Europe faces enormous challenges as energy interdependence buckles from the military conflict — After years of consistent hostility and tension on the Russia-Ukraine border, the eyes of the world have returned their gaze upon this conflict as tensions have flared up into a full-on conventional kinetic war, the largest such event in Europe since the Second World War. Setting aside the West’s overtly…

Education and academia have become another front in the Western position against China — Another line of controversy has emerged in the increasingly tense relations between the liberal Western world and China. On October 22, German journalists Stefan Aust and Adrian Geiges were disinvited from giving public talks about their new biography of the Chinese president titled Xi Jinping: the Most Powerful Man in…

The small country is becoming a thorn in the side of the Asian superpower over another small country that is also a thorn in the side of the same superpower — Even without any previous context, anyone looking on the world map would agree that Lithuania is a small country. …

What’s going to happen at the end of this spicy energy policy drama? — The trans-Atlantic and European political scene seems reluctant to let go of the drama regarding German households and how they might keep their homes warm in the winter months. It’s a facetious way to put it, but the controversy over the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline that has now…

The two countries have transformed their relationship from deadly adversaries to energy partners — After years of controversy surrounding Nord Stream 2 the project is nearing its light at the end of the tunnel. The natural gas pipeline will connect Germany directly to Russia by way of the Baltic Sea. In an instance of the U.S. not interfering in foreign affairs, President Joe Biden…

Somehow it was ‘Sleepy Joe’ who woke everyone up — The U.S. has fully withdrawn from the nearly two-decade mission in Afghanistan. Unfortunately for President Joe Biden, carrying out the departure of U.S. forces from Afghanistan has tarnished his reputation among the establishment entities that had previously held almost unwavering support for him. The decision to withdraw from Afghanistan reveals…

Tearing the band-aid off the hubris and decay of empire — It was bound to fall apart. America’s longest war has come to an abrupt and woeful end. Two decades of exerting the titanic effort of waging an aggressive war of choice in one of the most distant lands from North America has fallen apart in a couple of weeks, leaving…

Citizens of the island nation grapple with two oppressive regimes — Cuba. The island nation so close to the continental United States has long shared a parallel and interactive trajectory with the neighboring superpower. For its size, Cuba has played a sizeable role in the world as the one scrappy Latin American country right up on the doorstep of the United…

Count your blessings next time you take a ride — Rubber. It’s in so many things that we take for granted: water bottles, spatulas, erasers, grip handles, video game controllers, safety gloves, conveyor belts, waistbands, condoms, and, of course, rubber bands. The critical raw material is produced through the extraction of latex from the rubber tree by tapping the bark…