In an appeal to the German government and its European partners, numerous public figures from Germany and Europe are calling for a joint effort by European democ­racies to enable Ukraine to success­fully defend itself against Russia’s war of aggression. Any success for Russia’s politics of violence would be a blow to European security. The European democ­ratic project would also be struck at its core.

In his essay for the major German weekend newspaper “Welt am Sonntag” Ralf Fücks, founding director of LibMod, analyzes the current debate about Israel, the efforts to get rid of Germany’s special commitment to the Jewish state (“end of the cult of guilt”), and the long lines of hostility toward Israel on the “progressive” left.

Donald Trump is a vehicle for Musk and Thiel to implement their radical ideas, which aim to replace an accountable government with an unaccountable techno-monarchy, writes former technology manager Mike Brock. His article was first published in March on https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/how-silicon-valleys-corrupted-libertarianism.

According to Oliver Moody, people in the Baltic states have been aware of the threat posed by Russia for much longer. The Berlin corre­spondent for The Times and Sunday Times has just written a book about “The Baltic Sea Conflict Zone” (“Konflik­tzone Ostsee”) In an interview with Till Schmidt, he explains what we can learn from the Baltic states.

Over the course of its 75-year history, NATO has weathered many storms. At least two previous crises were existential – and in both cases, the US played a key role. The new crisis in the transat­lantic alliance, triggered by President Trump, runs deeper. Europe needs a bold and strong strategy to brave the storm. Gerlinde Niehus, former Deputy Director for Defense and Security Cooper­ation at NATO, analyzes the current situation for us.

“In Europe, people are actually being imprisoned for their opinions,” is the title of Yascha Mounk’s essay. Jeanette Hofmann, political researcher at Berlin’s Freie Univer­sität is specialized in digital­ization and democracy. She disagrees and instead empha­sizes the urgency of finding answers to the dilemma democracy finds itself in: Defending itself without compro­mising its principles. 

From Germany to the UK, citizens are now routinely targeted for their online state­ments, writes German-American political scientist Yascha Mounk in his analysis and concludes that freedom of expression in Europe is under threat.

Despite the war, Ukraine is moving toward European Union membership at an unprece­dented pace. For its accession to succeed, it needs decisive support from the EU – and a solution to circumvent the ongoing blockades imposed by Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, Sergiy Solodkyy argues in his policy brief.

Is it legit­imate to restrict political freedoms – such as freedom of speech or the right to build political parties and to run for elections – in order to protect national security and to defend liberal democracy against its enemies? This is of course one of the classic contro­versies of political theory and practice, as Ralf Fücks analyzes.