Watching Tillerson’s first six months, one wonders whether Trump picked him as a way to diminish the State Department, similar to how Richard Nixon chose William Rogers for the express purpose of ensuring that the department remained weak. As Henry Kissinger recalled of Rogers, “few secretaries of state can have been selected because of their president’s confidence […]
Max Boot, a lifelong conservative who advised three Republican Presidential candidates on foreign policy, keeps a folder labelled “Trump Stupidity File” on his computer. It’s next to his “Trump Lies” file. “Not sure which is larger at this point,” he told me this week. “It’s neck-and-neck.” Read Here – The New Yorker
The wider world has largely forgotten that short border clash 55 years ago, playing out as it did in the shadows of the more momentous Cuban missile crisis at the peak of the cold war. But in this part of the world, the ghost of that war still lurks – it is the key to […]
After the pomp and ceremony of China’s big military milestone this week, the sudden absence of President Xi Jinping and other key leaders from state television news bulletins on Wednesday was a familiar sign for China watchers – Beijing’s summer conclave has begun. Read Here – South China Morning Post
Rouhani is obviously not the same president-elect as he was in 2013. He now appears to be ready to draw his own road map in front of both friends and foes — including Khamenei. All of Rouhani’s men were at the ceremony, as were his rivals, from his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to his most recent conservative presidential competitor, Ebrahim […]
The Gulf and the Horn are intricately intertwined regions that face common threats and vulnerabilities: armed conflict, transnational jihadism and organised crime, including piracy, human trafficking and money laundering. The current crisis comes at a difficult moment for the historically conflict-prone Horn, much of which is either politically unstable, mired in internal armed conflict or […]
More than the global and domestic situation, the biggest difference between the two stand-offs is their respective locations. Forty years ago, the two armies were confronting each other on territory claimed by both India and China. Now the face-off between India and China is in a plateau contested between Bhutan and China. Read Here – […]
Nawaz Sharif is the proverbial cat with nine lives. But his third, the longest and perhaps final term as Pakistan’s prime minister, came to an end last Friday when the Supreme Court of the country disqualified him from holding public office…Whether Sharif is able to make yet another comeback is still to be seen, but […]
Even as China and India once more come nose to nose and eyeball to eyeball across the forbidding glaciers of the high Himalayas, the United States must resist the temptation to pour gasoline on this potentially dangerous conflagration even though more than a few U.S. (and global) arms merchants would benefit from the intensification of Sino-Indian military […]
Both Gandhi, for all his saintly status a profoundly sectarian Hindu leader, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the All-India Muslim League and the founder of Pakistan, were dead within a year after partition. If the British government had not been in such a panic-stricken rush to get out of India, there might have […]
