On December 19, 2018, US President Donald Trump announced victory over the most challenging terrorist threat in recent years, through tweeting: ‘We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency’. This proclamation caught institutional and allied actors off guard, and was accompanied by a Trumpian demand of an …
Continue reading Mission accomplished? Identifying the end of terrorist campaigns
Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere. The concepts underlying it have been in development for decades and are already supporting commonplace tools like Google Translate, Amazon Alexa, and IBM Watson. AI can be understood as the ability of machines to ‘think’ and make decisions. Much of this has to do with machine learning and recognizing patterns …
Continue reading Diverging paths for the United States and Europe in the ‘race’ to develop AI
A headline in the Financial Times on 3 October 2018 read, ‘Can Russia stop using the US dollar?’ The subheading for the article was ‘After years of US sanctions, Moscow says it can de-dollarise its economy. But its rhetoric may be easier than reality’. These article headings raise a couple of questions to be addressed …
Continue reading Dollar power, exorbitant privilege, and financial sanctions
Felix Berenskoetter writes in his book Concepts in World Politics, that there is no single recipe for ‘unpacking a concept, its meaning, function or performances’. Using the metaphor of a ‘concept cake’ he argues that different layers are always at work as we try to make sense of the world. While this metaphor may seem …
Record breaking temperatures were reported this summer across the globe from Japan to Scandinavia and from Sub-Saharan Africa to North America. Heat waves led to wildfires conquering land beyond national control. As international teams were called upon for support, the environment became a focal point of transatlantic collaboration. This is one, and only one, significant …
Continue reading ‘Make our Planet Great Again’ – the Transatlantic Discord on Climate Change
With the highest number of refugees arriving in Europe since the Second World War, and many of those perishing in the Mediterranean and Aegean Sea, the European Union (EU) and its member states have been under increasing pressure to act. However rather than use the opportunity to create a long-term, innovative, and durable strategy for …
THE • TRANSATLANTIC • PUZZLE 