Michael Baker

In the course of the two major conflicts still active in the world today - the Russia-Ukraine and US-Iran wars - we have heard a lot about sanctions and blockades. Russian oil tankers and 'shadow' carriers have been sanctioned (and sometimes stopped and boarded), gas pipelines have been ruptured or turned off, and Ukraine's Black Sea grain ports have been repeatedly targeted by Moscow's missiles. In the Middle East, a US fleet is blockading the straits of Hormuz to prevent Iran exporting the...

The De Gaulle Movie General Charles de Gaulle was one of the genuinely towering figures of the 20th century, playing an heroic role in France's otherwise tragic Second World War, tarnished as it was by early surrender to the Germans in June 1940, then by collaboration under Petain's Vichy regime. So it's not totally surprising, I suppose, that there is now a new French film on release about De Gaulle's wartime leadership, or rather two films back to back. The first, Resistance, focuses on the...

Multi-Ethnic Empires One reason why both world wars proved to be such complex affairs was because the major combatant powers were not just nation states but empires, that's to say, either they formally possessed multi-ethnic territories far beyond their own national borders or they could claim widespread foreign interests and allegiances. In this sense, WW1 and WW2 were conflicts fuelled as much by inter-ethnic and ideological civil strife as by great power rivalries. For the ordinary...