. So let me concede the part that cuts hardest against me. On … [Read more...] about Trip.com’s $765 Million Apology: What the SAMR Penalty Tells Foreign Companies About Doing Business in China

Let me clear the air first, because the rest of this only makes sense if you know where I'm standing. I don't like this president. I think the tariff program he has run for the past eighteen months has been improvised, legally reckless, and expensive in ways his own voters are only starting to notice at the register. The Supreme Court threw out his signature tariffs earlier … [Read more...] about Trump’s Section 301 Probe of the EU Tech Fines Is Right, and It Pains Me to Write That