As the Trump Administration struggles to develop a strategy in Afghanistan, Russia has surreptitiously inserted itself into the mix. In late July, reports once again surfaced that Russia has been providing material support to Taliban militants battling U.S., NATO, and Afghan forces.
There is no doubt that as the United States winds down the Afghan war — the longest in American history, and one that has cost half a trillion dollars and more than 150,000 lives on all sides — regional adversaries are muscling in. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan remain the dominant players. But Iran is also making a bold gambit to shape Afghanistan in its favor.
The wider world has largely forgotten that short border clash 55 years ago, playing out as it did in the shadows of the more momentous Cuban missile crisis at the peak of the cold war. But in this part of the world, the ghost of that war still lurks – it is the key to how the world’s two most populous nations imagine one another.
The Gulf and the Horn are intricately intertwined regions that face common threats and vulnerabilities: armed conflict, transnational jihadism and organised crime, including piracy, human trafficking and money laundering. The current crisis comes at a difficult moment for the historically conflict-prone Horn, much of which is either politically unstable, mired in internal armed conflict or still in a state of fragile post-conflict recovery.
The Trump administration is on the cusp of making three crucial decisions about the sixteen-year war in Afghanistan and the related matter of how to manage the tempestuous relationship with Pakistan, thought by many to hold the key to peace in Afghanistan. These decisions will go far in determining whether America can successfully conclude its military adventure in Afghanistan and lay the groundwork for a more stable and peaceful South Asia.
Where the China-India competition goes hinges on each side’s strength and wisdom. India is weaker than China in terms of national strength, but its strategists and politicians have shown no wisdom in preventing India’s China policy from being kidnapped by rising nationalism. This will put India’s own interests in jeopardy. India should be careful and not let religious nationalism push the two countries into war.
Here’s a crazy idea floating around Washington these days, outlandish even by today’s outlandish standards: The United States should hire a mercenary army to “fix” Afghanistan, a country where we’ve been at war since 2001, spending billions along the way. The big idea here is that they could extricate U.S. soldiers from this quagmire, and somehow solve it.
Are we living through an era that resembles the 1930s, when authoritarian leaders were on the march, democratic leaders failed to stand up to them, the international system buckled, and the world was dragged into war? Or are we living through something more like the late 1970s, when America, recovering from its long engagement in a losing war and pulling itself out of a prolonged economic slump, began to take the course corrections that allowed it to embark on a period of national recovery and reassert its international ascendancy?
North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile flew right past President Donald Trump’s boast of “It won’t happen!” Guess what, boss? It’s happening. It’s bad and it’s going to get worse. And Trump has no plan for how to stop it… If Kim is not stopped it is likely that he will have missiles capable of hitting Los Angeles, New York, and Washington with a thermonuclear warhead by the end of Donald Trump’s first term.
North Korea Missile Test Exposes How Trump Has Overplayed His Hand
It is interesting that in invoking historical justifications in the latest standoff between China and India in the Sikkim and Bhutan tri-junction area, neither party is keen to recall that the region once constituted sovereign principalities – of Tibet, Sikkim and Bhutan. Of the three, Bhutan is still independent, Tibet was taken over by China in 1951 and Sikkim became part of India only in 1975 by the exercise of Article 2 of the Indian constitution. The controversies behind these takeovers is another matter, but the moot point is that the histories of these erstwhile states have been splintered beyond recognition as they have been absorbed into other historical streams.
