The United States has a long history of intervening overseas to solve one problem and inadvertently creating others. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration armed rebels fighting Afghanistan’s Soviet-backed government only to find that some of them later targeted the United States…It’s worth remembering these precedents as the Trump administration prepares to reimpose sanctions on […]
If top officials in Washington and Tokyo are to be believed, the application of “maximum pressure” through United Nations sanctions was decisive in bringing North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to the summit table. Pyongyang has been the target of a string of UN bans from trade to travel for more than a decade, the toughest […]
The damage from withdrawing from the JCPOA is also increased by Trump’s abandonment of the serious effort to develop a common position between the U.S. and its European allies on the so called “sunset clause.” That clause would have allowed Iran to regain it’s so called “inalienable rights” to scale up its worrisome nuclear activities […]
It is often said, perhaps with some hyperbole, that Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers was the best hope for conflict resolution in the Middle East. Its architect John Kerry argues instead that the 2015 deal’s limited parameter of closing Iran’s pathway to a nuclear weapon is sufficient on the merits. Read Here – CFR
If nothing further is done, the U.S.-China trade deal reached this month will be remembered, to quote a phrase coined by the current president of the United States, as “the single worst trade deal” ever negotiated. Read Here – CFR
We are left with a region where the Iranians and Saudis will have no more opportunities to cooperate to resolve regional crises, starting with those in Syria and Yemen. Which means, that in the near future, the US, the Europeans and other parties involved in the geo-political game of the Middle East will be left […]
The mysterious armoured train that arrived in Beijing on Monday night is one of the main pieces of evidence to support the theory that Kim Jong-un is making a historic visit to China. While Beijing has yet to confirm Kim is in Beijing, the arrival of the train coupled with reports of heightened security at a […]
North Korea looks pretty scary at the moment, firing off missile after missile, threatening to target Guam, and, on Sept. 3, testing what the regime claims was its first hydrogen bomb. And the country’s dictator, Kim Jong Un—so ruthless he may have had members of his own family murdered—might be just crazy enough to push the button to initiate a catastrophic […]
The ongoing dispute between Qatar and the rest of Arab Gulf Cooperation Council represents perhaps the greatest internal threat to the group since it was created as a bulwark against Shi’a radicalism in the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian revolution. The split all but eliminates any prospect that the United States could forge a regional – […]
Once dependent on Beijing during the years of international isolation imposed by the West for its nuclear program, Iran is now critical to China’s ability to realize its grandiose ambitions. Other routes to Western markets are longer and lead through Russia, potentially a competitor of China. Read Here – The New York Times
looking beyond borders 