By: John Hulsman

Dr. John C. Hulsman is Senior Columnist at City AM, and Founder and Managing Partner of John C. Hulsman Enterprises, a global political risk consulting firm. More of John’s work is available on his substack

We’re winning the war against Isis in Iraq but the peace has already been lost

October 17, 2016

It is the saddest, and easiest, prediction to make in global political risk analysis today: we will “win” military victory in Iraq, only to lose the peace. For the dire, ghostly, maddening conclusion must be that the West and its Middle Eastern allies are incapable of learning from history. The press salivates about the imminent retaking [...]
How decadent elites lost control of politics the world over

October 10, 2016

To outsiders, Colombia’s recent referendum on ending its 53-year war with the Stalinist revolutionaries of the Farc seemed the ultimate no-brainer. Putting a merciful halt to a conflict that has killed a horrendous 220,000 souls would seem to require little thought. Yet when earnest President Juan Manuel Santos put his peace deal to a nationwide [...]
Deutsche Bank’s woes signal the fall of the House of Merkel

October 3, 2016

“And the deep and dank tarn closed silently over the fragments of the House of Usher.” – Edgar Allan Poe With mighty Deutsche Bank, the largest lender in Germany and symbol of the country’s economic might, in dire straits, Germans are belatedly waking up to the nightmarish reality that the supposedly masterly inactivity of their wildly [...]
Clinton and Trump’s dismal debate performances laid bare America’s perilous divisions

September 27, 2016

“I have a son who’s 10, he’s so good with computers.” – Donald Trump, when asked about US cybersecurity weaknesses (The American Republic is) “under siege by a moron.” – Bruce Springsteen, when asked about Donald Trump Well, it was just as weird as had been anticipated. The estimated 100m Americans who tuned into the [...]
Syria must burn itself out: It is time for the West to do nothing

September 26, 2016

(The best policy is) to float lazily downstream, occasionally putting out a diplomatic boathook to avoid collisions. Lord Salisbury, 1877 In one of the least shocking policy outcomes of the year, the US-Russian brokered ceasefire in Syria did not last the week. Speaking as a longstanding sceptic of intervention there, being right analytically gives me [...]
Reality has finally caught up with Germany’s disastrous Chancellor Merkel

September 19, 2016

Merkeln (German verb): To dither, do nothing or fail to take decisions I have always thought the German stereotype for humourlessness is slightly unfair. Exhibit A for my contrary view is that a new verb, Merkeln, has recently entered the German language. Any culture that can coin a word to describe the haplessness of its [...]
Italy is just three plausible steps away from crashing out of the Eurozone

September 12, 2016

“Never ask a question if you don’t know the answer” – Common courtroom adage "Plausible threat” is a term of art in political risk analysis, meaning the peril being discussed can come about through entirely possible events. Martians disrupting France’s upcoming presidential election would not be a plausible threat (fun though it would be). On the [...]
Britain would have left the EU even if it had voted Remain

September 5, 2016

Counterfactuals are the ugly stepsister of political risk analysis, neglected and scorned in equal measure because – as they deal with events that have never occurred – they can never be definitively assessed. We find this all more than a little amusing, as the first rule of any world-class analyst is humility, that nothing (good [...]
Forget Norway: Canada-plus is the best Brexit deal Britain can achieve

August 30, 2016

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.” – Book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, Verse 1 Theresa May’s policy of slowing down the post-Brexit train through the determined tactic of vagueness has been skilful, but it has now served its purpose. By resolutely refusing to invoke Article 50 [...]
A Global Free Trade Alliance should be Britain’s stunning post-Brexit future

August 22, 2016

“You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’” – George Bernard Shaw If the EU isn’t Britain’s future, then what is? Surely, part of the answer lies in the Drakean vision I have put forth in previous columns, forging far closer economic ties with the [...]

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