The first visit to Washington by Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud as the Saudi monarch comes as the kingdom faces multiple difficult challenges. The Sept. 4 summit will do little to address Saudi Arabia’s deep problems, because they are impervious to an American solution. Read Here – Al Monitor
With Chinese President Xi Jinping scheduled to visit the United States late this month, U.S. commentators and presidential hopefuls are debating whether Xi’s planned state visit should be downgraded or even cancelled. Organizers of the visit settled on the September timing knowing full well the presidential campaign would likely produce a toxic media environment. Read […]
It is an indicator of how peculiar the Pakistani psyche is that we have never truly reconciled to our geographical inheritance. Having insisted on carving out a country from the ruins of the British Raj, we then proceeded to engage ourselves in an unending quarrel with the folks next door, which in a strange way […]
The reality is that nobody supports our claims over Kashmir, and even Kashmiris do not want to join Pakistan. Indeed, those fighting there are doing so for independence. And yet our diplomats continue banging the drum for archaic UN resolutions calling for a referendum that limits the choices for Kashmiris to merge with either India […]
When Hassan Rouhani was elected Iran’s president in June 2013 on a campaign platform of engaging with the West to reach a nuclear deal and improve Iran’s economy, he apparently didn’t know that Iran and the United States had already opened a secret diplomatic channel and held bilateral talks in Oman on the nuclear issue […]
Japan’s expanded diplomatic overtures can be explained in two main ways. First, they could be seen as a means of balancing against China. If true, this would effectively be a form of unwitting indirect assistance to Russia, whose own traditional hegemony in Eurasia is being seriously challenged by China’s growing trade ties and economic presence […]
After China initiated the “One Belt, One Road” project, a large number of countries have shown a willingness to join. However, India, which has enormous influence on whether the initiative, especially the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, can be implemented smoothly, has not officially responded. Some scholars therefore believe that the Indian government’s official attitude […]
The next president of the United States will almost certainly be more hawkish on Iran than Barack Obama. Maybe a little more hawkish, if Hillary Clinton; potentially a lot more hawkish, if a Republican. What can that president do about the nuclear accord that the Obama administration and several world powers have struck with Iran? […]
The Indian Army’s recent operations against militant camps in Myanmar are not the first of their kind in the world or even in the region. Amidst the ongoing debate over the potential shift in India’s military strategy this represents, and the questions surrounding the operation’s extraterritoriality, there has been little discussion on the status and […]
For the past eighteen months as representatives from Iran and the P5+1 have negotiated a potentially historic nuclear agreement, a debate has raged on the contents of the deal. While the document itself is critical, what will be more decisive for the success or failure of the agreement is the set of regional, global, and […]
looking beyond borders 