Geopolitics | RCP Story Stream

In a Divided World, Momentum Behind Negotiations Grows March 17, 2025

At a time of rising geopolitical tensions and deepening global fragmentation, the Ukraine war has proved particularly divisive. From the start, the battle lines were clearly drawn: Russia on one side, Ukraine and the West on the other, and much of th...

geopolitics

America Needs a National Economic Security Strategy March 17, 2025

As America confronts an ambitious economic and military peer in China, we desperately require a more coherent playbook for protecting and using our significant economic tools and assets. It is time to complement our national military strategy with a ...

United States Senate

economics

Why Iceland Matters for European Security March 14, 2025

Iceland may be small, but its strategic importance is vast. As Trump questions NATO commitments, European allies must step up before the Arctic becomes the next geopolitical flashpoint...

Romania’s Electoral Coup Is a Blow to Europe March 13, 2025

This past weekend, Romania’s electoral commission disqualified the frontrunner nationalist candidate, Calin Georgescu, from participating in May’s upcoming presidential contest, the latest development in an electoral saga started with the controversi...

Iraq’s Plan To Transform Its Economy Is a Risky Bet March 10, 2025

Iraq’s Development Road aims to reduce dependence on oil by turning the country into a key trade corridor between Asia and Europe. ...

Turkish-Kurdish Conflict at a Turning Point March 08, 2025

On February 27, 2025, Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), made a groundbreaking call for the group to lay down its arms, dissolve, and integrate into the Turkish state...

Trump Can Hit Russia & China Vulnerabilities March 08, 2025

Hold on, world leaders, President Donald J Trump’s energy plan is coming for yours. His policies to promote oil and gas production, end the electrification of vehicles and appliances, develop domestic critical minerals, and withdraw from the Paris Ag...

Russia

china

Peace in Ukraine: The Sooner, the Better March 07, 2025

It is not enough to lament and proclaim that, in an ideal world, the aggressor must be defeated, because geopolitics is not a childish game of good versus evil. ...

Ukraine

Net Zero Is Over March 06, 2025

It has become a cliché to observe that the world as we have known it has gone, never to return. Yet for all the anxiety about what comes next – geopolitical competition, a heightened risk of war, disruptions to patterns of trade – few say the obvious...

A Window Into the DPRK Military March 06, 2025

The direct intervention of North Korea in the Ukraine war represents a test benchmark for the Korea’s People Army, whose battlefield actions are now challenging the traditional Western opinions that have always drawn it as an obsolete and ineffective...

North Korea

Trump Is Losing Europe and Strengthening China March 05, 2025

When Donald Trump told Tucker Carlson last October about the need to "un-unite" Russia and China, many dismissed it as just another hollow statement from a famously outspoken presidential candidate. Now, with Trump's secretary of State extolling the ...

china

Major War Brews in Central Africa March 05, 2025

The fall of Goma, the administrative center of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) North Kivu Province, to the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels in late January has significantly upped the ante in the country’s longstanding unrest. What had until now...

Africa

The Hells Angels Have Arrived in Latin America With a Low Profile March 05, 2025

In Brazil, walking through majority-black Salvador da Bahia’s working-class neighborhoods, one can now spot garages with the Hells Angels’ painted insignia, in Portuguese and English. Their compounds are confined, far from commercial areas, though a ...

Brazil

Hells Angels

Politics

Broken Promises and Their Consequences March 04, 2025

More than three decades after the Cold War ended, the United States continues to treat Russia as an existential enemy rather than a potential partner. This hostility, deeply embedded in Washington’s foreign policy establishment, is not just ideologic...

Israel’s Intelligence Failure March 03, 2025

Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, 2023, was not Israel’s first intelligence failure. In the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, Israel was surprised by Egypt and Syria’s two-front armored attack. ...

Israel

Forgotten Wars: Conflict Intensifies in Burkina Faso March 03, 2025

Over the past decade, Burkina Faso has been experiencing a profound political and humanitarian crisis, driven by armed insurrections and a resurgence of terrorism. Since 2015, the country has witnessed an escalation of violence perpetrated by jihadis...

The Crumbling Pillars of Global Order March 01, 2025

From moral clarity to strategic ambiguity: The US position at the UN ...

Ukraine

Four Geopolitical Disruptions and How To Exploit Them August 29, 2024

geopolitics

Putting ‘Asia First’ Could Cost America the World August 27, 2024

As America’s presidential campaign nears its climax, domestic politics and geopolitics are combining to stimulate an important strategic debate. Briefly stated, the question is: Should Washington deprioritize, perhaps even disengage from, regions out...

china

U.S.–China Tensions: A Year of Posturing in the Pacific August 27, 2024

Chinese and American forces in the Pacific have had a busy year, with the great power rivalry flaring up again recently in the skies off Alaska. Yet this was only the latest episode in a long-running saga of moves and countermoves playing out in warm...

china

The Geopolitics Behind a Normal Meeting August 27, 2024

Small things can reveal much larger geopolitical truths. Such is the case of a recent meeting of the U.S.-China financial working group. The group, which consists of representatives from each country’s central bank and government agencies, convened l...

china

Russia’s Diminishing Role in Central Asia August 24, 2024

The world was caught off guard by Ukraine’s bold and daring incursion into the Kursk region of Russia on August 6. ...

Central Asia

China Prods Pakistan to Ramp up Security August 22, 2024

China is frustrated with Pakistan's inability to protect Chinese workers on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which has slowed progress due to violence and instability....

china

Update on the War in Ukraine August 20, 2024

Two and a half years ago, Russia invaded Ukraine, a former part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. The reason for the invasion was geostrategic: Moscow justifiably feared that a hostile power could invade it from the west through Ukraine and...

Ukraine

Iran Tries Rapprochement With Azerbaijan August 19, 2024

Skepticism remains, but regional geopolitics are pushing Iran and Azerbaijan to complete their rapprochement. ...

iran

Azerbaijan