Centre for International Policy Studies – Canada's leading centre for analysis and debate of international affairs.

Sovereignty and Settler Colonial Worldmaking
Many assume state sovereignty to be a settled fact. As the basis for our international system of sovereign states, it represents some of the firmest ground on which we have built our societies. However, critical engagements with sovereignty point to the delusion of this way of thinking. Moreover, settler colonial states, such as Canada, further highlight the tensions contained by our assumptions over sovereignty’s settledness: Indigenous peoples continue to affirm their own underlying claims to authority.

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Blog - War in Iran: What Does Trump Want?
From the beginning of the Iran conflict, Donald Trump has presented an array of reasons and objectives for attacking Iran. Many of them are contradictory. It’s about nuclear weapons (the same ones that were “obliterated” last year); It’s about fundamental regime change (and yet the “Venezuela solution” would also be just fine); There was an imminent threat of attack against the US (which no intelligence agency was able to pick up) – or, Trump just had a “gut-feeling” that it was simply time to do this as it has to be done sooner or later anyway; An impending Israeli attack pushed him into it (or he pushed the Israelis).

Read the blog by Peter Jones
Blog - How Tensions in the Middle East Affect Africa’s Economy, Security, and Geopolitics
Since 28 February 2026, the Middle East has experienced sustained hostilities following United States and Israeli strikes against Iran and subsequent retaliation by Iran. Iranian missile and drone attacks have been reported across several countries in the region. Leaders across Africa have already expressed alarm.

Read the blog by Chris Begealawuh
Blog - A Canadian’s Past, Present and Future with China
Almost fifty years ago, I arrived in Shanghai as a member of the Fudan University class of ’77. I was the first foreign student admitted to the Philosophy Department’s History of Ancient Chinese Thought Program since the Sino-Soviet split of 1961. My thesis advisor, Yan Beiming—a prominent figure on the conservative side of China’s 1920s New Culture Movement—had just returned to campus. Now an elderly professor, he had endured years of imprisonment and torture as Fudan’s “number one object of attack” during the 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution.

Read the blog by Charles Burton

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War in Iran: What Does Trump Want?0
- Analysis, CIPS, News
- March 11, 2026
From the beginning of the Iran conflict, Donald Trump has presented an array of reasons and objectives for attacking Iran. Many of them are contradictory. It’s about nuclear weapons (the same ones that were “obliterated” last year); It’s about fundamental regime change (and yet the “Venezuela solution” would also be just fine); There was an

By Peter Jones
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