Delvewire — Global Affairs

Delvewire's coverage of Global Affairs: in-depth, with context and evidence.

Delvewire was founded by Amaya Kavya.

  • G7, G20, NATO, the UN, BRICS, ASEAN: What They Actually Are, and Whether They Matter

    You hear the names constantly and half of them blur together. Here is the plain version: what each of these clubs and alliances really is, who is in it, and which ones actually have the power to make anything happen.

    Global Affairs · 2026-08-14

  • Capitalists vs Communists: The Cold War, in Quick

    For almost half a century the world was split in two, the capitalist West against the communist East, two superpowers with enough nuclear weapons to end the world and every reason never to use them. Here is the whole thing, fast.

    Global Affairs · 2026-08-07

  • Sixty Thousand People Crossed Into Ceuta: Europe's Only Land Border With Africa

    Over two days at the end of July, around sixty thousand people walked, swam and floated around a breakwater into a Spanish city of about eighty-five thousand on the North African coast. At least seventy-two of them died in the water. Most of the rest went back within days. Ceuta is one of two places where the European Union has a land border with Africa, it has been used as leverage before, and the argument about who opened it is not settled. This is what is known so far.

    Global Affairs · 2026-08-03

  • Desert Storm: The First War the World Watched Live, and What the Cameras Missed

    Three reporters on the ninth floor of a Baghdad hotel held open a phone line to Amman and described the bombing as it happened, and a war became live television. What the audience saw was real and also unrepresentative: guided weapons made up a small fraction of what was dropped, and the ground campaign that decided it lasted a hundred hours and killed tens of thousands of people almost entirely on one side. This is what happened, what the coalition chose not to do, and what it left behind.

    Global Affairs · 2026-08-02

  • The Cuban Missile Crisis: What It Was, and How Close It Actually Came

    For thirteen days in October 1962 the United States and the Soviet Union stood closer to a full nuclear exchange than at any point before or since. The version most people know, the cool young president staring down the reckless Soviet premier, gets the ending roughly right and almost everything else wrong. There was a secret trade. There were about a hundred nuclear warheads on the island that Washington knew nothing about. And on the worst day, the decision not to fire came down to one Soviet officer in a submarine with no air conditioning.

    Global Affairs · 2026-07-24

  • Why Anyone Would Want Greenland: The Island, the Superpower, and the Alliance It Nearly Broke

    A few months ago the president of the United States stood up and said, more or less plainly, that America needed to own Greenland, and that he would not rule out taking it by force from Denmark, a country the United States is bound by treaty to defend. It sounded unhinged. It also nearly cracked the oldest military alliance in the Western world down the middle. But he did not invent the idea on the spot, and he was not entirely making the strategic case up either. Here is what Greenland actually is, why a superpower keeps trying to buy it, and why the 56,000 people who live there keep saying no.

    Global Affairs · 2026-07-22

  • Who Actually Drew the World's Borders

    The lines on a map of the world look permanent, like they grew out of the ground. Almost none of them did. Most of the borders you know today were drawn by a small number of men, in a small number of rooms, in the last four hundred years, often without setting foot in the places they were dividing up.

    Global Affairs · 2026-07-20

  • Why It Was Europe: How a Small, Divided Corner of the World Ended Up Ruling Most of It

    For most of history Europe sat on the modest edge of a world whose wealth and learning lay elsewhere. Then a handful of small Atlantic kingdoms went out across the oceans and came to rule much of the planet. Not because their people were cleverer or braver, but because a particular mix, geography, disease, a genuine edge in ships and finance, and relentless rivalry at home, happened to come together in one place at one time.

    Global Affairs · 2026-07-17

  • Why the Countries That Have the Bomb Are the Ones Stopping Anyone Else From Getting It

    The United States is the only country ever to use a nuclear weapon in war, and it holds one of the two largest arsenals on Earth. It also leads the effort to stop any new country from building even one. That looks like plain hypocrisy, and many see it that way. It is more useful to understand it as a bargain: a written deal nearly every country has signed. Here is how it works, why its keepers defend it, and why so many call it a double standard.

    Global Affairs · 2026-07-15

  • The United States and Iran: Why Neither Side Lowers Its Guard

    Decades of hostility, collapsed deals, and now open strikes around the Strait of Hormuz. Beneath the headlines, both Washington and Tehran get something from the confrontation. Understanding what that is explains why it never quite ends.

    Global Affairs · 2026-07-10

  • Mikhail Gorbachev: Celebrated Abroad, Resented at Home

    Gorbachev is remembered in two completely different ways. In the West he is the man who helped end the Cold War peacefully and won a Nobel Prize. In Russia he is often blamed for destroying the Soviet Union. Both verdicts come from the same set of facts.

    Global Affairs · 2026-07-03

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