Eurasia

Norland, who has served as chief of mission to Libya since August 2019, will lead US diplomatic efforts to promote a political solution to the conflict. US Ambassador to Libya Richard Norland will take on the additional role as US special envoy, a position aimed at keeping the war-torn country’s …

Turkey appears reluctant to back down from its military posture in Libya, even as its normalization bid with Egypt depends greatly on whether the two sides find common ground in the Libyan conflict. Turkey and Egypt held their first high-level meeting in eight years last week, but Ankara has shown …

A rocket attack on a Turkish military supply convoy in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province has killed one soldier and wounded four others, Turkey’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday. Turkish forces retaliated to the attack by firing on targets they identified in the region, the Defense Ministry said in a statement. It …

U.S. President Joe Biden said May 10 that Russia has “some responsibility” to address a ransomware attack that has paralyzed the largest U.S. fuel pipeline, although he refrained from directly blaming the Kremlin. Biden said there was “no evidence” the Russian government was involved in the cyberattack on Colonial Pipeline, …

European and Chinese leaders are urging swift ratification of the trade deal they agreed to in December, after tensions over accusations of human rights abuses in China delayed approval of the deal by European Union lawmakers. The EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) took seven years of negotiations and was …

The US–China rivalry has many dimensions, but at its heart is a strategic contest over primacy in the Western Pacific. Although this contest is being waged on many fronts — including economic, diplomatic and ideological — it is essentially military. China seeks to challenge US leadership in the Western Pacific …

America’s “unipolar moment” has lingered on in the international distribution of space capabilities, but it will not last forever. American space partisans could be forgiven for yawning at the recent announcement that the Russian and Chinese space agencies will build a joint lunar research base. The statement included no timeline, …

Shairbek Dzhuraev, Crossroads Central Asia Peace is on the brink in Central Asia. The border conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan has reached a new bottom. The clashes of the past week left at least 40-50 people killed, mostly civilians. More than a hundred houses were burned, and remnants of good …

The US and NATO began their withdrawal from Afghanistan on 1 May, with the security situation in the country little better now than it was after the 2001 invasion. US President Joe Biden, in his announcement of the withdrawal in April, called on Russia, China and India to step up …