For all the talk of the forever war in the Middle East, the longest U.S. war is not Afghanistan but the Korean War, which is under an indefinite cease-fire 71 years after the war began in 1950. Read More Here
US President Joe Biden knew what British Prime Minister Clement Attlee knew in 1947: Once you make local elites dependent on the power and money of a foreign occupier, it becomes almost impossible to leave without causing mayhem. And the longer the foreign power stays, the worse the mayhem often becomes. Read More Here
Fake news has gained prevalence in recent years due to the rising role of social media platforms as news outlets, where content can be produced and relayed among users with no significant third-party filtering, fact-checking, or editorial judgment. Read More Here
One U.S. government organization that has been generally more effective than the Pentagon in improving some capacities and capabilities of foreign partners, and at decidedly less cost in blood and treasure, is the CIA. Read More Here
The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and sudden collapse of the government in Kabul have led critics of President Joe Biden to argue that American credibility has been dealt a staggering blow. Read More Here
Growing tension with India and the West has further pushed Sri Lanka into China’s embrace. Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government increasingly sees a friend in China who can bring much needed foreign exchange to Colombo. Since the pandemic struck in 2020, Beijing has provided crucial and timely economic and health aid support. China provided over US $2 billion […]
The Joe Biden administration has rarely missed an opportunity to stress the critical importance of Southeast Asia to its Indo-Pacific agenda of containing China’s influence and rise. But until a string of recent high-level visits to the strategic region, observers noted that little had been done to match its words with deeds. Read More Here
With the Taliban’s sudden reconquest of Afghanistan, US President Joe Biden is learning how quickly “inbox problems” can derail other objectives. Whether he will recover and salvage his legislative agenda remains to be seen; history offers conflicting lessons. Read More Here
A supply chain crunch that was meant to be temporary now looks like it will last well into next year as the surging delta variant upends factory production in Asia and disrupts shipping, posing more shocks to the world economy. Read More Here
Before the Radcliffe Line, there was the Durand Line. The British, having seized territory from Afghanistan during the Second Anglo-Afghan War in 1878-80 and annexed it to British India, dispatched Mortimer Durand to formalize those gains with a treaty in 1893. Read More Here
looking beyond borders 