Israel and Saudi Arabia have many shared interests, but there are also numerous instances where their interests diverge. The latter was evident when MBS forced the resignation of Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri as a means to remove the fig leaf of legitimacy covering Iranian-Hezbollah activity in Lebanon. Israel did not approve of this move, […]
US President Donald Trump’s tougher stance on Iran could push Tehran closer to Beijing, which will defend the Iran nuclear deal whether or not Trump decides to certify it, according to a diplomatic adviser involved in the deal and experts. Read Here – South China Morning Post
Hand in the Haqqanis or hang on to them? That is the dilemma before the Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, so aptly summed by a Pakistani columnist for the Dawn newspaper. In the face of unexpected and significant pressure from the United States to deliver some top militants of the Taliban and the […]
The natural question is then: Why China? Why should China be that external actor? The reason is that China supplies some critical, missing input. That input is deep pockets — someone has to pay a large initial cost to jump-start the building of the infrastructure network, and the actor needs to be able to absorb […]
The Costs of War Project identifies no less than 76 countries, 39% of those on the planet, as involved in that global conflict. That means places like Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya where U.S. drone or other air strikes are the norm and U.S. ground troops (often Special Operations forces) have been either directly […]
Separated from the rest of Asia by the world’s biggest mountains, India is the elephant on its own subcontinent. Leaving aside perennially hostile Pakistan, it has effortlessly dominated smaller neighbours much in the way that America does in the Caribbean: they may grumble and resent their sometimes clumsy big brother, but they have learned to […]
India’s rise is taking place in the shadow of China’s even more dramatic rise. China’s assertive, and often aggressive, behaviour has been viewed as a huge challenge for India because it opens up the likelihood of China dominating India’s immediate neighbourhood. By focusing a great deal of energy in the neighbourhood, the Modi government is […]
When it comes to the Modi government’s foreign policy record, you can see it as a glass half full or a glass half empty. Full or empty, it was half. It did not meet its full potential and there were more misses than hits, especially in the neighbourhood, in 2017. But there was one significant […]
Helmut Kohl (b. 1930) oversaw the reunification of Germany…Kohl’s tenure as chancellor—second in length only to that of Otto von Bismarck—ended in 1998 when the Social Democratic Party defeated the CDU. When Kohl passed, he was given an “EU state funeral,” a testament to his commitment not just to a united Germany, but to a united Europe as well. Read […]
When President Trump took office on January 20, his supporters hoped he’d keep his campaign promises to get tough with China on trade and push it to deal more forcefully with North Korea; renegotiate or pull out of NAFTA; withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal; and dismantle the Iran nuclear deal. Meanwhile, critics in the US […]
looking beyond borders 