Throughout the Ukrainian war, Vladimir Putin and Russia's leadership have repeatedly made threats that Western escalation is equivalent to a "direct war" on Moscow and thus merits a nuclear response. As the US approved long-range strikes on Russian territory several days ago, Putin subsequently responded by expanding the country's nuclear doctrine to define it as "aggression from any non-nuclear state – but with the participation of a nuclear country" as "a joint attack on Russia."

On Sunday evening US President Joe Biden ultimately decided to allow Ukraine to use American weaponry for long-range strikes into Russian territory. A deeply contested and controversial decision, the outgoing administration had held off on such a decision for a long time due to its implications in potentially escalating the war, which Russia had long described as a "red line."

On Tuesday the New York Times reported that Donald Trump was expected to appoint US Senator Marco Rubio as his Secretary of State. The reaction has been, explosive. Foreign policy hawks and China bashers are celebrating, while pro-China voices are licking their wounds in despair.

The re-election of Donald Trump as President of the United States has sent shockwaves throughout the world. A man who was once believed to be "finished" in the eyes of the mainstream media at the beginning of 2021 staged an epic political comeback and naturally will set us on the route of four more years of unpredictability and uncertainty, right?

As of the time of writing, Donald Trump has effectively wrapped up his return to the White House. The former President prevailed in a number of key states and swept aside. By 6 am UK time the New York Times forecast had determined his probability of victory was over 95%. Already, centrist liberals throughout the world have entered a state of meltdown on social media, dooming amidst the dramatic consequences that are likely to follow his return.

On the 5th of November, the United States will vote in its Presidential Election. They face a stark choice between incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris, and then Republican contender and previous President Donald Trump. Amidst a sharply polarised and divisive American politician environment, this election will be possibly one of the most significant ever in determining the country's historical trajectory and its relationship with the world.

In Victor Cha's 2012 book "The Impossible State", he added a chapter titled "The End is Near" wherein he predicted the end of the North Korean state following the death of its then-leader, Kim Jong Il. Cha's book, a NeoConservative who served in the Bush Administration, simply reflected the conventional wisdom of Washington D.C "scholars" since the end of the Cold War in 1991, that being the DPRK was a Communist relic whose collapse was imminent, and would ultimately meet the same fate as the Soviet bloc regimes in Eastern and Central Europe, East Germany specifically.

Over the past week or so, two critical votes were held in countries that have emerged as additional battlegrounds of Russia's geopolitical struggle with the west: Moldova and Georgia. Both states, former constituent republics of the USSR, have pro-western aligned heads of state who seek to integrate their countries into the European Union, a process that was accelerated with the Ukraine war. In Moldova, a referendum was held to place aspiration to membership of the EU in its constitution.

On Monday China and India finally agreed to de-escalate a military standoff on the border conflict deep into the Himalayas and implement a workable resolution. New Delhi's foreign ministry stated: "We reached an agreement on patrolling, and with that, we have gone back to where the situation was in 2020 and we can say... the disengagement process with China has been completed."

Over the past few days, the internet has been gripped by a mass hysteria that North Korean soldiers are about to be deployed to fight in Ukraine. The first party to claim this was Kyiv, and this was then followed by South Korea. Once Seoul began saying so, a larger portion of the Western public began taking it seriously. However, it should be noted amidst these claims that so far not a single high-level government source in the West, NATO, or its news sources of record has actually verified this yet.

Last week an article appeared in the Financial Times (FT) stating that anonymous western officials were exploring the possibility of a "frozen peace" in the Russo-Ukrainian war. In this purported arrangement, fighting would permanently stop and Russia would of course remain in the territories it occupies, but there would nonetheless be no "peace treaty" or diplomatic recognition of the aforementioned changes. Instead, the article goes on to claim that Kyiv joining NATO would absurdly be part of such a deal.

Throughout history, there has been one recurring theme: That wars and invasions are frequently started on the basis of miscalculations. The story is always the same, the attacker believes that they have assembled a "master plan" which if executed correctly, will pre-emptively and decisively cripple the enemy in a knockout blow, handing them a swift and relatively bloodless victory avoiding a long and destructive war.

Last week, some European states voted to impose tariffs on Electric Vehicles imported from China. The vote can't be described as a consensus, because less than half of member states voted to do so, with another portion opposing, and another abstaining. The levy does not just cover EVs in China made by Chinese firms, but also those made in China by European firms and imported back, notably Germany's Volkswagen. China has immediately retaliated by launching a dumping probe into European brandy exports, and will presumably counteract a number of other exports too.

It has been a common line of Taiwan's "Democratic Progressive Party" (DPP) to insist that the island was "never part of China." This hardline separatist position relies on a manipulation of logic and omission of truth to infer that the island is a separate country, as recently echoed by a speech from its President William Lai who insisted that Taiwan or "The Republic of China" was in fact older than China PRC, and therefore it was "not the motherland."

Using its geographic and industrial advantages, Britain, with France now an allied accomplice, easily surpassed the competing powers of the time including the still feudalist Russia and the declining Ottoman Empire, establishing a globally spanning dominion annexing the Indian subcontinent, swathes of Africa, the lands of Australia and New Zealand, all while maintaining its hold in North America through Canada and subjugating China's Qing Dynasty. But the advantages of British industrialism would not last forever.