After two decades of the United States’ costly and bloody efforts to support the Afghan government, the Taliban has retaken control of the country in stunning fashion, posing new risks – and opportunities – for neighbouring China. Read More Here
Even as the United States pulls back from the Middle East, some in the U.S. foreign policy community believe that the region will be among the places where a so-called great-power competition between Washington and Beijing will play out. Read More Here
Not only is the endgame of the armed conflict in Afghanistan undetermined. There are also questions about how moderate the Taliban will ever be, which has a tremendous impact on Chinese officials’ perception of, and policy toward, the organization. Read More Here
Ideas won’t matter if the reigning hegemon is overstretched and collapses like the British Empire or the Soviet Union. The instinct of a realist and a restrainer is to avoid a scenario that might result if one keeps following failed prescriptions of the last quarter-century. And that is why restraint is on the rise. Read More […]
Bareknuckles diplomacy is Chinese Communists’ method of choice for fulfilling such goals. And they have the mindset for it. Diplomacy is war without bloodshed for them, while there can never be too much deception in martial undertakings. Read More Here
Even before Thursday’s swearing-in of Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s incoming, hard-line president, the Islamic Republic was escalating hostilities on several fronts in the Middle East. Now Tehran is only likely to get more aggressive, experts say, and that means U.S. President Joe Biden—like so many of his predecessors—may not get his wish to downgrade the region’s […]
The Persian Gulf rivals have some distance to go to mend fences, but their nascent rapprochement offers the best chance in years for a return to regional stability in the Middle East. Read More Here
The controversies over the Dalai Lama’s successor are likely to have a direct impact on India; one possible scenario put forward by the Dalai Lama himself is that he could be reincarnated in a “free country”, likely to be India rather than Tibet. Read More Here
An ascendant China. A revanchist Russia. The failure of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to achieve U.S. objectives. Climate change. The threat of nuclear proliferation. Rising authoritarianism. The challenges to U.S. influence on the world stage have become so numerous, serious, and complex that some experts see the “unraveling” of American power. Read More Here
Climate change should not only be considered a threat. It can also be an opportunity for cross-border collaboration. Indeed, transnational regional military and civilian collaborations may be able to do what trade once did for promoting peaceful relations between nations. Read More Here
