Europe

The Western Balkans – the rising threat from Russia and the risks for Europe

The Western Balkan states - Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, Albania, and North Macedonia - remain overlooked areas of potential investment. However, oft-cited risks of operating there include weak governance and political paralysis, unresolved conflicts and secessionist movements, the enduring presence of organised crime groups and foreign hybrid influence. These structural threats are considerable,

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The war before the mid-terms: red flags for America’s political future

The US is moving toward the mid-term elections under conditions that no longer look like normal democratic competition. Abroad, the Ukraine war is being pushed into a new phase, Iran is an on-again-off-again switch remaining a live trigger point, China is testing missiles while using minerals and diplomacy to test the Indo-Pacific order, and energy

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The collapse of the old order: Europe’s political crisis and the rise of strategic realignment

The geopolitical assumptions that defined the post-Cold War era are rapidly disintegrating. Across Europe, traditional political parties are collapsing under the weight of public frustration, while NATO struggles to adapt to the realities of modern warfare exposed by Ukraine. At the same time, the media environment that once sustained Western consensus politics is fragmenting as

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Politics be damned

This is no longer about Ukraine. It is about trajectory. The UK and EU leaders are driving their nations to a point where economic fragility, political fragmentation and strategic overreach will meet like a train crash. The continued rhetoric of open-ended confrontation with Russia may play well in chambers and summits, but the negative consequences

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Warfare by any other name?

For years, European officials have spoken about “hybrid warfare” as though it were a future threat. It is not. It is already embedded in the political and economic landscape of the continent, and has been raging for years. Hybrid warfare does not begin with tanks crossing borders. It begins with ambiguity. It operates in the

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The age of strategic fatigue: why great powers are running out of appetite, not capability

At first glance, the global system appears more militarised and confrontational than at any point since the late Cold War; no surprise there with some 60 major conflicts affecting life and limb around the world as we speak. While this is underway, defence budgets are expanding across NATO, East Asia, the Middle East and Russia,

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UK & Europe’s Critical Infrastructure

For the past 18-24 months, KCS Group International has been warning – repeatedly and with increasing urgency - that Europe’s critical infrastructure is dangerously exposed. What was once a forecast is now an undeniable reality. Russia’s hybrid operations have not only intensified but quadrupled in 2025, exploiting every weakness in a system that has been

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Is the EU at war with the US or with itself?

The claim that the EU is “at war” with the US sounds hyperbolic at first glance. Washington remains Europe’s principal security guarantor, its largest external trading partner and (through NATO) the backbone of continental defence. Yet, beneath the formal architecture of alliance, a more corrosive dynamic has emerged. Policy choices taken in Brussels and several

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ARC and the powers determined to stop it

For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the world’s three largest powers (the US, Russia and China) are showing signs of drifting into a pragmatic triangular balance. It is not an alliance, and it is not ideological. It is, instead, the product of converging interests. Quiet US-Russia communications on energy and

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Europe’s push for rare earth magnet production: can it wean off China?

Europe’s debut into large-scale rare-earth magnet manufacturing via the newly opened plant in Narva, Estonia, is a bold signal. Backed by EU funds and Canadian Export Credit Agency loans, this facility represents a strategic effort to break China’s long-standing stranglehold on critical magnet supply chains. But as promising as that may seem, the road to

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