Where Is The Next Generation Of African leaders?

In every single African country, young people make up the majority of the population – and they are generally very ill-served by their ageing governments. Young leaders, where they can be found, don’t just come with energy; the right ones can bring new ideas, technocratic competence, and a new idealism. Instead, some of the continent’s […]

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Trump Wants Little To Do With His Own Foreign Policy

It has become abundantly clear that President Trump does not buy his own administration’s strategic shift toward great power competition. Compare the new strategic doctrine to three of President Trump’s recent speeches—one that launched the National Security Strategy, his address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, and yesterday’s State of the Union. In each, there was at most a […]

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India’s One Belt, One Road-Block

In a sense, India’s foreign policy is still passive. The hallmark of power is not that countries will take your money and use it to build refineries, or that foreign leaders will visit and eat your food at interesting summits about maritime security. The real test of power is whether a country can make other […]

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China’s Rise Is Over

And while external specialists have cleaved to the narrative of China as being on a nonstop trajectory of sensational growth and expanding influence, government and business leaders within the PRC today take a much more sober view, challenging the dominant narrative of China as the ever-rising power. According to them, the end of the rise […]

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How Sharp Power Threatens Soft Power

“Sharp power,” as coined by Christopher Walker and Jessica Ludwig of the National Endowment for Democracy, refers to the information warfare being waged by today’s authoritarian powers, particularly China and Russia. Over the past decade, Beijing and Moscow have spent tens of billions of dollars to shape public perceptions and behaviour around the world—using tools […]

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President Trump’s First Year, In 14 Metrics

Like any president, Trump is taking credit for good economic news. He’s highlighted rising stocks and falling unemployment. But Trump also, famously, regards trade deficits as a sign of economic weakness. And for people who worry about the fact that the U.S. buys more stuff from other countries than it sells them, the news has […]

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The Tragedy Of Mahmoud Abbas

Picture a Palestinian leader in the twilight of his reign. Besieged on all sides and challenged by younger upstarts, he lashes out against Israel, his Arab brethren, and the United States. Other Palestinian officials jockey to replace him, convinced he’s past his prime. This is how it ended for Yasser Arafat, whose insistence on waging […]

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For Islam And Against America: What Fuelled Pakistan’s Nuclear Black Market?

Evidence indicates that it is difficult to make generalisations about the whole nuclear proliferation episode involving Pakistan, as different sets of motivations, circumstances, and players were involved in the three cases under discussion. Even the different stages of each case require separate treatment—for example, both Iran and North Korea did nuclear deals with the AQ […]

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