Having mastered the art of pretending to be an ally of the U.S. while working to undercut its interests, including aiding its battlefield foes, Pakistan has merrily been playing a double game. Yet, the U.S. continues to arm it with sophisticated weapons and provide multibillion-dollar aid to prop it up. Read Here – Nikkei Asian […]
When Defense Secretary Ash Carter took the reins of the Pentagon in February, he inherited a Pentagon coming out of two prolonged land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, navigating a budgetary drawdown threatened by sequestration, and wrestling with how to remain the dominant military in a fast-changing world. As one of his predecessors Robert Gates […]
One of Merkel’s great strengths is an unerring sense for political reality. As such, her comments at the town meeting early last week show that nobody knows better than Germany’s chancellor just how precarious the situation in the country has become. The influx of refugees continues unabated and Merkel’s public approval ratings continue to fall […]
India has watched the Sharif-Obama summit in Washington keenly, and while it is clear that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif returns to Islamabad without any big announcement to show for the bilateral, and no progress on US-Pakistan civil nuclear negotiations, there are many parts to the 2015 joint statement issued by the two that could cause […]
PRIME Minister Nawaz Sharif’s second visit to the White House to meet US President Barack Obama will occur in markedly different circumstances than the first one two years ago. Read Here – Dawn
In spring 2003 an unnamed official at CIA headquarters in Langley sat down to compose a memo. It was 18 months after George W Bush had declared war on terror. “We cannot have enough blacksite hosts,” the official wrote. The reference was to one of the most closely guarded secrets of that war – the countries […]
In July 1984, U.S. customs agents arrested a Pakistani national, Nazir Ahmed Vaid, at Houston International Airport for trying to purchase krytrons–useful for triggering nuclear weapons–and smuggle them out of the United States Some months later, Vaid was found guilty of violating export control laws, but a plea bargain produced a light penalty: deportation. Months […]
Among today’s geopolitical risks, none is greater than the long arc of instability stretching from the Maghreb to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. With the Arab Spring an increasingly distant memory, the instability along this arc is deepening. Indeed, of the three initial Arab Spring countries, Libya has become a failed state, Egypt has returned to authoritarian […]
Over 2,000 years ago, the ancient Silk Road, a 7,000-km-long trade route created by camel-driving merchants, started to link China with Europe via central and west Asia. Today, the ancient invention still inspires both China and the United States when they work out their respective blueprints to promote regional development. Sprouting from the inspiration, the US “New […]
Overall, India’s diplomacy with Iran has been rooted in economic interests and buttressed by civilizational links. New Delhi’s contemporary cooperation with Tehran is mainly premised on India’s energy security, access to Afghanistan and Central Asia, and its enduring rivalry with Islamabad. It is worth emphasizing that India’s interests in Central Asia are substantial, and it […]
looking beyond borders 