August
- Opinion
- US election
Trump can still showboat his way to the White House
No modern politician knows how to make an entrance like Donald Trump, but his uncommon talent for working crowds has to overcome his ability to alienate half the electorate.
- Louise Mahler
White supremacists turn UK riots into online recruiting pitch
Hard-line organisations previously designated by the UK as domestic terrorists are calling for an overthrow of the British government.
- Jeff Stone
May
‘Hitler’s language’: Biden calls Trump ‘unhinged’ for ‘reich’ post
The US president has seized on a video posted to the Republican’s social media account that referred to a “unified reich” if Donald Trump won a second term.
- Jordan Fabian and Jennifer Jacobs
Russia not looking for global power clash: Putin
Vladimir Putin now casts the war as part of a holy struggle with the West, which he says has forgotten the role played by the Soviet Union in defeating Nazi Germany.
- Updated
- Guy Faulconbridge
April
- Opinion
- Russia-Ukraine war
‘Cartel of aggression’ trades on timidity and self-interest
The West has enormous economic leverage over China and Russia. But fear of their own consumers prevents governments from using it.
- Simon Johnson and Oleg Ustenko
February
- Analysis
- Dictators
Why are we talking ourselves into Armageddon?
Western leaders and commentators are increasingly talking of World War Three, but they may be overestimating the strengths of Russia, China and Iran.
- James Curran
January
How Tina Fey became ‘the most powerful woman in comedy’
The comedian has never kowtowed to cancel culture, but she has slightly reworked the musical version of her 2004 hit “Mean Girls” to acknowledge changing mores.
- Stephen Armstrong
December 2023
Trump glorifies Putin, uses Nazi rhetoric in campaign speech
The former US president demonised immigrants as “poisoning the blood of our country” and called January 6 defendants “hostages”, amid alarm over his language.
- Isaac Arnsdorf
November 2023
- Opinion
- Review
Why we’re still in love with the toxic myth of the ‘Great Man’
The theory that history is defined by alpha males feels unfashionable and offensive – but we can’t let it go.
- Antony Beevor
June 2023
- Opinion
- Russia-Ukraine war
China is going to be the great winner from Putin’s strife
Russia’s failed attempt to make Ukraine into a buffer state is only helping China’s statecraft on its sensitive own western borders.
- Geoff Raby
April 2023
The spy hiding in plain sight in my family tree
It’s thrilling to discover a familial link to someone who lived so large, writes an Australian Financial Review reporter whose relative was David Walker.
- Tom McIlroy
March 2023
NATO slams Putin rhetoric on nuclear weapons in Belarus
While Washington played down concerns about Mr Putin’s announcement, NATO said his non-proliferation pledge and his description of US weapons deployment overseas were way off the mark.
- Updated
- Dan Peleschuk
January 2023
- Opinion
- Democracy
Hello Davos, you are the problem
Global elites are busy undermining the economic fairness that’s needed if the anti-democrats and demagogues are to be kept at bay.
- Misha Zelinsky
September 2022
- Opinion
- Russia-Ukraine war
Will solidarity with Ukraine survive Putin’s winter of discontent?
By weaponising the gas and oil on which large parts of Europe depend, Putin has always hoped to destabilise the democratic coalition lined up against him.
- Updated
- Misha Zelinsky
April 2022
‘No culture, no sports, only fighting’: The steel town that forged Volodymyr Zelensky
Before he was Ukraine’s president and a global icon of democracy, Volodymyr Zelensky was a boy from the gritty former Soviet industrial city of Kryvyi Rih.
- Updated
- Misha Zelinsky
March 2022
- Exclusive
- Business Summit
No freedom without cost as war ushers in ‘new economic era’: Treasurer
Australians must be prepared to bear a higher price of living in return for standing up to aggressors, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has warned.
- Phillip Coorey
July 2021
Netflix’s How to Become a Tyrant is like a YouTube manual
This six-part show reminds us that the alternatives to democracy aren’t as appealing as we might think.
- John McDonald
US military brass feared ‘Reichstag moment’ from Trump
General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told aides he feared the then-president and his acolytes might try to use the military to stay in office.
- Reis Thebault
March 2021
Gordon Liddy, Watergate mastermind, dead at 90
Liddy, a former FBI agent and Army veteran, was convicted of conspiracy, burglary and illegal wiretapping for his role in the Watergate burglary, which led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.
- Will Lester
January 2021
How a historian came close, maybe too close, to a Nazi thief
His relationship with Bruno Lohse led to academic Jonathan Petropoulos being asked to help locate a looted artwork, and later being accused of extortion.
- Nina Siegal