U.S. and Iranian leaders traded insults in public at the U.N. General Assembly this week, but that’s a minor skirmish compared to the coming battle between the two adversaries. The U.S. government is about to launch its toughest sanctions yet to tighten the noose around the neck of the Tehran regime — a bold but […]
The parade of grotesques at this week’s Labour conference will be matched by the ghastlies on full display when the Tories gather in Birmingham next week. In both instances, our two main parties operate on the presumption the electorate must be made up of fools. Read Here – The Spectator
“We reject the ideology of globalism” in favor of the “ideology of patriotism.” So spoke the American president from the pulpit, in the high church of the first ideology, before a congregation nominally convened in a spirit of global cooperation. Ahead of his address at the annual gathering of the United Nations General Assembly, the buzz […]
Diplomacy through portraiture had long been a staple of early modern statecraft in Europe and India. In a time where travel to another monarch’s realm could prove deadly, rulers sent their portraits in lieu of their persons as part of sensitive negotiations. Rulers interacted ritually with portraits as if they were not the representation of […]
Early last week, Russia concluded Vostok-2018, its largest military exercise since the fall of the Soviet Union. It wasn’t just their size, however, that made the recent war games so groundbreaking. For the first time in history, 3,200 Chinese troops trained alongside some 300,000 Russians in eastern Siberia. Read Here – Foreign Policy
In Donald Trump, the US may have finally found a president whose views on Iran are both unambiguous and immutable. They are, as social scientists would say, overdetermined. First among causes, the Iran deal, like the Affordable Care Act, stands as part of a repugnant Obama legacy and is therefore to be repudiated; whether or […]
Maldives’ President Abdulla Yameen has conceded defeat after a surprise election win for the opposition in a poll that was billed as a test for democracy in the troubled island nation. “The citizens of the Maldives had their say … and I accept that result,” Yameen said in a televised speech on Monday. Read Here – Al Jazeera
In rolling out the administration’s new “National Cyber Strategy,” National Security Advisor John Bolton said that Trump had removed restrictions on the use of offensive cyber-operations and replaced them with a more permissive legal regime that gives the Defense Department and other agencies greater authority to penetrate foreign networks to deter hacks on U.S. systems. Read […]
Next week Donald J. Trump returns to the United Nations for the annual opening of the UN General Assembly. While Trump exceeded expectations during his first UN appearance last year, he will face more pushback this time around. The president will encounter a more skeptical global audience, woke to the reality that his administration’s diplomacy […]
Five weeks into a five-year term, but this past week could prove to be the most consequential of them all. Three big things and all spelling some kind of danger for the PTI. It’s not been a good week for (Pakistan’s Prime Minister) Imran (Khan). Read Here – Dawn
looking beyond borders 