Power, illusion and the Thucydides warning
Power rarely collapses from weakness. It collapses from the consequences of misjudgement. The confrontation between the US and Israel with Iran may prove to be one of those moments.
My ...
Democracy at risk: what the EIU 2025 index reveals about Cyprus
In a previous article, we examined the concentration of power and erosion of democracy in Cyprus. This article advances that discussion, focusing on the 2025 Democracy Index from the Economist Intelligence ...
Fanatics, an obsessive, and a belligerent fool
We don’t have to look very far to find a useful historical analogy for the current crisis in the Middle East. In 1967 Egypt closed the Strait of Tiran to ...
Cyprus EEZ in the limelight
Cyprus EEZ came back into the limelight on the occasion of EGYPES, Egypt’s annual and foremost energy conference and exhibition that took place in Cairo this week. And in ...
A timely look at happiness
A couple of weeks ago, we had the joy of our granddaughter staying over for a few days. That Friday night, worrying about the escalating war, I sat watching her ...
Misinformation has major macroeconomic impacts
Advances in technology have enabled the rapid spread of information and knowledge, but, at the same time, they have amplified the phenomenon of misinformation and the circulation of false news.
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Concentration of power and the erosion of democracy in Cyprus
The Republic of Cyprus is currently at a significant constitutional juncture. The legislative debate on amending Article 17 of the Constitution, which guarantees the secrecy of correspondence, for a new surveillance ...
King Charles’ state visit to America would be in bad taste
What special relationship! David Dimbleby the veteran British broadcaster exclaimed rhetorically on being asked about the illusion of the special relationship between Britain and the USA.
There never was a ...
Wars, deceptive and personal
The Greek armada that sailed to Troy, supposedly to bring back the wife of a cuckhold, was a deception, and deception is still in vogue. Someone must have whispered Sun ...
Iran: Trump will have only three options
The Iranians know they have won, but President Trump doesn’t get it yet. He’s still at the stage of counting up the US and Israeli air-strikes and assuming ...
In search of a diplomatic off-ramp
A Trump apologist explained his tendency to threaten military action and then back off as a deal making tactic to frighten his enemy to accept his terms. If the threat ...
Orban has already faced divine justice
Viktor Orban has not aged well. When I met him in Budapest two months before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 he was a typical hyper-ambitious student leader. Anybody who ...
Inadequate responses by Europe to the impact of Iran war
As the war with Iran, involving Israel and the US, escalates, governments in Europe appear to be underestimating its ongoing and future damaging economic impact. Already, the war has triggered ...
Cyprus: an ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ no longer
Cyprus has long been regarded in strategic thinking as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” in the Eastern Mediterranean. The phrase captures a hard reality. Today it carries a more troubling implication: ...
The war on Iran: A series of miscalculations
Still not four full weeks into the war, and already Donald Trump’s “short-term excursion” – decapitate the Iranian regime with a surprise attack and impose harsh terms on the defeated ...
Energy security in southeast Europe and the East Med
Undoubtedly the war in Iran has upended the way we view energy security and its impact is global, including on southeast Europe and the East Med. That was the subject ...
War in the Middle East and its impact on the global economy
Recently, the global economy has faced severe challenges, notably the pandemic, the Ukraine war and disruptions in global trade. Currently, it is once again confronted with a new and rapidly ...
A perfect storm is brewing of Trump’s own making
While the war in Iran shows no immediate signs of ending, the world’s attention rightly remains focused on developments in the Gulf. That, however, does not mean that time ...
The UN Charter on self-defence has been conducive to maintaining relative peace
History repeated itself as farce at the White House last Thursday during the visit of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi for talks with President Trump at the Oval Office.
As ...
In war, the ordinary people always pay the piper
Lebanon’s 1975 war saw refugees enter Cyprus; chaos in Syria saw more people seeking asylum. Another influx followed the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza. Cyprus had no involvement in these battles, ...
Iran war only exacerbates Cyprus’ underlying economic challenges
Even before the outbreak of the war on Iran the Cyprus government faced profound challenges including the need to protect the living conditions of lower income households, to undertake investments ...
Iran: the paradoxical logic of victory in an asymmetric war
Wars do not all share the same definition of victory. In what are commonly called asymmetric wars – conflicts between opponents of vastly unequal power and resources – the logic is almost ...
NATO illusions and the reality of Cyprus’ deterrence strategies
In the wake of the March 2, 2026, drone strike on the British Sovereign Base at Akrotiri, President Nikos Christodoulides has moved to reorient the Republic of Cyprus’s grand strategy. His ...
Energy policy that leaves consumers paying more
In a damning finding, the report published at the end of February by the auditor general presenting the results of his audit of the Electricity Authority of Cyprus (EAC) concluded ...