Several years ago, I had occasion to interview the Guardian’s Russia correspondent, Jonathan Steele, and asked how he assessed Britain’s ties to US foreign policy. He humorously described the US as the big ship in the harbor and Britain as its “tugboat.” No longer a world power on its own, Britain these days escorts the US into foreign outposts where neither belongs. More

First Israel built a sophisticated missile interception system named Iron Dome to neutralise the threat of homemade rockets fired out of Gaza. Next it created technology that could detect and destroy tunnels Palestinians had cut through the parched earth deep under the fences Israel erected to imprison Gaza on all sides. Israel’s priority was to keep Gaza locked down with a blockade and its two million inhabitants invisible. More

If Donald Trump gets his way on formation of a Space Force, the heavens would become a war zone. Inevitably, there would be military conflict in space. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 which designates space as the global commons to be used for peaceful purposes—and of which Russia and China, as well as the United States, are parties—and the years of work facilitating the treaty since would be wasted. More