In the spring of 2000, Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif stood in a jail cell in Pakistan‘s notorious Attock Fort as members of the local and international press looked on. Imprisoned by the army chief he appointed, Sharif appeared utterly demoralized and even pitiful. It was a radical reversal of fortune for a man who just two […]
China’s rising economic influence has leaders around the world on the edge of their seats. But Beijing is an abnormal great power. Its international potential is constrained by significant domestic economic vulnerabilities, and the inward-looking Chinese leadership has yet to craft a nimble and constructive international posture. And as the Chinese economy normalizes, its growing […]
The United States has waged three wars since Al Qaeda’s terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001: against Al Qaeda, in Afghanistan, and in Iraq. The first two were forced upon the US, but the third was the result of a willful, deliberate decision by former President George W. Bush, taken on ideological grounds and, most […]
“The problem with this administration,” one senior official who works for an Obama cabinet department and is a loyal and enthusiastic supporter of the president told me, “is that we don’t do strategy, we do deliverables.” This is a common lament in modern Washington. Trapped within the news cycle like hamsters within a plastic exercise ball, the […]
Pakistan is on the verge of an historic moment: This spring, for the first time, an elected administration will hand off power to another one after serving out its term. The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) government, which came into power in 2008 following reasonably free and fair elections, holds a number of dubious distinctions — […]
March 19th marks the ten-year anniversary of the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Iraq has largely fallen off the United States foreign policy agenda since U.S. troops left the country at the end of 2011. Meanwhile, Washington has embraced a passive “one-Iraq” policy that derives its name from its emphasis on the importance of keeping […]
The ostensibly secular President Hosni Mubarak took 18 years to come to secular India to receive the Indira Gandhi Prize for International Understanding; he had visited China more than once during that time. The avowedly Muslim Brotherhood member President Mohamed Morsi is visiting India within two years of assuming office. The conclusion suggests itself. Mr. […]
No serious observer thinks a nuclear Iran is good for world peace, not with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s abhorrent anti- Semitism and threats to obliterate Israel. Yet the single-minded focus on Iran ignores a more immediate and provocative atomic threat: North Korea. It’s an oversight that U.S. President Barack Obama must rectify. Read Here – Bloomberg
A decline in America’s leadership role and the emergence of a highly unstable world is a serious possibility. In reality, decline is not a foregone conclusion but a deliberate political choice that builds from a failure to define what matters most to the nation. It is imperative for the United States to articulate principles to […]
Even as Obama hesitates to thrust the United States into the rolling cauldron that is Syria, critics accuse him of coddling a dictator in Cairo. Read Here – Foreign Policy
looking beyond borders 