We have long had lockdowns, where cultural and political barriers have created divisions between countries and their respective economies. Such a division existed between East and West, or between Germans and Slavs, British and French, Danes and Swedes, etc. Today, →
What if the Cold War (1947-1991) had instead been fought between the United States and Germany – and not the Soviet Union? It may be hard to believe, but it was not a foregone conclusion that the United States would →
A sense of calm – and perhaps even hope – is spreading across the world following Donald Trump’s election victory. Trump and his party have seized everything that matters: the Senate, the House of Representatives and even the absolute number →
Anyone who grew up in the 1970s will remember post-war Europe, where a third of Germany was behind the communist Iron Curtain, along with Poland, the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, partly Yugoslavia, Albania and, of course, Russia. But →
The classic nation state is about ‘one people and one country’. It often talks about linguistic and cultural unity, but there are also aspects of ethnicity and religion. For example, Sweden is the country of the Swedes, a people with →
Apart from a few oddballs, few people are upset by the European Commissions plans to control and monitor our online activities. And since most things are now connected online, the regulations affect the bulk of our communications – emails, chats, →
Western Europeans have long harboured a kind of suspicion and sometimes disgust for everything east of Berlin. The endless steppes and the land of the mad horse people, uncivilised, inhospitable, debauched and remote. For various reasons we have repeatedly attacked →
Many were surprised by the Swedish rush to join NATO, which took place without a referendum or in-depth debate. Why now, one wonders? NATO was formed as a defence alliance against the Soviet Union during the Cold War, when Sweden →
We remember the Warsaw Pact from the Cold War, where the Soviet Union formed a defence alliance with the Eastern states occupied during World War II, as well as other Red nations. Today, Russia is not formally part of a →
