Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s cabinet approved a draft law on Wednesday authorizing naval blockades to prevent migrant boats from entering the country’s territorial waters. The proposal comes amid a crackdown on illegal migration in the EU country.

The bill, which must still pass both houses of parliament, empowers authorities to impose a ban on vessel passage for up to 30 days, or up to six months under certain drafts, during periods of “exceptional pressure” constituting a “serious threat to public order or national security.” Violators could face fines of up to €50,000 ($59,000) and boat confiscation for repeat offenses.

Additionally, the legislation introduces stricter border surveillance and expands the list of criminal convictions for which foreign nationals can be expelled from Italy. The bill also introduces tougher jail terms for human smugglers.

The legislation further stipulates that migrants aboard vessels denied entry be transferred to countries with which Rome has detention or return agreements, aiming to revive Meloni’s plan to outsource asylum processing to Albania – a project repeatedly blocked by court rulings.

Meloni, elected in 2022 on a promise to halt illegal sea arrivals, has pursued increasingly stringent migration policies as Italy remains a primary entry point for the tens of thousands crossing the Mediterranean annually. 

Italy has remained the primary entry point for migrants crossing the Mediterranean into the EU. In 2025, an estimated 6,000 monthly sea arrivals were recorded, according to Italian Interior Ministry data, far exceeding numbers in other entry points like Greece and Spain.

High-profile crimes involving migrants, including gang rapes and violent assaults in Rome and other cities, have fueled public anger and bolstered support for tougher border controls. Similar tendencies have been observed across the EU where anti-migrant sentiment has seen a significant rise in recent years.

The issue has also been highlighted by Washington which has repeatedly cautioned Europe over its approach to migration. In December, US President Donald Trump argued that Europe is “destroying itself” with “disastrous” immigration policies. His new National Security Strategy also warned the continent faces potential “civilizational erasure” due to “socially disruptive migration” and “loss of national identities.”

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British chemical industry tycoon Jim Ratcliffe has blamed the rapid influx of foreigners for the country’s economic problems, saying the UK “is being colonized by immigrants.” The 73-year-old drew criticism from Prime Minister Keir Starmer over the remarks.

In a Sky News interview on Wednesday, the founder and CEO of INEOS chemicals group, who also co-owns English football giants Manchester United, argued that “you can’t have an economy with 9 million people on benefits and huge levels of immigrants coming in.”

“The UK is being colonized by immigrants, really, isn’t it? The population of the UK is 58 million in 2020, now it’s 70 million. That’s 12 million people,” Ratcliffe added.

Government data shows the UK population surpassed 58 million in 1995 and was over 66 million in 2020.

Starmer said Ratcliffe should apologize for his “offensive and wrong” comments and described the UK as “a proud, tolerant and diverse country.”

Ratcliffe is Britain’s seventh-richest person with an estimated £17.05 billion ($23.22 billion) fortune. He bought a stake in Manchester United in February 2024, and donated £100 million to Oxford University in 2021 to establish an institute for antimicrobial research.

He supported the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, but is now a tax resident of Monaco. He has previously called mass migration a drain on social services. Ratcliffe backed Starmer in the 2024 election but has also spoken favorably of anti-migration politician Nigel Farage, whose Reform UK party is gaining voter support.

The Starmer government’s pro-migration advocacy recently backfired. The state-funded narrative game ‘Pathways’, designed to discourage teen radicalization, drew audience sympathy for its antagonist, a purple-haired anti-immigrant goth girl named Amelia.

Critics noted the game not only sought to advise young people against protesting immigration but also cautioned against researching its effects – activities they said constitute normal civic engagement.

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Across the globe, the post-Cold War settlement that once carried the promise of Western primacy is no longer taken as an unshakeable fact. Its vocabulary remains in circulation, yet real-time history continues to contest its authority. In the space left behind, many states are seeking a different idea of order, one that sounds less like instruction from a single center and more like negotiated balance among several centers. In such a moment, regions that were once treated as arenas begin to behave like authors. The Greater Middle East is one of the first places where this change is becoming visible as a messy strategic recomposition in which security is no longer outsourced and alliances are no longer assumed to be permanent.

For decades, a simple model dominated strategic thinking in the region. Washington would remain the ultimate guarantor, and regional states would calibrate their risks inside the umbrella of American deterrence. That model did not always prevent wars, but it provided a framework for expectation. Even when trust frayed, the underlying assumption was that the US could be induced to act, and that the cost of ignoring its interests would be prohibitive. In recent years, however, the region has experienced a succession of shocks that have made the old calculus feel less reliable. One of the most dramatic was the Israeli strike in Doha in September 2025, an operation that pushed a long-simmering anxiety into the open by showing how quickly escalation could breach political red lines in the Gulf. If such an event could occur with only limited external restraint, then the notion of an automatic security backstop began to look like a story the region told itself rather than a guarantee the system could still deliver.

