Twenty-five years ago this week, on February 24, 1991, the first United States ground invasion of Iraq began. The first Bush administration had clear UN and congressional mandates to liberate Kuwait. More than thirty countries contributed ground forces, and the Soviet Union was a critical diplomatic partner. Read Here – National Interest
There is in evidence an unspoken theory of “balanced” bilateral state-operated terrorism. Why is India complaining about Mumbai, New Delhi, Pathankot, etc, when it’s doing the same all over Pakistan, from Karachi to Peshawar? Nobody outside Pakistan is willing to accept Pakistan’s binary of “we both do it to each other,” writes Khaled Ahmed. Read […]
Jeb Bush is a nice guy. So is his brother, George W. Bush. Their father, George Herbert Walker Bush, is a particularly nice guy. It’s a nice family. But at the presidential level, they all have been failures. Much of what’s wrong with the country today—and some of what’s wrong with the world—can be placed […]
Sanctions imposed by the U.S. and the European Union to punish President Vladimir Putin for meddling in Ukraine remain a drag on growth. And oil’s decline to a 13-year low has been catastrophic for Russia, where almost 50 percent of government revenue comes from crude and natural gas. Read Here – Bloomberg
The upheavals that began in the Middle East five years ago have reshuffled longstanding alliances and hostilities, created a staggering array of new actors, and left vast stretches of the region in either intermediate or total collapse—outcomes that have collectively shattered the prevailing order there. Read Here – The National Interest
President Barack Obama’s trip to Cuba on March 21 is not, as its critics contend, a vote of confidence in President Raul Castro’s government. It is simply an opportunity for Obama to acknowledge both the successes of his policy and its limits. Read Here – Bloomberg
In fact, Saudi Arabia is no state at all. There are two ways to describe it: as a political enterprise with a clever but ultimately unsustainable business model, or as an entity so corrupt as to resemble a vertically and horizontally integrated criminal organization. Either way, it can’t last. It’s past time U.S. decision-makers began […]
PRIME MINISTER Nawaz Sharif has declared developing Pakistan’s external economy a national priority. He should be applauded for focusing on tackling a major weakness. However, Pakistan’s interest in trade is not new, and is a case study in lost opportunities. Read Here – Dawn
As vast as China’s investment in Africa certainly is, speculation has steered the conversation onto a misleading, and perhaps antagonistic tangent. Recent findings suggest that Chinese investment in Africa is more nuanced than commonly believed. Read Here – The Diplomat
Among the multiple existential challenges facing the European Union this year – refugees, populist politics, German-inspired austerity, government bankruptcy in Greece and perhaps Portugal – one crisis is well on its way to resolution. Britain will not vote to leave the EU. Read Here – Project Syndicate
looking beyond borders 