Substack

Created
Tue, 15/07/2025 - 17:01
Have European leaders stopped to consider the Orwellian implications of gearing up their nations for perpetual war? On March 5 2025, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled her Re-Arm Europe Plan, which aims to boost EU defense spending by €800 billion over four years. On June 5, NATO defense ministers agreed to double … Continue reading The False Premise of European Rearmament  
Created
Tue, 24/06/2025 - 19:43
The British press has been the most consistently bellicose on the subject of Russia-Ukraine: the same phrases, the same sentiments were on display in every mainstream newspaper and political magazine An accepted difference between a despotism and a democracy is that in the first there is a single opinion while the second allows a variety … Continue reading “Slava Ukraini!”: how the British media went to war against Russia
Created
Wed, 18/06/2025 - 04:10
5th of June 2025 In George Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother’s state of Oceania is perpetually at war. This never-ending conflict is not a conventional war to be won, but rather a tool of control. The paradoxical party slogan “War is Peace” is the key idea. Continuous war justifies continuous surveillance. Orwell’s novel vividly illustrates how … Continue reading 1984 Revisited – Robert Skidelsky and Attila Mesterházy Jr.
Created
Wed, 18/06/2025 - 04:16
15th of May 2025 As John Lanchester recently remarked (LRB 27 April 2025) ‘However little money there is for anything else, there’s always enough money for a war’. The failures of neoliberal economics threaten all kinds of political backlashes, some of which have already been seen in the nationalist turn of international relations. ‘Military Keynesianism’ … Continue reading Military Keynesianism?
Created
Wed, 18/06/2025 - 04:21
8th of May 2025 It is right to be suspicious of Putin’s intentions without falling for the idea that he will never stop. In 1836 the liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill claimed that Lord Melbourne’s government was smitten with the “epidemic disease of Russophobia,” an irrational panic that had triggered an unnecessary increase in defense … Continue reading The Nation: Russophobia—an Epidemic Disease?