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Egyptian concerns grow amid Ethiopia’s plan to build dozens of dams

Ethiopia announced a plan to build dozens of additional dams at a time when tensions with Egypt and Sudan over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam are on the rise due to failure to agree on filling and operating the dam. Egypt has recently criticized the statements of Ethiopian Prime Minister …

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Ethiopia’s plan to build Red Sea military bases fuels tension with Egypt

Amid the stalled negotiations with Egypt over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Ethiopia is expressing its intention to build military bases in the Red Sea. Ethiopia recently made fiery remarks that further fueled tensions with Egypt over the controversial dam Addis Ababa is building on the Blue Nile. On June …

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Blinken says Iranian compliance on nuclear deal ‘a first step, not a last step’

The US secretary of state told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that there are ‘areas where we can get even stronger commitments from Iran.” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken defended the Biden administration’s Iran nuclear deal strategy before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday. US President Joe Biden’s …

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Turkish drone sets off international buzz over ‘killer robots’

The appearance of Turkish artificial intelligence-controlled drones in Libyan skies has rekindled questions on how lethal autonomous weapons will affect regional geopolitics and whether they should be banned. Turkey’s flourishing drone industry is back in the international spotlight following a UN report suggesting that Turkish-made artificial intelligence-based drones might have …

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For the U.S. and Russia, ‘Stable and Predictable’ Would Be a Good Start

When U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met last month with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, in Reykjavik, it prompted inevitable comparisons with another high-level encounter in Iceland’s capital: the famous October 1986 summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev that set the stage for the thawing of the Cold …

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America Comes and Goes. Trans-Atlantic Tensions Are Forever

“First thing I’m going to have to do, and I’m not joking,” candidate Joe Biden said last September in a campaign interview about America’s European allies. “If elected I’m going to … get on the phone with the heads of state and say America’s back, you can count on us.” …

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The U.K.’s Incoherent China Strategy

Earlier this month, the United Kingdom’s foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, delivered a speech in Parliament setting out measures to ensure that British businesses do not profit from what he called the “industrial scale” forced labor of minority Uighur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region. However, Raab’s remarks made no mention of …

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Victims of the Balkans Wars Are Still Seeking Justice

It’s a cold morning in Rance, a mountainous village east of Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, and Isak Asllani is preparing to pay tribute at a memorial for his fallen family and friends. It is a painful ritual he carries out every Feb. 17 to mark the anniversary of Kosovo’s declaration of …

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Slovakia’s Reformists Face an Uncertain Future

A display of hubris by Slovakian Prime Minister Igor Matovic over a controversial Russian coronavirus vaccine has cost him his job and shaken a reformist government in which many Slovaks had invested so much hope. On April 1, Matovic resigned, just over a year after coming to power following an …

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Bulgaria’s Fractured Politics Marks the End of the Borissov Era

As a European Union and NATO member that borders Turkey, hugs the Black Sea coast and maintains cordial relations with Russia, Bulgaria is a strategically significant country. Yet in recent years, it has rarely made international news—except for the occasional domestic clash over Russian influence and periodic mass protests over …

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