The West’s sluggishness in realising that it has been on the receiving end of China’s elaborate, multidecade hostile strategy has a lot to do with the hubris that followed the United States’ triumph in the Cold War. U.S. policymakers assumed that the CCP would find it nearly impossible to resist the tide of liberalisation set off by the […]
The election of hardline President Ebrahim Raisi in Iran has raised fears that the country will refuse to negotiate with the West. But with Iran’s economy in tatters, and the Sunni Taliban returning to power in neighbouring Afghanistan, Iran’s leaders have every incentive to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. Read More Here
The withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan is likely to accelerate current trends in India’s relations with the United States, China, and Russia: greater cooperation with Washington, deeper conflicts with Beijing, and wider fissures in the traditional strategic partnership with Moscow. Read More Here
The White House is moving quickly to contain the fallout from the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, hoping to blunt possible damage to the rest of the president’s agenda. Read More Here
Policymakers in the United States and Europe have adopted the position that their mission is to promote democracy worldwide, regularly arguing that if they fail, authoritarian governments will exploit American restraint and join forces. Read More Here
It is now clear that there was no Afghan state, no government, no military. These were convenient fictions, phantasms, if you will, that were invoked by successive administrations to justify America’s presence as an occupying power. But no sooner did Biden pullout than the entire Potemkin village came crashing down. Read More Here
The swift fall of Kabul recalls the ignominious fall of Saigon in 1975. Beyond the local consequences – widespread reprisals, harsh repression of women and girls, and massive refugee flows – America’s strategic and moral failure in Afghanistan will reinforce questions about US reliability among friends and foes alike. Read More Here
Afghans are entering a new stage in their country’s troubled history, with many of them fearing for their lives and their freedoms, as the government of President Ashraf Ghani collapsed Sunday and Taliban fighters entered Kabul and took over the presidential palace. Read More Here
Even as the United States pulls back from the Middle East, some in the U.S. foreign policy community believe that the region will be among the places where a so-called great-power competition between Washington and Beijing will play out. Read More Here
Not only is the endgame of the armed conflict in Afghanistan undetermined. There are also questions about how moderate the Taliban will ever be, which has a tremendous impact on Chinese officials’ perception of, and policy toward, the organization. Read More Here
looking beyond borders 