open polity

Tag: Analysis

  • Opinion: Vinícius Júnior And The Fight Against Racism In Football

    Opinion: Vinícius Júnior And The Fight Against Racism In Football

    There is and never will be any justification for racist abuse towards black people in society. Often dubbed the beautiful game, football brings millions of people together in celebration of a shared love. Yet its beauty has always existed alongside something deeply uncomfortable. Like most things, football is a microcosm of society; even the beautiful game is plagued by political, social, and cultural tensions that create division and conflict. Despite football being a global and diverse sport, racism and discrimination remain embedded in the sport. This reality was made extremely clear during yesterday’s Champions League clash between Real Madrid and Benfica, where there was a 10-minute stoppage after Vinícius Júnior alleged racist abuse. 

    After scoring a sensational goal that put his team one-nil up, Real Madrid forward Vinicius Junior danced in the corner of the Estádio da Luz. In celebration and in the confrontations that followed, Benfica’s Gianluca Prestianni said something to him while covering his mouth. Vinícius immediately ran to the referee, François Letexier, who stopped the match and crossed his arms to signal that he was activating the anti-racism protocol. A Real Madrid statement said Vinicius told the referee he had been racially abused by the Argentina winger.

    In an interview after the match, Kylian Mbappé, who witnessed the ordeal, stated: “I’m going to explain what happened, Vinícius scores a goal, a goal of the host, he’s going to dance and then people whistle is something normal, and then number 25 has said 5 times monkey to Vinícius, you have to explain it calmly.” All throughout his career, Vinicius Junior has faced racist abuse. It is something that has come to define his football career. In 2021, when he was only 20 years old, fans at Camp Nou were recorded shouting “Macaco” (Monkey) at him near the touchline. 

    It is important to note that this comes just a couple of weeks after Donald Trump, the President of the country holding the 2026 FIFA World Cup, reposted a video depicting the Obamas as Gorillas. Black people have long been compared to animals and primates. This dehumanising trope was used to justify the violent processes of colonialism and slavery. In the nineteenth century, scientific racism promoted the false notion that Black people were biologically inferior and animalistic. 

    The suffering and subjugation of black and brown people seemed less ethically important because, in the eyes of white supremacists, they were animals, not humans. When figures in very powerful positions circulate or amplify that imagery, even indirectly, it normalises and signals to some people that such depictions are acceptable in public discourse. Whilst these two incidents are not directly related, they exist within the same wider cultural context where racism is increasingly becoming once again normalised.

    Vinícius Júnior has consistently been vocal about his experiences of racist abuse. However, whenever he has, a troubling narrative has persisted- that he provokes the racism he receives. This illogical idea that his celebrations and personality invite such horrific treatment completely shifts responsibility away from the perpetrators and onto the victim. This rhetoric resurfaced again yesterday in the commentary by Mark Clattenburg, who said Vinicius Junior hasn’t “made it difficult”, and by Benfica manager José Mourinho, who gave his response to the chaos that had unfolded during the match.  In an interview after the game, Mourinho said, “Vini Jr’s goal should be the main thing about the game. But when you score a goal like that… you should celebrate in a respectful way. But I will be independent; I will not say I believe Prestianni or Vini, I was not there. Prestianni denies it, but I will not pick a side. The biggest legend in this club is Eusebio. This club is not racist.”

    For Mourinho to suggest that, by celebrating in the way that he did, Vinicius Junior provoked a racist reaction is completely unacceptable. Celebrating in front of opposition fans is not something that was invented yesterday; it is a part of the game, and players should not have to suffer racist abuse for it. Given that Mourinho himself is well known for his antagonising celebrations on the touchline, he is the last person who should be dictating to a player how to celebrate. Dancing by the corner-flag should not be seen as controversial. Some of the most iconic goal celebrations have come in this way. By perpetuating this lazy narrative, it diverts attention away from the real issue of racism, which isn’t just a football problem but a wider societal problem. 