It was in this atmosphere that the Saudi-Pakistani Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement, signed in September 2025, drew intense attention. It suggested that major regional players were preparing for a future in which protection would be organized through layered partnerships rather than delegated to a single patron. Analysts noted that the pact followed a pattern of disappointment with external responses, including perceptions of American restraint or hesitation when regional allies felt exposed. Whether the agreement functions as a hard war guarantee or as a strategic warning, it belongs to a wider movement in which states are building options.

Two emerging security configurations are now becoming visible across the Greater Middle East, and it is important to name their participants clearly. On one side, a prospective bloc is coalescing around Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Türkiye, Egypt, and Oman, with this core increasingly presented as a sovereignty-driven framework meant to reduce reliance on external guarantees and to deter destabilizing escalation, while Qatar, Algeria, and several other states observe this alignment with growing interest as a possible partner network rather than as a formal membership. On the other side, a countervailing alignment is taking shape around Israel and the United Arab Emirates, whose partnership is reinforced by defense industrial cooperation and advanced technology collaboration, and whose strategic reach is further strengthened by Azerbaijan, which acts less as a conventional member than as a pivotal partner connecting overlapping networks because it maintains close ties to Türkiye while simultaneously sustaining deep security and energy links with Israel and expanding cooperation with Abu Dhabi.

From that point onward, the region’s strategic landscape began to resemble a set of magnets shifting under the table, drawing some capitals closer while pushing others apart. The most consequential trend has been the emerging closeness among Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, a triangle with the potential to reshape the balance of military and diplomatic weight. In early February 2026, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan traveled to Riyadh, and public reporting described discussions that included deeper cooperation in the defense industry. Around the same period, Turkish and regional reporting highlighted Erdogan’s suggestion that Saudi Arabia could join Türkiye in investment and partnership around the KAAN fighter program, which carries both symbolic and practical significance for Ankara’s ambition to expand indigenous defense production and export capacity. Such projects matter not only because they add capability, but because they create interdependence, and interdependence is often the scaffolding of durable alignments.

This emerging axis has also been framed as a diplomatic instrument, not merely a military one. Reuters reporting in early February 2026 described a planned round of talks in Istanbul aimed at avoiding conflict, with participation invited from several regional powers including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Oman, Pakistan, and the UAE. Even allowing for the fluidity of such initiatives, the roster itself hints at a search for new forums where regional states are not simply reacting to outside agendas, but shaping the agenda collectively. The logic is straightforward. If the system can no longer be counted on to prevent confrontation, then the region must build mechanisms that reduce misunderstanding, increase transparency, and create off ramps before crises harden into wars.

Yet as one set of relationships deepens, another set is hardening into a counterweight. Israel’s security partnerships, particularly those tied to technology, intelligence, and advanced systems, are expanding in directions that unsettle parts of the region. The normalization wave that began with the 2020-2021 Abraham Accords opened channels that have since matured into tangible defense industrial cooperation between Israel and the UAE. The UAE’s EDGE Group investment in Israel’s ThirdEye Systems, reported in early 2025, is one illustration of this trajectory, pointing to a relationship that is increasingly comfortable with joint development, not only procurement. This represents a bet that technology can narrow the gap between threats and response, and that a compact among capable partners can offset the uncertainties of the wider environment.

Azerbaijan’s role adds another layer of complexity, because it sits at the intersection of these emerging blocs. It has cultivated long standing ties with Israel that include defense cooperation and energy trade, even as it maintains close relations with Türkiye. Reuters reporting in January 2026, citing Kpler data, described a rise in Israeli imports of Azerbaijani crude shipped via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan route, underscoring the practical depth of that relationship. At the same time, Baku has also been deepening defense engagement with Abu Dhabi. Azerbaijan’s defense ministry reported planning activity in late 2025 for the joint exercise named Shield of Peace 2026 with the UAE. Additional reporting in early February 2026 described senior level attention to those exercises. In a region where symbolism carries strategic weight, exercises, industrial projects, and high visibility visits are messages to friends and warnings to rivals.

