Despite its quickly increasing defense budgets in the last 20 years, China still lacks the ability to project combat power in a sustained way far from its shores, and the U.S. maintains full-spectrum military superiority, even in East Asia. Chinese forces lag far behind their U.S. counterparts in quality of equipment, experience and training. Unfortunately for […]
Recent strategic shifts by China and Russia simultaneously – and paradoxically – mark closer ties, challenges to the U.S., an unequal partnership, and rivalry between them in Eurasia. Read Here – The Diplomat
The balance of power is one of those concepts that gets the most attention when it’s shifting. Or wobbling. When people are talking about it, it’s time to be worried. And everybody is worried. As Grandma observed, family arguments are getting too loud when the whole village is gossiping about whether the marriage will survive. Read […]
Modi’s meetings have been clearly organised and financed by his local supporters and orchestrated by the BJP/RSS machinery in India, though the embassies have been involved in liaison with the host government for security and logistical support. As these interactions have become political, it is only natural that there will be echoes of domestic Indian […]
Current dialogue between Russia and the West scarcely deserves the name. Too often, it is simply a contest of postures and a recitation of grievances, each side clinging to positions stripped of nuance or scope for compromise. This is doing no one any good. For all kinds of reasons, the West needs more unsentimental Russophiles. Read Here – The Moscow Times
Belying conventional wisdom, Modi has surprised all those who had viewed him as a novitiate in diplomacy. His success appears to be in the special brand of ‘personalised diplomacy’ he has practiced, aimed at creating the maximum impact – telegenic and otherwise. Implicit also, has been the teleological message of fundamentally transforming India’s foreign policy. Read […]
As the June 30 deadline for a nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 approaches, the world is eagerly following the fortunes of political moderate figures in Tehran. Can the Cabinet of President Hassan Rouhani overcome any last-minute roadblocks put up by hardliners in either Tehran or in Washington? One member of Rouhani’s cabinet, Minister […]
On October 11, 2014, according to Islamic State-affiliated Twitter accounts a woman going by the name Ahlam al-Nasr was married in the courthouse of Raqqa, Syria, to Abu Usama al-Gharib, a Vienna-born jihadi close to the movement’s leadership. ISIS social media rarely make marriage announcements, but al-Nasr and al-Gharib are a jihadi power couple. Al-Gharib […]
Tehran is full of anticipation as the June 30 deadline for a nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 approaches. But to say that the two main political factions in the Islamic Republic – the moderates and the hardliners – share the same assessment about the possibility for a final deal and its utility for […]
More than two thousand years ago, China’s Han Dynasty launched the Silk Road, a sprawling network of commerce that linked South and Central Asia with the Middle East and Europe. Today, the idea of a “New Silk Road,” an intertwined set of economic integration initiatives seeking to link East and Central Asia, has taken hold […]
looking beyond borders 