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Global Affairs Session 60 29 June 2026 PRISONER'S DILEMMA IN WORLD GEOPOLITICS Why rivals keep choosing to defect Modern geopolitics increasingly resembles the classic Prisoner's Dilemma: nations gain most by cooperating on climate, trade, AI safety, arms control and health, yet each fears rivals will exploit restraint. Robert Axelrod's research on the evolution of cooperation shows how repeated interaction — not one-off calculation — can turn selfish rivals into durable partners, a lesson now being tested from the Gulf to the AI race to the Paris Agreement.

Global Affairs Session 59 25 June 2026 THE SAMSON OPTION: ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR GAME The existential doctrine of last resort Israel’s alleged last-resort nuclear doctrine, known as the Samson Option, is built around deterrence through the fear of a catastrophic response. Shaped by the historical trauma of the Holocaust and regional vulnerability, this strategy of intentional nuclear ambiguity aims to prevent war by making the cost of aggression entirely unacceptable.

Global Affairs Session 58 24 June 2026 TÜRKİYE'S GAME Erdoğan's high-wire act between East and West Türkiye under Erdoğan has moved from Atatürk's secular, Western-facing republic toward a strong presidential regime that mixes nationalism, Islamic symbolism and strategic autonomy. It stays inside NATO while bargaining with the West, balancing Russia and China, projecting power across the Middle East, and competing for leadership of the Islamic world — a high-wire act that will shape its future as a powerful but troublesome ally.

Global Affairs Session 57 23 June 2026 CHINA VS US: THE EPIC AI CLASH China cracks cheaper and open-source The contest between the United States and China for AI supremacy has hardened into a full-stack rivalry running from chips and data centres to models, applications and global standards. Washington leads at the frontier with closed, premium models built on the world's best compute and capital, while Beijing has turned chip restrictions into an advantage, flooding the market with cheaper, open-source alternatives. What began as a race for better products is fast becoming a contest for control of the next computing platform, and for military, economic and geopolitical power.

Global Affairs Session 56 22 June 2026 US–ISRAEL RIFT? Estranged partners? What next? Israel and the United States have been strategic partners for more than seven decades, but June 2026 exposed a real rift. A US–Iran interim deal, a rebellious Israeli strike, and open Israeli defiance of Washington's terms pulled Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu apart in ways rarely seen in the alliance's history. This session traces the relationship from its 1948 origins to today's standoff, examines the domestic lobby that shapes US policy, and asks where the estranged partnership goes from here.

Global Affairs Session 55 17 June 2026 END OF THE FLAT WORLD? Why globalization's great equalizer is losing its shine Thomas Friedman's "flat world" promised a globalised, technology-enabled playing field where individuals and companies anywhere could compete with established players. Two decades on, the same flattening forces that built outsourcing hubs and global supply chains have triggered a backlash of job losses, wage stagnation and rising inequality. As trade drifts from globalization towards regionalization and the digital world risks fragmenting along geopolitical lines, the flat world may be giving way to a more cautious, resilience-first order — one in which "bridge" nations like India could gain the most.

Global Affairs Session 54 16 June 2026 AI GETS WEAPONIZED America bans Anthropic's frontier AI models In June 2026, the United States banned foreign access to Anthropic's most advanced models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, treating frontier AI as strategic technology on par with chips, weapons systems and encryption. The move marks a shift from controlling hardware to controlling model capability itself — and reveals how thoroughly artificial intelligence has become entangled with geopolitics, national security, and the race for sovereign AI capability, as the world risks splintering into competing AI blocs.