China’s next Silk Road is not concrete but code. By shaping global standards in 6G, digital payments and satellite connectivity, Beijing is embedding sovereignty at the protocol level creating power that is harder to sanction, harder to unwind, and already in place before crises erupt.
The US boarding of a Panama flagged tanker carrying Venezuelan oil tests a fundamental question of international law. Can sanctions be enforced at sea without UN authority, or does this cross into unlawful interference with freedom of navigation?
Britain once sold trust to the world. That trust was forged in power, then refined into a services export: English law, City custody, and a reputation that money held here stayed safe from politics. The move from freezing Russian reserves to using, and possibly taking, them risks a slow credibility leak. In finance, leaks compound. The cost is drift, not drama.
Europe is not being dragged into decline by fate. Its leaders are choosing an energy squeeze, a financial time bomb over frozen Russian assets, and subordination to United States tariffs and war demands, while pretending this is morality and strategy. The only sector with a clear future is the arms industry. Everyone else is being told to absorb the cost in silence.
Ukraine’s front line is breaking, Europe is talking itself into wars it cannot fight, and Brussels is trying to turn Russian reserves into a permanent war chest. This long read ties the military endgame to the legal and financial tricks around frozen assets, drawing on earlier Telegraph Online (telegraph.com) investigations
For eighty years Washington could print claims on the rest of the world and call it money. That privilege is no longer absolute. By turning reserves and payment pipes into weapons, the United States has forced other states to think like risk managers. The result is not a sudden dollar collapse, but a slow tightening of the funding noose around Washington’s own budget