These cross-cutting ties are producing a Middle East in which old categories are less useful. States that once appeared to stand on the same side of an American-led security network are now drifting into different camps, each camp shaped by its own reading of risk. For some, the central fear is the possibility of an uncontrolled escalation that pulls the region into a direct clash involving Iran, the US, and their respective partners. For others, the fear is that Israel’s widening margin of military and technological superiority could translate into a freer hand, whether in the Gulf, the Levant, or the Red Sea corridor. The September 2025 strike in Doha, regardless of how one judges its motives, became a kind of demonstration of reach, and demonstrations of reach have a way of changing how neighboring states interpret their own vulnerability.

The anxiety is not confined to the Gulf. Israel’s leadership has also been signaling concern about shifts in the regional military balance. In early February 2026, Israeli media reported on a warning by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Egypt’s military capabilities were growing and needed monitoring. Such remarks suggest uncertainty about intent in a moment when alignments are changing. Egypt, for its part, is trying to secure room for maneuver and to ensure that its sovereignty is not constrained by a security environment designed by others. That impulse is widely shared, even by states whose policies differ sharply.

The Horn of Africa has become an unexpected mirror of this wider contest. In late December 2025, Israel announced recognition of Somaliland, a move that triggered strong objections from Somalia and condemnation by several actors, including Türkiye, which framed the decision as destabilizing and unacceptable. Whatever the long-term trajectory of Somaliland’s status may be, the episode illustrates how new fault lines are emerging far beyond the traditional frontiers of the Arab Israeli arena. It also underscores why Gulf and Red Sea states increasingly see security as a connected system rather than a set of isolated theaters. Ports, islands, shipping lanes, undersea cables, drone corridors, and energy routes now bind together places that once seemed separate. A local move on a map can echo into global trade, and global trade is one of the currencies of the new multipolar era.

All of this is happening while the region is simultaneously trying to protect economic transformation agendas that demand predictability. Mega events, tourism flows, industrial investment, and energy diversification all require a baseline level of stability that perpetual crisis cannot provide. That is one reason defense-industrial cooperation has become preferable to simple arms buying. Co-production ties partners together over time, and it gradually changes the domestic politics of alliance by embedding it in jobs, factories, and technical communities. It is also why diplomatic formats that emphasize de-escalation are proliferating, even among rivals who distrust one another. They don’t have to become friends – just manage risks in an era when insurance from outside is more conditional than it once was.

At the same time, the formation of opposing camps carries obvious dangers. Blocs tend to produce security dilemmas. One side’s defensive move can look like preparation for offense to the other side. Exercises invite counter exercises. Industrial partnerships invite counter partnerships. A narrative of sovereignty, once embraced by everyone, can become a justification for unilateral action when trust collapses. In such a climate, incidents can spiral quickly, especially when domestic politics, ideology, or leadership rivalry inflames what might otherwise remain manageable. The region has lived this story before, but the difference today is that the old referee is less willing to step onto the field, and the new referees are not yet recognized by all players.

And yet, within the turbulence lies an opening. If the region is forced to take responsibility for its own security, it may eventually build something more sustainable than dependence. The path there will not be linear. It will likely pass through competition among blocs, through harsh bargaining, and through moments when the temptation to test an adversary is strong. But over time, pressure often produces institutions. Hot rivalries sometimes mature into cold coexistence. Deconfliction channels become routine. Joint mechanisms for maritime security, airspace coordination, crisis communication, and arms control, even in partial form, can begin to take root because the alternative is too costly.

A plausible outcome, then, is not a neat victory of one alignment over another, but the gradual emergence of a regional security architecture that reflects the region’s true distribution of power and its layered identities. Such an architecture would not require states to agree on every conflict, nor would it erase ideological divides. It would aim instead to prevent rivalry from becoming catastrophe. If it succeeds, even imperfectly, the Greater Middle East could move from being a battlefield of the changing world order to being one of its designers. After a period of internal competition and painful adaptation, the region may find itself entering the new global era with more autonomy, more bargaining power, and a stronger ability to translate its geography and resources into influence rather than exposure.

During the Vietnam War, US National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger concocted the ‘Madman Theory’. The idea was to force the North Vietnamese and the Soviet Union to negotiate with Washington by making them think that then-President Richard Nixon was so crazy that working things out was a better alternative than not doing so. Hanoi didn’t buy it. But maybe the EU establishment will in 2026?

Well, they believe there’s a madman in the White House, alright. But the outcome is, once again, probably not entirely what Washington had in mind.

“Let no one be mistaken in thinking that the true intention of the US was simply to confront a geopolitical threat,” French President Emmanuel Macron told El Pais in a new interview, addressing US President Donald Trump’s recent threats to take Greenland by force for “national security” reasons. “It was not the Russians or the Chinese who posed the threat. I can tell you that we have compiled an intelligence tally of the number of Russian and Chinese ships and submarines that were around Greenland and whose presence we detected: It is negligible.”

