Geopolitics

The new gold rush

The price of gold has plunged over the past week, but is still up more than 10% this year and has nearly doubled since the start of 2025.

Is it just a bubble? Or are there sound reasons for gold’s safe-haven appeal?

Clearly, speculation is part of the story. FOMO has amplified fear of geopolitical & financial turmoil.

But in a time of war and Western sanctions, geopolitical upheaval & loss of trust in the dollar, gold is also a valuable form of insurance that has stood the test of time.

And it can also offer a decent return. Ignoring the past year’s exuberance, gold appreciated by an average of 9% a year between Jan 2000 & Jan 2025.

The caveat: if gold becomes a more mainstream financial asset, it may lose some of its safe-haven properties.

Read my latest column for The Brussels Times

Europe needs independence from Trump’s America

The storm over Greenland may have abated for now, but Europe’s relations with Donald Trump remain grim.

Europeans need to face facts: they cannot rely on the mercurial US president to protect them from Russia; indeed, he too poses a threat.

Now, then, is the time to accelerate plans to reduce Europe’s military, economic and technological dependence on Trump’s America and to build new partnerships with like-minded powers.

Read my latest Brussels Times column.

Europe braces as Trump targets Greenland

When in 2019 Donald Trump first suggested that the US acquire Greenland, Europeans dismissed the idea as a bad joke. But they’re not laughing now.

My latest column for Brussels Times explains why Trump wants Greenland, how he might gain control of it, and what that would mean – not just for Greenland and Denmark, but also for Ukraine and the rest of Europe.

It concludes that in a world governed by force, Europe needs to be able to defend itself – not by 2035, but now.

Why the EU isn’t a superpower yet

Trump and Putin negotiating Ukraine’s future without consulting Europeans; the EU capitulating to Trump on trade; European factories choked by China’s rare-earth curbs:

Now that global decisions are increasingly dictated by hard-power realities not technocratic rules, the once-mighty EU suddenly seems like a paper tiger.

Read my latest column for Brussels Times, which analyses the EU’s four big vulnerabilities and sets out what it needs to do to become a superpower.