    Also, what’s even more outrageous is Mourinho saying the club cannot be racist because their biggest legend is a black player. It’s the sporting equivalent of saying, “I can’t be racist, I have Black friends.” Just because an iconic black figure has been celebrated and elevated does not mean that discriminatory behavior, biased structures, or the lived experiences of other players and fans have been completely erased. Benfica players and fans are not immune to racism simply because they have a statue of a black player outside of their stadium. Ultimately,  representation at the top does not automatically equal equality throughout the institution. Admiration for an exceptional individual does not dismantle bias. In fact, in some instances, it perpetuates bias. 

    This is because if that player fits the mold of what is “acceptable”-being humble, hardworking, and quiet- they are celebrated, and the underlying structures that allow discrimination to persist go unchallenged. Meanwhile, Black players like Vinícius Júnior, who are outspoken and expressive, are judged more harshly and subjected to abuse. Former Manchester United midfielder Paul Pogba was treated in a similar way, particularly from sections of the British media, for being different and outspoken. 

    He was often compared to N’Golo Kanté for his actions off the pitch as well as on the pitch. The difference between the two players fundamentally lies in how closely they conformed to socially comfortable and acceptable stereotypes. Kanté was often portrayed as humble and uncontroversial. His reserved personality and lack of public political statements contributed to a media image that was “acceptable” and non-threatening to mainstream audiences. The difference in the reception of these players highlighted that black athletes are more readily celebrated when they fit a narrow mold of quiet excellence rather than being outspoken and different. This could not be clearer today when we look at how Vini is treated.

    In recent years, there have been several anti racism campaigns by football’s governing bodies, but it is evident that more needs to be done. Punishments for racist abuse need to be stricter, and more education is needed. It is not enough to signal awareness. The deeper cultural attitudes and unconscious biases need to be confronted, and people need to face serious consequences for their actions. Kylian Mbappe has called for Prestianni to be banned from playing in the Champions League. While some may see this as extreme, perhaps this is precisely the kind of punishment that is needed to send a clear message that there is no room for racism in football.

  • The 2016 Nostalgia Trend: Why Gen Z’s Internet Throwback Reflects Political Anxiety in 2026

    The 2016 Nostalgia Trend: Why Gen Z’s Internet Throwback Reflects Political Anxiety in 2026

    Since the beginning of the year, the internet has been flooded by 2016 nostalgia. From rose-tinted filters to viral Musical.ly sounds and users sharing personal 2016 photos, a strong desire to return to the past has dominated digital platforms. This trend is not limited to Gen Z; people of all ages and backgrounds have participated, underscoring how widely this sense of nostalgia isfelt. 2026 marks a decade since 2016, so it is understandable why people are looking back and reminiscing. However, the scale of this nostalgia trend was not seen last year,  when a decade had passed since 2015. This suggests that what appears at first to be a harmless internet trend may reflect something deeper. Widespread nostalgia often signals dissatisfaction with the present and a longing for a mythic past. It suggests that something has gone wrong in our current reality.

    Scrolling through social media feeds, amid videos and pictures referencing 2016, it has been hard to escape more serious content depicting ICE brutality in the US, widespread protests in Iran and even discussions of Trump potentially invading Greenland. Many people around the world live in constant fear and uncertainty, so it makes sense for them to retreatto a time when life felt better. When people are nostalgic, often, what they remember is not the full historical reality of that year, but how life felt. Many people participating in this trend were younger at the time and so, more shielded from economic instability, rising living costs, climate anxiety, digital overload, and constant exposure to global crises through social media. Therefore, life felt a lot easier for them.

    However, 2016 was, in many ways, the beginning of the political reality we are living in today. 2016 was the year Donald Trump won his first U.S. Presidential election, an event widely viewed as the catalyst for the intensification of the political polarisation that’s plaguing America today. Through his divisive rhetoric and politicisation of nostalgia, he mobilised millions of voters by framing the present as a decline and the past as something that needed to be restored. He promised to “Make America Great Again” by building a wall to curb migration levels. However, given America’s deeply contested history marked by slavery, Jim Crow laws and gender inequality, many commentators questioned what period this “greatness” referred to. 

    2016 also had major political implications in the UK. This was the year of the Brexit referendum, which resulted in the UK leaving the European Union after 52% of the country voted to “take back control”. The leave campaign, like Trump, also used the tactic of politicising nostalgia, as they framed EU membership as a loss of national sovereignty, promising a return to an earlier period of independence and control. For some individuals, this period is remembered as a time of greater cultural familiarity and less visible diversity. The leave campaign exploited this sentiment by strongly emphasising immigration.