It seems that Trump has managed to do the impossible and make EU leaders switch out their Russian invasion fantasies for American ones. And wouldn’t you know it, that actually works out better for them, because they’ve spent years trying – and failing – to convince Europeans that Putin is going to kick down the door to the EU sometime around 2030. This looming, abstract invasion fantasy that’s always just far enough away to hope that people will have forgotten all about it by the time they’ve successfully used it as a pretext to steal billions in taxpayer cash.

Meanwhile, Europeans have long been like, “Yawn, yeah okay, let me guess, you need more of our money again, right?” It’s like the guy trying to sell you a home alarm system by having the neighbor – Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky in this case – constantly talk about how his place got broken into. And how he was just a totally random victim. Just sitting there, minding his own business, doing nothing at all to do with dodgy neo-Nazis and NATO weapons on the Russian border. So it could have happened to anyone! Even you, Europe! Because NATO’s so fragile, apparently. What have they been buying with all our money? Nerf guns?

No wonder Europeans aren’t really buying it. Not outside of the establishment, anyway. And maybe not even them, although it serves them to keep saying otherwise.

So lucky for guys like Macron, they now have a whole new narrative that gives them much better cover for the exact same scheme of washing massive amounts of public funds into defense spending. The new message coming now from Macron effectively marginalizes any existential threat from Russia or China in favor of panic about an American one.

The EU has to become a “power” to fend them off, he now says. And it’s not just a matter of not being able to rely on the US anymore, which is what they were trying to sell back when Russia was the main villain. And this is even better for the EU’s plans, because Europeans actually find Trump attacking the bloc entirely plausible, for one. So that helps.

And on top of that, this new narrative lets EU leaders commandeer taxpayer money not just for the defense sector but for several other sectors as well, since Europe is deeply dependent on the US right across the board. And this massive spending spree conveniently boosts their own political survival odds, because it props up their flagging economies.

Macron is now talking about the need to build an entire tech ecosystem independent from the US, phasing out government use of American software like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Webex, and telling El Pais that the US is going to attack on the digital regulation front in the coming months as well. Probably because Washington doesn’t appreciate that the EU is fed up with Elon Musk using his social media platform (and personal bullhorn), X, and its opaque algorithms, to control online narratives that Europeans get fed. In the same vein, American officials have also openly confirmed their intent to fund pro-Trump European NGOs, in the same meddling style of their nemesis, George Soros.

It’s already starting to sound like a conscious uncoupling. The EU’s banking chief, the ECB’s Christine Lagarde, is talking about the need to come up with alternatives to America’s Mastercard and Visa credit card systems. And Macron is also saying how the world wants alternatives to the greenback now that America under Trump is “distancing itself further and further from a state of law.”

Macron calls the current American ideology “blatantly anti-European.” Apparently, it took Trump spelling it out for him, letter by letter, to notice. Decades of actively undermining the EU as an economic competitor just didn’t quite make the point clear enough.

So now that there’s a new main villain supercharging this European tax-and-spend narrative way better than hating on Russia or China ever did, guess what? Sounds like Russia’s getting a soft rebrand.

“Like it or not, Russia will still be there tomorrow. And it turns out it’s right on our doorstep. It’s important to structure the resumption of a European debate with them,” Macron told El Pais. The Kremlin confirms that technical talks have resumed between France and Russia. So Macron seems to be arriving at the same conclusion that former French President Charles de Gaulle did 60 years ago: The idea of “Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals” as a counterbalance to the US as Europe’s potential overlord.

China will take “all necessary measures” to fight infiltration and sabotage by foreign forces, the Foreign Ministry in Beijing has said, responding to a recent US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) recruitment ad targeting Chinese military personnel.

The spy agency’s Mandarin-language video, published on its YouTube account on Thursday, urged officers and troops to leak information on top Chinese leaders or regarding sensitive military or technological fields.

“China will take all necessary measures to resolutely combat infiltration and sabotage activities of foreign anti-China forces and resolutely safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian told journalists on Friday, when asked about the CIA video.

The ad came just weeks after Beijing launched an anti-graft probe into its highest-ranking general, Zhang Youxia.

Speaking to troops in Beijing on Tuesday, President Xi Jinping described the past year as “a revolutionary tempering” in the fight against corruption for the Chinese army. Beijing has dismissed multiple top officials and more than a dozen generals in the three years since Xi intensified efforts to crack down on top-level corruption in 2023.

Thursday’s video was the fifth Mandarin-language recruitment video the CIA has released since October 2024. In the early 2010s, Beijing reportedly dismantled much of the agency’s spy network in China, capturing or executing more than a dozen agents.

