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Every day, the digital jungle confronting the 21st-century citizen continues to expand. It spreads into ever more remote areas, while zones of so-called “digital deserts” are steadily shrinking. The programs and applications we use are increasingly embedded in our daily lives, and their protection, monitoring, and security have become central issues for national policies across the globe. As internet users grow ever more dependent on GAFAM , entrusting their lives to the disc

Across many fields and according to different criteria, international organisations, private companies, and research centres regularly use indices as tools to rank countries. Initiated by institutions such as the IMF, the UNDP, the OECD, or the IMF, or produced through research by private companies, lobbies, NGOs, or collective interest groups, indices offer a new way of reading the world depending on the factors they examine. From the most populated to the emptiest, from the

BNP Paribas, Société Générale, Crédit Agricole, ALSTOM, ALCATEL, TOTAL, Airbus, Technip, SIEMENS, ING, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and HSBC… These companies share a common feature: they are all large multinational corporations, known worldwide, endowed with historical know-how and unique technologies. Yet another common denominator brings them together. All of them have been the target of perfectly legal judicial actions, capable of placing them in serious difficulty, disrupt

Governed by a constitution drafted in 2005, Iraqi society is unique in that it is subject to a mixed legal system, inspired by French and Egyptian civil law , but also by elements of Islamic law and Sharia . In practice, Iraqi law is structured as much by civil and criminal courts and codified commercial laws as by customary and tribal courts, governed by rules not recognized by the official justice system. Approaching Iraqi society and its government through the lens of law,

The difficulties—and even the decline—of many empires are often attributed to the poor management of their provinces. From the Abbasid Empire to the Roman Empire, and even Isaac Asimov’s all-powerful Galactic Empire in his Foundation saga, uprisings and revolts “come from the borders,” to quote the Chinese military strategist Sun Bin. So, if a centralised and unitary power entails risks and weaknesses in administering its territory, decentralisation, conversely, presents its

Eight years after setting foot on Malian soil, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a reduction in France’s military presence in the Sahel region. “We are going to initiate a profound transformation of our military presence in the region,” he declared at a press conference, referring to the five thousand soldiers deployed under the framework of the French Force Barkhane (FFB) to combat jihadist groups. Accelerated by the deterioration of relations between Paris and Bama

“Europe in June 2022 is very different from Europe in January 2022,” declared Emmanuel Macron on 1 July 2022, as the six months of the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union (PFUE) came to an end. This presidency, profoundly reshaped by the war in Ukraine—which highlighted the European Union’s dependence on Russian hydrocarbons—above all allowed President Macron to place the French vision of a sovereign, independent, and humane Europe at the forefront of the p

In May 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a speech in Sydney, Australia, in which he called on his Indian and Australian partners to unite in order to form a solid common front capable of counterbalancing—or at least limiting—China’s growing hegemony in the Pacific region. Japan, an Asian country to which the French president was nevertheless indirectly addressing his call for solidarity, pursues a complex policy in this area increasingly threatened by China, wh

Diplomacy and religion in Russia In his speech of 27 February 2022, Vladimir Putin justified his “special operation” in Ukraine through his Orthodoxy. In other words, through the glory and justice it would bring—and was duty-bound to bring—to the Russian Church. Through a metaphysical theory, Patriarch Kirill, head of the Church, described this war as “an operation against the forces of evil,” advocating, like Vladimir Putin, for a Russian world freed from the Western threat.

On 23 September 2020, the European Commission presented the Pact on Migration and Asylum, aimed at profoundly reforming the system for receiving and managing asylum seekers and migrants arriving at the borders of the European Union. The Pact was presented as a tool capable of better managing the migratory pressure experienced by certain states, strengthening data collection, decriminalising sea rescues, and creating a European Union Agency for Asylum. Migrants largely cross t

Around the world, sayings and stereotypes about Russians abound: greatness of soul, generosity, the vastness of the territory, unfathomable minds that inspired Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and the legacy of the Tsars and the Soviet Empire. These clichés often collide with a flatter reality, yet they remain part of what Russian identity and culture are in the 21st century. This Russian culture, rich in symbols, is deeply linked to the country’s place in contemporary geopolitics. It

From the 1950s to the 1980s, the world witnessed Armstrong walking on the Moon, the launch of the first space station, the sending of the first probe to Mars, the first space shuttles, and the American flag planted on our lunar satellite. From the Sputnik mission to Apollo, through the Perseverance operation, the second half of the 20th century was marked by a “space race” in which the American and Soviet powers confronted one another. While the end of the Cold War led to a g

Three months ago, the meeting between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping took place during the G20 summit. On that occasion, Indonesian President Joko Widodo expressed his desire to play a mediating role in the face of the “risk of a new Cold War.” Before the incident involving Chinese balloons flying over American airspace, Indonesia warned of the danger of “dividing the world into several camps.” This was a striking statement for a country located at the junction of the Indian and Pa

Ranked third among the world’s richest individuals, Gautam Adani, with a fortune of $121 billion, overtook Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates in March 2022. He is neither European, American, Chinese, nor Russian, but Indian. India, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi describes as the world’s largest democracy, is the country with the third-highest number of billionaires, behind the United States and China, with 166 wealthy individuals compared to only nine in the 2000s. While the expre

Thucydides said shortly before his death, “The balance of fear is the only guarantee of an alliance.” So has NATO, born out of the fear of a Soviet invasion of Eastern Europe, outlived its purpose in this multipolar world? How does NATO function in the aftermath of the Cold War, deprived of its original objective? Has it become the symbol of a striking imbalance in transatlantic cooperation between Europe and the United States? How and why has it become such a constraining or

Two peoples claiming one and the same territory. This confrontation fuels debates and passions across the Levant, and its developments regularly make international headlines. First referred to as the “Arab-Israeli” conflict and later reduced to the “Israeli-Palestinian” conflict as we know it today, it symbolises a diplomatically intractable struggle whose outcome appears increasingly shaped by the Israeli bombardments devastating the population of Gaza. Between 2008 and 2021

At a time when digital technology increasingly accompanies human life, the creators and users of new technologies have invented AI, a new tool that emerged less than a quarter of a century ago. Artificial intelligence seems to be the new path of progress and marks a notable shift in the processes of human interaction. Yet the emergence of this technology, with potentially harmful effects on individuals, raises the question of how responsibility should be attributed when damag