    This recent trend seems to have forgotten this, instead focusing only on the positives of 2016. This is significant because it highlights that, if overindulged, nostalgia can produce a paradise that never has and never will exist, but that is pursued at all costs, taking away all joy and potential from the present. The danger of nostalgia, therefore, lies in its ability to move politics away from solving current issues towards attempting to recreate a mythic past. When this happens, progress is framed as decline, and so societies become more vulnerable to divisive rhetoric, exclusionary policies, and authoritarian leaders who promise to “restore” rather than “reform”. 

    Whilst this recent wave of nostalgia has mainly been felt by young people focusing on internet culture and memories of childhood, rather than something as explicitly political as national history, the underlying sentiment can align with wider political narratives. The past becomes a symbol of comfort and safety, while the present is the opposite and something we need to leave. This feeling can be manipulated into making people believe that society has moved in the wrong direction. Consequently, instead of a politics of progress and democratic debate, we get a politics of division and democratic decline.

    If we look through history, we can see that authoritarian and fascist movements have often drawn on similar emotional dynamics. Leaders of these movements employ nostalgic rhetoric to highlight their country’s past greatness for their own political gain. This past greatness is often characterised by economic stability and cultural purity, which fascists/ authoritarian leaders promise to restore if given power. Fascist parties leverage this nostalgia to mobilise the working and middle classes by appealing to a shared sense of loss, exploiting cultural anxieties and economic insecurities. Walter Benjamin argued that fascism invokes a mythical past not to genuinely recover it, but to reframe the present in ways that justify oppressive policies.

    In emphasising the greatness of the nation in the past, fascist nostalgia is selective and ignores significant moments in the history of the nation. Things such as colonial violence, gender and racial inequality and class exploitation are omitted from the narrative of the nation’s past, instead presenting a homogenous society that never existed in reality. By manipulating cultural memory, fascism seeks to align popular discontent with its agenda, diverting anger away from the capitalist system and toward fabricated enemies of the state, such as immigrants or different cultural influences. The rise of far-right politics across Europe and America has coincided with an increase in this political tactic. 

    The 2016 nostalgia trend is an important reminder that a longing for the past can be exploited and manipulated for political gain. What begins as a desire for old trends and memes can evolve into a broader belief that the past was inherently better than the present. History illustrates how easily this feeling of longing can be redirected toward exclusion, blame, and promises of national restoration. Nostalgia itself is not a dangerous emotion to feel. It reflects humans’ natural desire for stability and security. The risk arises when these desires are directed toward chasing a version of the past that never truly existed.

  • The Hidden Costs of Generative AI: Why You Should Rethink Your Usage

    The Hidden Costs of Generative AI: Why You Should Rethink Your Usage

    Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

    The use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) has massively increased in recent years, making it hard to imagine the world before it. Whether it be for homework assignments, university essays, advice, or information, people are running to AI bots such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok to get the answers. Given how useful it appears to be, the question right now is, why wouldn’t you use it? After all, it can make life a lot easier, and everyone is using it. While this is true, there are costs and consequences of its use that more people need to be aware of and concerned about.

    Generative AI vs Traditional AI: Understanding the Difference 

    AI has been a longstanding feature of daily life and a cornerstone of technology for years. Many of the tools and platforms we rely on today have integrated AI to improve efficiency long before the current generative AI boom. However, the rise of generative AI has marked a dramatic shift in traditional uses of AI and our understanding of it. 

    Traditional AI is task-oriented intelligence, which means it is rule-based AI that relies on pre-programmed rules and algorithms to perform specific tasks. It analyses data, identifies patterns, makes predictions and makes decisions based on logical reasoning, which allows it to carry out tasks such as recognising images, recommending products or answering specific queries. Voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa, recommendation engines on Netflix or Amazon, or Google’s search algorithm are all examples of traditional AI. They follow specific rules to carry out a specific task; they don’t create anything new. 

