The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 89, July 2026 Page 3 From the series European news German industrial output has been falling for six years. This is happening at a time when the US is imposing tariffs, competition from China is growing, and the energy shock caused by the war in Iran comes on top of the severing of energy ties with Russia triggered by the conflict in Ukraine. Friedrich Merz's government is attempting to revive the economy through substantial defence spending and investment in infrastructure, combined with domestic reforms. However, the latter is precisely what the government is struggling with, and there is still no sign of the renewed momentum it had hoped for. As frustration grows across the country, the government's decline in the polls has been mirrored by the rise of the AfD. This is the context in which the debate over “China shock 2.0” is unfolding. T...

Internationalism No. 89, July 2026 Page 2 On June 17th, during the closing banquet of the G7 summit in Evian against the highly symbolic backdrop of Versailles, Donald Trump, accompanied by his host Emmanuel Macron, initialled a memorandum of understanding with Tehran. The president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, did the same via video-conference in Tehran. The document had already been digitally signed in Geneva on the 14th. For former diplomat Michel Duclos, this was a surprise organised by the French presidency, which had taken care to invite Egypt, the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia to the G7 proceedings. Trump, aware of the criticism within the Republican camp over his backing down in the face of Iran , and of the fact that his international prestige did not emerge strengthened from the third Gulf War , was offered a lavish stage on which to save face. Or, in Japanes...

Internationalism No. 89, July 2026 Page 1 From the series Artificial intelligence One of the most penetrating reflections on the anthropological question linked to artificial intelligence (AI) was put forward by Henry Kissinger. In his view, AI and communication through digital networks – the web – undermine the principle of reality defined by the Enlightenment in two ways: the web tends to fragment our perception of reality, being based on algorithms that tailor information to individuals in order to cater to their preferences; secondly, perceptions of reality are mediated by a mechanism – the probabilistic filtering of a volume of data far beyond the capacity of the human mind – whose internal workings cannot be reconstructed through rational analysis. The web fragments perceptions of reality, tailoring it to individuals according to the ten...