There is no doubt that as the United States winds down the Afghan war — the longest in American history, and one that has cost half a trillion dollars and more than 150,000 lives on all sides — regional adversaries are muscling in. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan remain the dominant players. But Iran is also making […]
Watching Tillerson’s first six months, one wonders whether Trump picked him as a way to diminish the State Department, similar to how Richard Nixon chose William Rogers for the express purpose of ensuring that the department remained weak. As Henry Kissinger recalled of Rogers, “few secretaries of state can have been selected because of their president’s confidence […]
Max Boot, a lifelong conservative who advised three Republican Presidential candidates on foreign policy, keeps a folder labelled “Trump Stupidity File” on his computer. It’s next to his “Trump Lies” file. “Not sure which is larger at this point,” he told me this week. “It’s neck-and-neck.” Read Here – The New Yorker
Even as China and India once more come nose to nose and eyeball to eyeball across the forbidding glaciers of the high Himalayas, the United States must resist the temptation to pour gasoline on this potentially dangerous conflagration even though more than a few U.S. (and global) arms merchants would benefit from the intensification of Sino-Indian military […]
Sometime in the next few days, President Xi Jinping will probably decamp to a seaside resort on China’s northeastern coast for a key Communist Party conclave before a twice-a-decade leadership shuffle. The annual meeting in Beidaihe, a summer retreat for China’s most powerful leaders since the 1950s, is one of the last chances for party […]
Nothing can describe this irony better than The Indus Saga , in which Aitzaz Ahsan writes in the preface: “… a nation in denial of its national identity is unfortunate. But when it chooses to adopt an extra-territorial identity, it becomes a prisoner of propaganda and myths… This is the Pakistan of today, not the Pakistan of […]
To be sure, Delhi is now far more conscious of the existential challenges that the power gap with Beijing generates. This awareness, however, is yet to be matched by a sense of urgency across the government. Consider the following: China has been transforming the southern tip of Sri Lanka and the western seaboard of Myanmar […]
Veterans of the U.S. diplomatic corps say the expanding front office is part of an unprecedented assault on the State Department: A hostile White House is slashing its budget, the rank and file are cut off from a detached leader, and morale has plunged to historic lows. They say President Donald Trump and his administration […]
Great power disputes have the potential to wreak havoc throughout Asia, as the Sino-Indian faceoff shows. From New Delhi’s perspective, China continues to try to encircle it from the north, not only in Bhutan but also through the Sino-Pakistan alliance, which links a growing and aggressive power to India’s deadliest enemy, one that has nuclear […]
Shahid Khaqan Abbasi was sworn in as prime minister of Pakistan in an oath-taking ceremony held at President House on Tuesday. He was elected prime minister by lawmakers in the National Assembly, bagging 221 votes to become the successor to ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif. Read Here – Dawn Also Read: Meet the new prime minister
looking beyond borders 