    Generative AI, on the other hand, does create something new. As opposed to traditional AI, which merely analyses and predicts, generative AI innovates and creates entirely new outputs from its training data. It goes beyond recognising patterns by learning them and using them to generate text, images, music or even code. For example, platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini can mimic human behaviour and creativity by engaging in conversation and producing new content from simple prompts. 

    A lot of people find it useful for completing menial tasks such as writing emails, cover letters or resumes. It can make life easier and improve productivity. For university students, generative AI can be a massive help with heavy workloads and reading lists. Instead of stressing about deadlines, you can get ChatGPT to provide a summary of required reading, an outline for an essay or even the whole essay. 

    For some people, it can even be a useful tool for advice or support, given that therapy can be hard to access. ChatGPT can provide help instantly. Furthermore, it can improve workplace efficiency. Gen AI is already being integrated into our daily learning and work tools, such as Copilot within Microsoft Office, or the AI content generator in Grammarly. There are clear benefits of generative AI; however, alongside these benefits, there are downsides to the tool that should cause concern to those who use it.

    Sexual Abuse

    One of the major harms caused by generative AI is its ability to create indecent images of children and women, as it has made it easier for people to create images and videos that qualify as sexual abuse and sped up the rate at which they are spread. Elon Musk’s AI platform Grok has been under fire recently for this very reason. Many users have been entering prompts such as: “Hey @Grok, remove her clothes” into the chatbot, and receiving exploitative images instantly. 

    The Internet Watch Foundation(IWF) which tackles child sexual abuse online have warned that AI is becoming a ‘child sexual abuse machine’ and adding to dangerous record levels of online abuse. 

    According to IWF analysts, new data shows that 2025 was the worst year on record for child sexual abuse material, and there has been a “frightening” 26,362% rise in photo-realistic AI videos of child sexual abuse, often including real and recognisable victims. Of all the AI-generated videos of child sexual abuse discovered by the IWF in 2025, 65% were so extreme that they were categorised as Category A.

    Generative AI has enabled this material to be made by criminals with minimal technical knowledge at an alarming scale. This has extremely harmful effects on children whose likeness is used, as well as further normalising sexual violence against children. There is now increasing pressure on these AI platforms to enforce stricter regulations to prevent such abuse from occurring. Earlier this month, Malaysia and Indonesia blocked access to Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok for this very reason.

    The UK government has also taken action following a long week of growing pressure to take the matter seriously. The Secretary of State confirmed that legislation to ban AI ‘nudification’ tools will be brought forward as a priority.

    She also stated that the Online Safety Act already offers significant protections against AI harms, and pledged to address any gaps, including through legislation. ‘

    Cognitive Development

    Another harm concerns cognitive development. A study at MIT found that using ChatGPT may be harming our critical thinking abilities. The study divided 53 subjects aged 18-39 years old from the Boston area into three groups and asked them to write several SAT essays using OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the Google search engine and nothing at all. The researchers used an EEG to record the writers’ brain activity and found that of the three groups, ChatGPT users had the lowest brain engagement and “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic and behavioural levels’. According to them, those who used ChatGPT became lazier with each subsequent essay over the course of several months, with many simply resorting to copy and paste by the end of the study. 

    The group that wrote essays using ChatGPT all produced very similar essays that were described as “soulless” by the teachers that marked them and lacked original thought. The EEGs revealed low executive control and attentional engagement. 

    The brain-only group, on the other hand, showed the highest neural connectivity, especially in the alpha, theta and delta bands, all of which pertain to creativity ideation, memory load and semantic processing. According to researchers, this group was more engaged and curious and expressed higher satisfaction with their essays.

    The group which used Google Search also expressed high satisfaction and active brain function.

    This suggests that reliance on generative AI platforms at the academic level can harm learning, especially for young users. The paper has not yet been peer reviewed, and its sample size is quite small but its main author, Nataliya Kosmyna, felt that it was important to release the findings in order to elevate concerns about the impact of such a reliance on ChatGPT for immediate convenience, as it is long-term brain development that stands at risk.

    “What really motivated me to put it out now, before waiting for a full peer review, is that I am afraid in 6-8 months, there will be some policymaker who decides, ‘let’s do GPT kindergarten.’ I think that would be absolutely bad and detrimental,” she says. “Developing brains are at the highest risk.”

