Category: State Analysis
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Enemy at the Gates: The Historical Roots of Modern Polish Nationalism
When criticizing various nationalist movements, it is often easy to point to exaggerated or decontextualized past injustices or highly mythologized golden ages to highlight the absurdity and insecurity of such movements. However, what happens when a state’s extreme nationalistic pride, fear and distrust are grounded in actual fact? And in a world of increasing power…
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Vice Empires: Causes and Implications of Narco-State Emergence
This essay will analyse three narco-states in their formative stages, and seek to understand why states undergo this process of narcotization and what implications the narco transformation will have, for both the states themselves as well as their wider regions.
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Dragons aping Bears: Why Russian Disinformation Tactics failed for China
This essay will explore how the Chinese COVID-19 disinformation campaign failed on all three tactical, strategic and grand strategic levels.
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Seven days to the Rhine: the sustained degradation of NATO and European defence
An analysis on NATO’s past, present and future
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Crossroad of Empires: Turkey between Brussels, Moscow and Washington
Turkey sees itself as wedged between ravenous Russia in the North, perfidious Europa in the West, lawless Arabia in the South-East, treasonous Kurds within and a demanding and difficult American ally in faraway seas. This essay will seek to analyse how Turkey has struggled to maintain a sustainable position amidst such chaos and in doing…
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Game of Thrones: Saudi Arabia between Aristocracy and Absolutism
Through an interrogation of Saudi history, this essay will establish the key causes of Saudi Arabia’s present seemingly medieval political, socioeconomic and legal status. With reference to the concepts of Enlightened Autocracy in opposition to Feudal Aristocracy, it will then attempt to explain the current power transition and near-future trends of reform in the Kingdom.
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Shaky Citadel: Taiwan’s Struggle for Survival
A disclaimer: Taiwan and the Republic of China are used interchangeably to simplify nomenclature. No political position is intended by the use of either term. A Brief History of Taiwan Taiwan, formally known as the Republic of China (ROC), attained its current state in 1949 after the Kuomintang (国民党), or the Nationalists, under the command…
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Chimeric State: Iran between Technocracy and Theocracy
The Iranian state system is a truly unique creature, having maintained both twin heads of fierce personality-based theocracy and experienced institutionalized technocracy. In merging these two normally exclusive traits, it has created a chimeric contradiction, which has allowed it to command the monstrous tools of regional pan-Shiite militia and fervent warrior jihadists with the expertise,…
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Thirsty Partition: Water Politics between India and Pakistan
This essay will explore how water plays a critical part in the current India-Pakistan conflict, focusing specifically on the geopolitical element, as well as related key concepts, such as regional balancing, security dilemmas and how to approach “bad” treaties.
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Arctic Opportunity: Russian Roulette in a Warming World
This essay will analyze how Russia benefits from the warming Arctic, the competition it faces from Western interests and its ambiguous Arctic relationship with China. In doing so, it hopes to shed light on how Great Power Competition, geopolitics and international relations change in some ways and yet stays the same in many others in…
UnderStated 