Fair Observer Monthly is a chance for you to sit down, look back and think about the month past. A month lasts 28 to 31 days, a suitably appropriate time to take stock of the world. We publish daily on our website and we select some of our best articles every month in our e-magazine. We will give you context and multiple perspectives on issues that matter. We will inform and educate you. Fair Observer Monthly does what we promise: make sense of the world.

This Fair Observer Monthly traces how power, deterrence and narrative collide across a tense world. German economist Alex Gloy warns that US President Donald Trump’s US–EU trade deal will tax Americans more than Europeans, while retired senior NATO official Michael Rühle argues Hiroshima’s legacy explains why nuclear deterrence endures. Entrepreneur and foreign policy analyst Emma Isabella Sage reads the US strike on Iran as a rare and polarizing reset of credibility while Assistant Editor Cheyenne Torres finds in John Macgregor a citizen-first blueprint to repair democracy. Noted British sociologist and cultural critic Ellis Cashmore examines how politics became a spectacle in the Bill Clinton–Monica Lewinsky saga and Afghan analyst Saboor Sakhizada indicts Taliban rule for entrenching gender apartheid in Afghan education. Japanese economist Masaaki Yoshimori contrasts the economic policies of two Japanese prime ministers — Shinzō Abe’s reflationary ambition and Fumio Kishida’s risk-averse “New Capitalism” — while young Indian student Om Gupta casts Narendra Modi’s Red Fort speech as a declaration of strategic autonomy.

Ideas compete as fiercely as states. Retired UN official Rahul Sur launches “Islamofactism” to ground debate on Islam in verifiable facts while Turkey-based young Afghan scholar Ali Omar Forozish proposes “conservative modernism” to break Middle Eastern sectarianism. Eminent Venezuelan diplomat Alfredo Toro Hardy shares his thoughts on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s high-control, high-risk autocracy while Indonesian analyst Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat warns that Chinese-backed coal in Indonesia undercuts climate pledges and a cleaner growth path for his country. And in a fitting coda to our long-running inquiry into words and power, Chief Strategy Officer Peter Isackson closes the Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary after eight years, reminding us that language can both clarify and conceal the truth.

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Content of Publication

Neither Art nor Deal: Trump’s Risky US-EU Trade Agreement – Alex Gloy

Eighty Years After Hiroshima: Why Nuclear Deterrence Will Remain – Michael Rühle

Make America Scary Again: The Challenging Path to Reviving US Deterrence – Emma Isabella Sage

Fighting Islamophobia With Islamofactism: A New Ten-Part Series – Rahul Sur

Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky and the Politics of Spectacle – Ellis Cashmore

Democracy is in Decline. The Mechanics of Changing the World Offers a Way Out – Cheyenne Torres

Afghanistan Under the Taliban Four Years Later: No School, No Future, No Problem – Saboor Sakhizada

Ken Loach: Auteur as Agent Provocateur – Ellis Cashmore

Our Dollar, Your Problem: Market Stress, Exchange Rate Feedback and the Fiscal Reckoning Ahead – Masaaki Yoshimori

Our Devil Closes His Dictionary and Muses on Its Roots – Peter Isackson

Abe and Kishida: The Two Contrasting Visions for Japan’s Political Economy – Masaaki Yoshimori

Conservative Modernism: A Roadmap for Sustainable Peace in the Middle East – Ali Omar Forozish

China and Indonesia Need to Overcome Coal – Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat

Modi at the Red Fort: An Address to Islamabad, Washington and Beijing – Om Gupta

Is Xi Jinping the World’s Number One Autocrat? – Alfredo Toro Hardy