American presidents have a habit of describing their Chinese counterparts in terms of awe. A fawning Richard Nixon said to Mao Zedong that the chairman’s writings had “changed the world”. To Jimmy Carter, Deng Xiaoping was a string of flattering adjectives: “smart, tough, intelligent, frank, courageous, personable, self-assured, friendly”… Donald Trump is no less wowed. […]
Despite President Donald Trump’s threats to blow it up, the Iran nuclear deal still has a “better than 50” percent chance of surviving the next year, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif talks about how his country will—and won’t—respond to Trump’s extraordinary campaign against the agreement the American president calls “an embarrassment to the United […]
Since World War II, the United States has issued no declarations of war; all military actions have been initiated by the president. As per the War Powers Resolution of 1973, the president can deploy troops for up to 60 days without congressional approval. Thus, whatever the foreign policy of the United States—positive or negative—the president owns it: his […]
Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz is making an historic first visit to Russia by a monarch of the Gulf kingdom as he and President Vladimir Putin seek an understanding on whether to extend an agreement curbing oil supplies. Read Here – Bloomberg
The Israelis and Turks, the Egyptians and Jordanians –– they’re all beating a path to the Kremlin in the hope that Vladimir Putin, the new master of the Middle East, can secure their interests and fix their problems. The latest in line is Saudi King Salman, who on Wednesday is due to become the first monarch […]
The 18-hour Vietnam retrospective unspooling on PBS is filled with powerful words and images…Curiously, it is a piece of the past that is not in the documentary that is, for me, both a chilling forewarning of what is to come and a significant lesson for leaders who are today faced with a dilemma out of which there […]
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will arrive in Beijing this week with a full agenda, in the midst of an escalating crisis over North Korea’s nuclear and missile weapons development and Sino-US trade tensions. The diplomat’s second official visit to China will take place from Thursday to Sunday and pave the way for US President […]
The surgical strikes were the first time the political leadership owned trans-LoC operations and marked a huge shift in the sanctity of the LoC as a de-facto international boundary…This could play a significant role in future Indo-Pak negotiations over Kashmir, where India starts asserting its sovereign claim over the whole of J&K, instead of accepting […]
When Ri Yong Ho, the foreign minister of North Korea, called U.S. President Donald Trump’s fiery speech at the United Nations a “declaration of war”, the phrase ricocheted across Twitter…As it turns out, though, North Korean officials refer to actions as a declarations of war roughly as often as Trump claims that CNN is fake […]
The Mattis visit to India comes almost exactly a month after President Trump unveiled a new South Asia and Afghan policy on 22 August, giving India a publicly key role in stabilizing Afghanistan while censuring Pakistan for perpetuating terror camps and sustaining terrorists on its soil—also in public. Coincidentally, Mattis is to travel to Afghanistan […]
