Amid a world of pitiless competition, David Cameron is serving the national interest by leading the drive to sell British-made weaponry to our allies in the Gulf. No less than 300,000 jobs depend on Britain’s defence industry, which serves as our biggest exporter of manufactured goods and keeps this country at the forefront of technological […]
It is not true at all that all Arab armies are merely private militias at the beck and call of the rulers. Some of them are real national armies and quite a few have turned out to be more nationalistic than others during the Arab Spring. Although it has been reported that the deposed Tunisian […]
The UAE is one of several Gulf nations using its oil wealth to find new ways to build a position of substantial influence in the world. For many years, the ambitions of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations were directed internally as they struggled with the mammoth task of building the infrastructure and social systems […]
The Middle East is undergoing a historic transformation. Parts of the region are up in flames, and Asia’s primary powers either have no role or a destructive one. Pakistan, Indonesia and other Asian Muslim countries, as well as India, with the world’s second-largest Muslim population, are largely uninvolved, as if events in the region have no […]
Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City, the word jihad dominated Western media outlets and characterised Islam as an inherently violent religion. Figures and groups such as Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda were presented to Westerners as opponents to Western civilisation who made it their duty to carry out terrorist attacks all over […]
While energy is not a top-tier issue for the American public, Obama and Romney present very different visions for how the United States will generate and consume energy over the next four years – and perhaps set the stage for the next twenty. They provide a clear choice for American voters and explicit differences for […]
Some months after the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein, I sat at lunch with the aging Hosni Mubarak. He was then 76 years old and hard of hearing but soon to “run” for the presidency for a fifth time in 2005. The four times previous, there had been no election at […]
Never mind the troubles of the West; the rest have problems too. Look at Turkey. A couple of years ago, this was a nation with an Ottoman spring in its step. Tired of rejection by Europe, it decided to seize new opportunities in the East. The economy was booming and Ankara had made friends of […]
One of 70-odd rockets fired from Gaza into Israel this week hit a chicken coop, critically wounding two Thai migrant workers, innocent bystanders in a deadly game of brinkmanship. If it had killed children on the Israeli farm they work for, Israel and Gaza would probably be at war right now. Gaza’s Islamist rulers, Hamas, […]
Two weeks ago, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, delivered the Landon Lecture to hundreds of U.S. servicemembers and students at Kansas State University. During the question and answer session, a cadet in the Air Force ROTC asked, “What [do] you see being the focus of our nation in 5 to 10 years, […]
looking beyond borders 