    Mental Health 

    This risk isn’t limited to our critical thinking skills, as generative AI can be detrimental to our mental health. Other studies have found that generally, the more time users spend talking to ChatGPT, the lonelier they feel. 

    A report by the British Medical Journal highlighted that AI-driven psychosis and suicide are on the rise. It acknowledges the fact that demand for mental health services has increased, and the rise of ChatGPT has provided many with an outlet to discuss their mental and emotional distress. However, according to the report, this use of chatbots in the self-treatment of mental health is becoming more of a problem than a cure. It points to the examples of several US teenagers, including 16-year-old Adam Raine and 14-year-old Sewell Seltzer III, who are known to have died by suicide after conversations with AI chatbots. The parents of these children have alleged that AI chatbots exacerbated or encouraged suicidal ideation.

    Sewell’s mothertold the BBC: “It’s like having a predator or a stranger in your home, and it is much more dangerous because a lot of the time children hide it – so parents don’t know.”

    It was only after he had taken his own life that Ms Garcia and her family discovered a huge collection of messages between Sewell and a chatbot based on Game of Thrones character Daenerys Targaryen.

    She says the messages were romantic and explicit, and, in her view, at fault for her son’s death by encouraging suicidal thoughts and asking him to “come home to me”.

    In another case, Stein-Erik Soelberg committed murder-suicide after spending hours a day talking to the chatbot and sharing his delusions. The 56-year-old allegedly killed his mother and then himself following a parsing spiral as a result of conversations with AI, and now the victim’s estate is suing OpenAI. This is not the only suit that has been filed against OpenAI; five other families have filed wrongful death lawsuits against OpenAI, alleging that ChatGPT encouraged their loved ones to kill themselves.

    The Environment 

    The rapid increase in the use of generative AI also has a devastating impact on the environment. Despite hopes that AI can help tackle some of the world’s biggest environmental emergencies, there is a negative side to the AI boom, according to a growing body of research. This is because the data centres that are needed to house AI servers produce electronic waste and consume large amounts of water. They also rely on critical minerals and rare elements, which are often mined unsustainably and use massive amounts of electricity, which increases the emission of greenhouse gases.

    “There is still much we don’t know about the environmental impact of AI, but some of the data we do have is concerning,” said Golestan (Sally) Radwan, the Chief Digital Officer of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). “We need to make sure the net effect of AI on the planet is positive before we deploy the technology at scale.”  

    Again, it is generative AI that is driving these concerns as the power density it requires is a lot more than traditional AI. Noman Bashir, lead author of  “The Climate and Sustainability Implications of Generative AI,” co-authored by MIT colleagues, stated: “What is different about generative AI is the power density it requires. Fundamentally, it is just computing, but a generative AI training cluster might consume seven or eight times more energy than a typical computing workload”.

    At the end of last year, figures compiled by Dutch academic Alexis de Vries Gao revealed that the AI boom has caused as much carbon dioxide to be released into the atmosphere in 2025 as emitted by the whole of New York City. He also found that AI-related water use now exceeds all of global bottled water demand. This study used technology companies’ own reporting, and following it, the Dutch academic has called for stricter requirements and for them to be more transparent about their climate impact.

    Additionally, residents in areas near data centres are also significantly impacted. For example, in Texas, where AI data centres used 463 million gallons of water, residents were told to take shorter showers and cut back on water usage due to ongoing drought conditions.

    In rural Georgia, Metallica, Instagram and Facebook’s parent company have built a massive data centre which is spoiling the water in the area. Beverly Morris, a resident, told the BBC that a private well is her only source of water, and since construction began on the data centre, the water has turned murky, with sediment now in her taps that wasn’t there before

    A Final Note

    Generative AI can be useful but there are clear downsides to the tool that can cause significant harm. People need to be aware of and understand the impacts of their AI usage because these consequences negatively impact society. Humans should be able to think for themselves and think critically about the world around them. Students need to be able to do their own work, we should not be so careless towards the environment, and indecent images of children should not be able to be generated online and spread at such a rapid rate.

