South East Asia

Once again, the U.K. appears to be out of step with its closest ally on chips and China, sitting on its hands over the sale of its largest semiconductor factory to a company with alleged links to the Chinese Communist Party. The U.K’s “have your cake and eat it, too” …

VIEs, as they are known, evade Chinese law, which prohibits foreign ownership of Chinese tech companies. Through a series of intricate contractual arrangements, however, these structures effectively give foreigners the economic benefits of ownership. People believe that if Beijing were to publicly declare a VIE illegal—in other words, expropriate foreign …

Turkey has undertaken to protect Kabul’s airport. It is a risky job, but also one which promises some substantial strategic rewards. The Taliban do not shy away from assertive statements, nor do they hesitate to commit war crimes. So, this week’s statement by the group castigating Turkey’s offer to remain …

Prolonging the UK military presence in Afghanistan would not have helped so long as the fundamental problem of the absence of a strategy remained unaddressed. But the manner of leaving and what follows still matter a great deal to the UK. It feels a lot like 1989. Once again, the …

U.S. officials will begin evacuating Afghan allies by the end of this month to a safe third-country while their visa applications are being processed, an administration official confirmed on Wednesday. President Joe Biden is expected to formally announce the effort, dubbed “Operation Allies Refuge,” later on Wednesday. Tracey Jacobsen, former …

The American withdrawal from Afghanistan coupled with the exponential growth of those parts of the country under the rule of the Taliban have caused alarm in Russia. Kommersant’s foreign policy expert Maxim Yusin painted a series of gloomy scenarios. The Taliban could expend into the former Soviet republics in Central …

Another lost war! Another denial! The US actually began its war on the people of Afghanistan back during the presidency of Jimmy Carter, who foolishly followed the advice of his Russia-hating, rabidly anti-Communist Polish emigre National Security Director Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski, in mid-1979, successfully convinced the gullible Carter to launch …

Philosopher Georg Hegel declared the only lesson of history is that we do not learn from history. As the US prepares for the final pullout from Afghanistan and what will soon follow as the fall of the country to the Taliban an entire generation of us wonder if this is …

Israel Aerospace Industries has announced the sale of dozens of counter-UAV Drone Guard systems to an unnamed South Asian country. The deal, announced in early July, was valued in the tens of millions of dollars. Israeli companies often don’t identify their customers, leaving observers to speculate about who acquired the …

China, which shares a tiny 47-mile-long border with Afghanistan, has long coveted developing closer ties with Kabul, not least because of the large, untapped reserves of mineral wealth that Afghanistan possesses. Rich in copper, lithium, marble, gold and uranium, Afghanistan’s mineral wealth has been estimated to exceed in excess of …