Cutting the aid budget so that it accounts for 0.5% rather than 0.7% of GDP need not in fact diminish its effectiveness, nor British influence in the world. It all depends how the budget cuts are made. It is a little known fact that the majority of British aid spending is actually handed out to […]
According to The Times, the Treasury is pressing for foreign aid to be cut temporarily from 0.7% of GDP to 0.5% as part of next Wednesday’s Spending Review. This would be both poor economics and dreadful politics. By way of background, the International Development Act of 2015 commits the UK to spend 0.7% of national income on […]
“The people’s will can’t be broken,” says Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the woman many recognise as the legitimate president of Belarus. I spoke to her via Zoom from Lithuania where she fled with her children after Alexander Lukashenko – ‘Europe’s last dictator’ – claimed victory in a Presidential election riddled with alleged electoral fraud. Protesters have taken […]
After the white smoke poured from the roof of the Sistine Chapel in 2013, the newly elected Pope Francis peered out from a balcony in the Vatican in a plain white cassock. He greeted the vast crowds in St Peter’s Square with a simple “Buenas noches!” and a slightly nervous wave. It set the tone […]
Turkey’s strongman president is bent on creating a warped, 21st century version of the Ottoman empire. As former French President, Francois Hollande, has said Recep Tayyip Erdogan is ”seeking to militarise the eastern Mediterranean; he has breached Nato obligations by buying Russian missiles; he has imprisoned hundreds of journalists and political opponents; he is obsessed […]
As George Orwell so sagely put it, “to see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle”. Sadly, this is a battle most political risk analysts are in danger of losing. For, in obsessing about the unicorn of a united, pro-American, anti-Chinese EU, foreign policy thinkers risk wholly neglecting an actually functioning […]
Sir Geoffrey Nice QC knows an atrocity when he sees one. He prosecuted Slobodan Milosevic for genocide and has been an expert on international human rights and humanitarian law ever since. He’s been involved in investigations into the Rohingya genocide in Burma, crimes against humanity in North Korea and allegations of forced organ harvesting of […]
After the genocides in Rwanda and Srebrenica a quarter of a century ago, world leaders said those fateful words: “Never again”. Less than three decades later, it’s ‘never again’ all over again in Myanmar and China. Experts have spoken out, but the world has failed to do anything other than wring its hands. Three years […]
The image of Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai in handcuffs as two hundred police officers raid the offices of his Apple Daily newspaper, symbolises yet another brazen attack on Hong Kong’s rapidly evaporating civil liberties – and a death knell for press freedom. As the last Governor of Hong Kong Lord Patten said yesterday, “this […]
“Geography is the most fundamental factor in foreign policy because it is the most permanent.” -Nicholas J. Spykman, The Geography of the Peace, 1944 A forgotten genius One of the great glories of my job as a political risk analyst is to bring great intellectual treasures that have lain submerged for far too long to […]
As we awake from our collective covid nightmare, we are finding ourselves confronted by the new horror of a global economic depression. If we are to beat this new threat to our wellbeing, governments must work to stimulate economic growth. This is why the Global Economic Neural Network (GENN) yesterday teamed up with the Centre […]
CapX Weekly Briefing It’s been a week of two wars – one metaphorical, the other almost literal. At home, the culture ‘war’ continues apace, with statues falling and absurd debates about the Prime Ministerial plane being painted red, white and blue. Abroad, the most serious conflict on the Indo-China border since 1962 led to dozens […]
At 6:48 AM on Sunday, Dallas Police asked Twitter users to send them any videos they had of US protesters acting illegally. A day later, their video service was down after tens of thousands of Korean pop music enthusiasts had uploaded hours of KPop music videos to the platform in protest, crashing its server. This […]
Are we paying too much in aid? Too little? Do we spend it wisely? Could we do more? Our international aid budget provides a rich seam of debate amongst politicians, advisors and commentators – but all too rarely do those who have led HM Government’s work overseas get a role in the conversation. I have […]
As the dust settles on the 2010s, we’re sure to be inundated with gloom-filled thinkpieces telling us what a god-awful decade it’s been. From Trump’s election to Brexit and the readily accepted climate eschatology of the new green movement, much of today’s media is a heady brew of shrill, overblown pessimism. Here at CapX, though, we […]
As a tumultuous year draws to a close, we’re looking back at some of the most insightful interviews CapX has conducted over the last 12 months. Robert D Kaplan is widely-regarded as one of the world’s leading thinkers on foreign policy, defence and geopolitics. He is the author of 18 books, including The Revenge of Geography and […]
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