    It can be incredibly tempting to use ChatGPT to ease the burden of life’s menial tasks, or to ask it for advice, or to create quick, funny images, but when doing that, people need to remember the cost. After all these are tasks we have been doing since before the technology existed so we don’t have to become so reliant on it, we cannot relinquish our minds or our humanity to an artificial machine, because before we know it we will become mindless beings incapable of completing the simplest of tasks mistaking their state of meaningless existence for a comfortable and easily life. 

  • Polling Paradox: Reform’s Lead, Leadership Distrust, and the Search for Credible Change

    Polling Paradox: Reform’s Lead, Leadership Distrust, and the Search for Credible Change

    Recent polling highlights a defining paradox of the current British political moment. In Ipsos’s Headline Voting Intention, November 2025, Reform UK leads national vote share on 33 per cent, roughly 25 points ahead of Labour. Yet in the same month’s Satisfaction with Leaders and the Government polling, dissatisfaction with Reform’s leader ranks among the highest recorded. High electoral support combined with deep leadership distrust reveals a volatile electorate driven more by rejection of the political status quo than by confidence in an alternative governing project.

    This paradox reflects an important shift in voter behaviour. Historically, parties such as UKIP functioned as temporary outlets for Conservative dissatisfaction, with voters often returning to the Conservatives once elections approached and governing choices narrowed. Current polling suggests this dynamic has reversed. Rather than Reform bleeding support back to the Conservatives, it is now Conservative voters who are defecting to Reform. This indicates not a fleeting protest surge but a deeper erosion of Conservative credibility as a governing party.

    This shift is best understood through dealignment rather than ideology. Conservative voters have not moved to Reform because they trust its leadership or policy coherence. Instead, they appear to have disengaged from the Conservatives as a competent vehicle for managing the economy, housing, and public services. Years of political instability and declining living standards have weakened the Conservatives’ reputation for competence. When governing credibility collapses, voters become willing to defect even to parties they view sceptically.

    Leadership dissatisfaction therefore has not constrained Reform’s polling performance because dissatisfaction has become systemic. Ipsos’s November 2025 data show low satisfaction levels across party leaders and government institutions more broadly. In this environment, leadership approval loses its traditional role as a filter. Voters increasingly prioritise expressing frustration over endorsing a trusted leader. Reform benefits from being outside government and outside the established Labour Conservative cycle, even while its leader remains unpopular.

    Importantly, this does not mean the electorate has radicalised in line with Reform’s rhetoric. Polling and voter research suggest that support for Reform is driven by a combination of cultural grievance and economic insecurity, with issues such as migration frequently interpreted through their perceived impact on living standards, housing, and public services. Reform’s appeal lies less in ideological extremism than in its willingness to articulate decline at a time when mainstream parties are perceived to minimise it.

    This dynamic creates space for alternative challengers. The Green Party occupies a notably different position in Ipsos polling. While its overall vote share remains lower, leadership dissatisfaction is comparatively low, and a substantial proportion of respondents select “don’t know” when asked to evaluate Green leadership. In a fragmented political system, uncertainty is electorally softer than rejection. Combined with a gradually expanding support base, this positions the Greens as a potential beneficiary of continued volatility, particularly if dissatisfaction with both Labour and Reform hardens.

    Reform’s relative strength lies primarily in valence politics rather than ideological positioning. Its migration narrative is consistently linked to housing shortages, pressure on public services, and declining wages. These are competence-based evaluations. When parties converge programmatically, voters prioritise who they believe understands and can manage problems rather than who best represents a traditional ideological position. Reform has been effective at owning the diagnosis of decline, even if voters remain unconvinced by its capacity to govern.

    These developments reflect broader structural changes in British politics. The traditional left right divide has weakened, and electoral behaviour increasingly resembles that of a multiparty system, even as institutional structures remain two-party dominated. Labour and the Conservatives are no longer as strongly underpinned by their historical ideologies, although those philosophical roots still shape voter perceptions. Long-standing reputation and experience now function as double-edged swords, signalling competence to some voters while tying parties to past failures for others.

