The decade following 9/11 was defined by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What conclusions did Moscow and Beijing draw from those decades? The need to quash dissent at home and avoid US hegemony abroad. 5/

Western leaders – misreading Fukuyama – hoped that increasing economic and political ties with Moscow and Beijing might lead at least towards increased liberalism, if not democracy. 6/

That theory is now dead. Truss’ speech argues that the West needs to use its full economic leverage to deliver geopolitical ends – as China and Russia have been doing for decades. What might those new methods look like? 7/

Truss suggested: 🔹Sanctions mainstreamed as an option of first resort. 🔹Market access and sectoral liberalisation agreements with ‘like-minded’ partners. 🔹Infrastructure investment and development spending directed toward countries that share ‘Western values’. 8/

These promises aren’t new, but the impetus behind them is accelerating in London and Washington, and to a lesser extent, Brussels. And they reflect a growing sense that existing international institutions – the UN, the WTO, the G20 – cannot deliver. 9/

In the absence of unlikely reforms, new ad hoc bodies and partnerships - the EU-US Trade and Technology Council, AUKUS, CPTPP – will continue to grow in importance. But they will not have the capacity to deal with crises. And their workings will be (even) less transparent 10/

NATO remains the single post-war institution whose stature is growing. Truss called for a “global NATO” and 2% of GDP spent on defence to be “a floor not a ceiling”, because there is “no substitute for hard military power”. 11/

New alliances may come, but the rules of a new era of zero-sum geopolitics have yet to be set. end/ ----- You can contact Jon at [email protected] and see his previous blogs here: bit.ly/3rZGqbb

I'm hosting a new monthly series of Global Counsel podcasts on behind- the-scenes geopolitical tussles. First ep features Tomas Lamanauskas on the role of the Int’l Telecommunication Union, regulaton of emerging tech and much more. play.acast.com/s/61d6d8e7cb16…

Introducing 'The Geopolitics of', a new podcast mini-series hosted by Jon Garvie exploring the policy debates – from infrastructure to cyber-security to sanctions – that will be fundamental to the business operating environment in the years ahead.

My front page story from Turkana, Kenya, where drought, aid cuts and food shortages from Putin's war in Ukraine are causing people to starve. From malnourished children in Kakuma refugee camp to violent cattle raids near the Ugandan border: a desperate, avoidable crisis.

New blog arguing that the "free world" case on Ukraine has yet to convince far beyond the G7 global-counsel.com/insights/blog/…

Will we see a return to Cold War diplomacy? In a new blog, Practice Director Jon Garvie analyses how the war in Ukraine is unfolding on a diplomatic level and how non-alignment is the cold war trend, which looks most likely to persist. Read here: bit.ly/3Hr36HO

For UnHerd, I spent a week in the Donbas embedded with the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps (Right Sector), in their first mission since being formally absorbed into the Ukrainian army, tasked with harassing advancing Russian troops: unherd.com/2022/06/on-the…

Latest episode of my Global Counsel geopolitics podcast out now, questioning what the past month of summits has acheived and how to reboot the multilateral system play.acast.com/s/61d6d8e7cb16… via Acast

important election coming up in Bucharest

great conversation with the World Economic Forum's KayFirth-Butterfield on the geopolitics of AI. Short version: we need a better conversation on the emerging rules of the game, and on who makes them. Global Counsel play.acast.com/s/61d6d8e7cb16…

Some thoughts on how far the #OECD / #G20 tax process can get this year and what happens if it fails. linkedin.com/posts/activity…