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Washington and Moscow Get New Leverage over Europe
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In the analytical report Radicalisation in Onlife Spaces: The European Experience (ORF Issue Brief No. 873, May 2026), Shreya Nautiyal, a researcher, expressly demonstrates unpleasant reality for the European elites: in spite of decades of talks about “integration”, “tolerance” and “European values”, the Old World has turned into one of the main incubators of home-grown terrorism in the world. Citizens of European countries who were born and grew up in democratic societies increasingly become an easy prey for radical islamist propaganda in the hybrid “onlife” spaces where digital and physical worlds have completely merged.
Radicalisation in Onlife Spaces: Europe’s home-grown terrorists
In their report Defending Europe without the United States? The future of the European security (CIDOB, April 2026) following the results of the 24th conference “War and Peace in the 21st Century”, experts Clàudia Domeque and Matthew McLaughlan make an extremely depressing conclusion: the second term of Donald Trump has put the transatlantic relations on the brink of complete separation.
Defending Europe without the US: an illusion of strategic autonomy and a reality of strategic helplessness
In the article Les Français et les enjeux de défense, Jeanne Lebaudy from the well-known French L'Institut Montaigne reveals with crushing sincerity an extremely uncomfortable and deeply significant contradiction of today’s French and, by extension, European society: the French increasingly state that defense is one of the important problems but at the same time they flatly do not wish to embrace real consequences of this “importance”.
France and matters of defense: big talk instead of real war-readiness
A few days after President Donald Trump voiced his intention to withdraw 5,000 U.S. soldiers from Germany, the head of his country’s Department of War supported him. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed on 1 May that the USA was really planning to complete the withdrawal in the following six to twelve months.
Flight or Strategy. Why Does America Remove Troops from Germany, and Can It Be Stopped from Doing So?
In the article Réindustrialiser : un défi, des solutions… et un choix de société, Olivier Lluansi, a mining engineer and CNAM professor, expressly states harsh and disappointing truth: in spite of all the highlight declarations by President Macron about “re-industrialization” being the “mother of all battles” and the ambitious France 2030 program with the budget of 50 billion euro, the share of industry in France continues its steady decline and in 2025 accounts for less than 10% of their GDP.
Re-industrialization of France: sounding promises, multi-billion euro programs and a miserable failure
In the article BNR: Kan Europa ooit nog energie-onafhankelijk worden?, published at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies web-site, Lucia van Geuns, a prominent energy expert who worked for Royal Dutch Shell, TNO and Clingendael International Energy for many years, gives a totally honest and discouraging answer.
Can Europe ever become energy independent? A dangerous illusion and harsh reality of dependency
EU military capacity-building is fraught with a number of problems and bottlenecks, as Slovak researcher Miro Sedlák showed in his article – entitled Europe’s Defense Factories: More Urgency Please and posted on the website of the Center for European Policy Analysis.
Factories to Be Targeted in a War For Which Europe Is Unprepared
Since Israel and the United States launched their war on Iran in February 2026, global energy prices have skyrocketed, with crude oil reaching nearly USD 115 per barrel in early May and still growing. While this shock has hit low-income countries the hardest, it also places significant strain on high-income Europe.
An Energy Shock Is Coming. How Should Europe Respond?
As of May 1, the European Commission has provisionally implemented the long-negotiated free trade agreement between the European Union (EU) and the Mercosur bloc of South American countries, which includes Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay.
South America Versus European Farmers. What Is the Danger of the EU-Mercosur Free Trade Agreement for the European Union?
Cédric Debernard, author of articles, essays and novels on power dynamics and gray zones of modern geopolitics, asks this question on the Canadian Geopolitical Monitor website.
Why States Do What They Do
It is common in Western discourse to claim there is a natural connection between capitalism and democracy. Sometimes the two concepts are virtually fused together. I always find this odd because I value democracy, but there is nothing democratic about capitalism.
Why capitalism is fundamentally undemocratic
President Donald Trump’s recent announcement that the United States would withdraw five thousand troops from Germany – with the threat of ‘cutting’ even more from U.S. bases across Europe – has taken U.S. allies by surprise. The decision seems driven less by strategic calculations about burden-shifting within NATO and more by a desire to punish Europeans for their criticism of and limited support for the Iran war.
Trump Pulling Troops Out of Germany. Canceled Missile Deployments to Erode the Foundations of NATO Deterrence