    This helps explain why the Liberal Democrats continue to struggle to translate vote share into broad electoral breakthroughs. Their support is often squeezed by tactical voting under first past the post, with voters reverting to Labour or the Conservatives in marginal seats. Reform and the Greens, by contrast, have benefited from political volatility by offering clearer points of distinction, even if those distinctions do not yet amount to governing credibility.

    The unresolved question is whether any challenger can convert dissatisfaction into durable trust. Reform’s coalition is currently broad but fragile, built on rejection rather than confidence. The Greens’ appeal is softer but potentially more expandable. Until a party or leader can convincingly signal credible change, British politics is likely to remain characterised by high vote shares, high dissatisfaction, and persistent instability rather than ideological realignment.

    L Shiels

  • Trump’s National Security Strategy

    Trump’s National Security Strategy

    Trump’s National Security Strategy

    Donald Trump’s approach to foreign policy is often described as erratic or transactional. In practice, it is better understood as selective engagement: cooperative where interests align, distant where they do not, and firmly hierarchical in how the United States situates itself relative to others.

    Nowhere is this clearer than in Trump’s view of Europe. While the administration maintains formal commitments to NATO, the tone toward European partners is noticeably cool. Cooperation exists, but it is conditional. European security is treated less as a shared project and more as a responsibility Europe must increasingly shoulder itself. This outlook helps explain a simultaneous insistence on higher European defence spending and a reluctance to frame Europe as the central pillar of US global strategy.

    NATO itself remains useful, but not sacrosanct. The alliance is increasingly framed as a vehicle for burden-sharing rather than solidarity. Expansion to non-EU members fits this logic. NATO becomes a flexible security architecture rather than a civilisational bloc anchored in Europe. The emphasis is on utility rather than identity.

    Alongside this is a reassertion of the Western Hemisphere as a priority space. The administration’s thinking reflects a modernised Monroe Doctrine. The Americas are treated as a zone where US influence should be uncontested, while engagement elsewhere is more discretionary. This hemispheric focus coexists uneasily with global alliances, producing tension with partners who continue to view US leadership as universal rather than regionalised.

    Economic policy reinforces this hierarchy. In Africa, the administration has promoted a shift away from long-term aid toward trade and investment, arguing that development is better driven by private capital and market access. This marks a departure from earlier aid-centric approaches. However, it has also generated tensions, particularly where funding cuts, including reductions to HIV/AIDS programmes, have raised concerns about public health and political stability.

    China occupies a distinct category. Rather than viewing China’s growth as a shared poverty-reduction success, the administration frames it as a case of strategic exploitation. The argument is that China used access to Western markets to strengthen its state capacity and global leverage without political convergence. This view underpins calls for economic decoupling and tighter controls on supply chains.

    At the same time, the US economy remains deeply dependent on low-cost goods produced abroad, often in the very countries now criticised. Western companies themselves benefited from labour arbitrage, exchange-rate advantages, and weak labour protections. The tension between strategic rivalry and consumer dependence remains unresolved.

    Taken together, Trump’s worldview places the United States not at the centre of a community of equals, but at the apex of a differentiated system. Partners, competitors, and peripheral states are managed according to their immediate utility. Cooperation exists, but warmth is rare. The result is not isolationism, but a colder and more conditional form of engagement with the world.

    For the United Kingdom, the outlook is correspondingly more constrained. The traditional strength of the US–UK relationship has rested on institutional depth, intelligence cooperation, and shared strategic assumptions. Under Trump, those structures continue to exist, but they are no longer sufficient on their own.

    Foreign policy under this administration appears increasingly shaped by personal relationships between leaders. Trump’s evident ease in dealing with Vladimir Putin, and his broader preference for direct leader-to-leader engagement, suggests a diplomatic environment in which personal affinity carries greater weight than alliance norms or historical alignment.

    This shift introduces a degree of contingency into transatlantic relations. Outcomes become less predictable, and less anchored in policy continuity, when diplomatic confidence depends on individual rapport rather than institutional trust. For Britain, influence may hinge not on proximity to Washington as a system, but on alignment with the preferences and perceptions of the president himself.

    The implication is not a rupture, but a thinning. The US–UK relationship persists, yet operates on narrower terms, shaped less by sentiment or shared identity and more by immediate strategic utility and personal alignment at the top.

    L Shiels