Yearly Archives: 2020

The Rise of ‘Wolf Warrior’ Diplomacy from China

Chinese diplomats have engaged in aggressive ‘wolf warrior’ public diplomacy in the last year, following instructions from President Xi Jinping to show more ‘fighting spirit’ in defending China on the world stage.

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What’s behind the wave of mysterious incidents in Iran?

On the 10th anniversary of the discovery of the Stuxnet computer virus, designed by the U.S. and Israel to target Iran’s nuclear program, the Islamic Republic is facing a new wave of unclaimed acts of sabotage. While military and nuclear facilities in Parchin and Natanz have been attacked, this latest …

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Turkey’s Generation Z Turns Against Erdogan

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s online address to students on June 26 was the latest sign that his efforts to shape Turkey’s young generation in his image have failed. Thousands of students joining the YouTube livestream disliked the video and used the comments section to criticize Erdogan and tell him …

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Iran's Military Alliance with China Threatens Middle East Security

Announcing Iran’s intention to build a new military base in the Indian Ocean, Admiral Alireza Tangsiri, the commander of the naval attachment of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said that the base would be used to protect fishing and commercial vessels from piracy and “foreign ships”, a reference to …

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Armenia-Azerbaijan

Clashes broke out Sunday along the Armenia-Azerbaijan state border, killing four Armenian and eleven Azerbaijani soldiers, as well as an Azerbaijani civilian. It is the worst and most worrying escalation on this front since 2016, say Crisis Group experts Olesya Vartanyan and Zaur Shiriyev. Along the border, the shooting disrupted …

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Lebanon's New 'Great Satan'

Hezbollah’s financial crisis is the result of US sanctions on its patrons in Iran, which had been supporting the terrorist group annually with about $700 million from oil revenues…. — Fahim al-Hamid, Saudi journalist, okaz.com.sa, March 22, 2020.

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Lessons from the polish opposition

After years of misrule under Poland’s Law and Justice party, a candidate representing the mainstream opposition almost managed to wrest back control of the presidency. In fact, anti-populists everywhere should see Rafal Trzaskowski’s near-miss campaign as a model for their own efforts.Although Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski did not come out …

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