Beijing is a top level threat for the administration of President Donald Trump, according to CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

“No adversary in the history of our Nation has presented a more formidable challenge or a more capable strategic competitor,” he said in an internal memo cited by the media last April. In it, he argued that Beijing was working to “economically, militarily and technologically dominate the world” and “out-compete America in every corner of the globe.”

The two superpowers clashed in an on-and-off tariff war last year after Trump imposed massive levies on China, citing unfair trade imbalances. The conflict went dormant last October following a deal clinched by the US president and Xi at a summit in South Korea.

Trump is expected to meet the Chinese president again in Beijing in April.

The US military used a highly classified laser-weapon system to shoot down a party balloon, multiple outlets reported on Thursday, citing sources in the administration of President Donald Trump. The incident triggered an airspace closure over the Texas border city of El Paso.

The episode reportedly took place on Monday when Customs and Border Protection (CBP) deployed a Pentagon-loaned counter-drone laser at Fort Bliss, near El Paso International Airport, to target suspected Mexican cartel drones. Reuters reported the system used was the AeroVironment LOCUST, a 20-kilowatt directed-energy weapon the US military has been testing to counter drones and other aerial threats.

However, when debris from suspected drones was analyzed, at least three objects were identified as mylar balloons used at parties, sources told Reuters and Fox News.

While no official confirmation of the laser deployment was made, reports claimed the episode triggered a scandal in the Trump administration. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reportedly “went nuclear” because CBP allegedly used the system without its clearance, posing risks to commercial aircraft.

The FAA ordered a ten-day airspace closure over El Paso on Wednesday, though its X post did not mention the laser, and the restrictions were lifted seven hours later with minimal explanation.

US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Wednesday praised the episode as a joint FAA-Pentagon counter-drone effort but did not explicitly confirm the laser’s use. The FAA, Pentagon, and White House did not respond to media requests for comment. 

The incident came amid heightened cross-border tensions between the US and Mexico, with Trump accusing Mexican authorities of failing to curb drug smuggling and threatening military intervention.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, President Claudia Sheinbaum said Mexico had requested explanations from the US over the El Paso airspace closure, stressing there was no Mexican involvement.

“There were different reports, but when the Foreign Ministry asked directly, we still didn’t get an answer, so they will have to explain,” she said, noting official US statements referred only to “cartels,” not Mexico.

Trump has accused several South American countries of failing to curb drug smuggling and last month ordered an operation in Venezuela to kidnap President Nicolas Maduro on drug-trafficking charges.

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Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has accused the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of playing “into the hands of aggressors” by banning a Ukrainian athlete while allowing Russians to compete under a neutral flag.

Ukrainian skeleton pilot Vladislav Geraskevich was disqualified from the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics on Thursday for refusing to remove a helmet adorned with images of Ukrainian athletes killed during the conflict with Russia. The decision to ban Geraskevich was made because “he did not consider any form of compromise,” the IOC said in a statement.

Zelensky vented his frustration with the IOC in a social media post on Thursday evening. “The Olympic movement should help stop wars, not play into the hands of aggressors,” he complained. “Unfortunately, the decision of the International Olympic Committee to disqualify Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladislav Geraskevich says otherwise.”

“And yet, 13 Russians are currently in Italy competing at the Olympics,” he continued. Despite these athletes competing under a neutral white flag, and not breaking the IOC’s rules on political messaging, Zelensky insisted that “they are the ones who deserve disqualification.”

At a press conference in Milan, OPC spokesman Mark Adams said that “you would have maybe five” countries represented at the Olympics if the organization banned every country engaged in wars or conflicts. “Because once you start, as a sporting organization, taking stands against wars and conflicts there is no end,” he said.

However, Russia has accused the IOC of applying this logic unevenly. “The IOC has discredited itself entirely,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov declared in 2024, after the committee refused to apply any restrictions to Israeli athletes over the war in Gaza, but forbade Russian and Belarusian athletes from competing in the Paris games under their national flags.

The IOC’s ban on political messaging was put in place in 2021, a year before the escalation of the Ukraine conflict. Despite being offered other ways to honor fallen athletes, Geraskevich insisted on wearing his controversial helmet during all of his training runs in Milan, the organization said.

Speaking after his disqualification, Geraskevich accused the IOC of making “a terrible mistake,” and playing “along with Russian propaganda.”

Two US Navy vessels collided during a replenishment-at-sea operation in waters near South America, leaving two sailors with minor injuries and prompting an investigation into the incident, military officials said on Thursday.