More than two thousand years ago, China’s Han Dynasty launched the Silk Road, a sprawling network of commerce that linked South and Central Asia with the Middle East and Europe. Today, the idea of a “New Silk Road,” an intertwined set of economic integration initiatives seeking to link East and Central Asia, has taken hold […]
There is indeed competition and a lack of mutual strategic trust between the two rapidly emerging Asian powers. Over the past year, India, under the Modi administration, has become a star on the world stage. Modi’s victory in the country’s general elections last May has injected enormous confidence into India’s economic development as well as […]
It’s been four years since a group of US Navy Seals assassinated Osama bin Laden in a night raid on a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The killing was the high point of Obama’s first term, and a major factor in his re-election. The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, […]
“We are natural allies … [It’s not] what India can do for the U.S., what the U.S. can do for India … The way we should look at it is what India and the U.S. can together do for the world … strengthening democratic values all over. “For nearly three decades there has been, by […]
A Pakistani blogger has taken on Samuel Huntington as Muslims fight what looks like a civilisational war. Under the heading “The farce called ‘The Clash of Civilisations’”, a well-regarded Pakistani journalist says that “a lion’s share” of the foreign jihadists joining the terrorist Islamic State in Syria-Iraq “have come from Europe”, meaning it is the […]
THE formal launch of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) during the recent visit of President Xi Jinping has understandably generated a lot of euphoria in Pakistan. With a planned portfolio of projects totalling around $45 billion, the size of the ‘investment’ in the CPEC over the next 15 years, if materialised, will equal the cumulative […]
Signalling that Afghanistan is upset with Pakistan over its refusal to allow direct trade with India via the Wagah border, President Ashraf Ghani says that if the deadlock continues, “We will not provide equal transit access to Central Asia [for Pakistani trucks].” Read Here – The Hindu
The implications of the Pakistani refusal to help Saudi Arabia in Yemen should not be underestimated. If China is Islamabad’s “all-weather friend”, former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Sultan once said that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have “one of the closest relationships in the world between any two countries”. Read Here – The Indian […]
Over the past month, two members of the Obama administration have made public statements regarding different aspects of America’s ongoing “war on terror.” The second has (understandably) received much more public attention than the first, but the first says something more important about the ultimate course of that long struggle. Read Here – The National […]
A historic ceremony was organised at the Prime Minister’s Office on Monday, where Pakistan and China signed 51 Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) relating to diverse aspects of bilateral relations, including the Pakistan China Economic Corridor. Read Here – Dawn Chinese Investments Dwarf American Package, Says U.S. Media
looking beyond borders 