With foreign influences and the pandemic undermining democracy in the V4 and the Western Balkans, external security – delivered via NATO – is fundamental, Kurt Volker argues. After a meeting-heavy June that saw the leaders of the international community converge on several stages and fora, it appears as though China …
Read More »Pakistan: Shoring Up Afghanistan’s Peace Process
Pakistan’s stakes in Afghanistan are rising as U.S. and NATO troops prepare to leave. All-out war after the withdrawal could push more Afghan refugees across the border and strengthen Pakistani militants. Islamabad should ratchet up pressure on the Taliban to engage in peace talks. What’s new? The fast-paced withdrawal of foreign …
Read More »China’s Crucial Decade
For the past four decades, a narrative has taken hold among policymakers and the general public alike suggesting that China’s rise will continue indefinitely, even when mathematics and demographics suggest otherwise. Between the 1980s and the turn of the millennium, this notion was fueled by China’s astonishing double-digit growth. In …
Read More »To Really Compete With China, Invest in America’s Human Capital
In July 1971, one month after the publication of the Pentagon Papers and a year before the Watergate break-in that would eventually cause his downfall, Richard Nixon gave one of the most interesting, and in retrospect, important, speeches of his political career. Still relatively unblemished by scandal, Nixon was cruising …
Read More »Pentagon Will Leave Large Number of Troops in Afghanistan to Protect US Embassy, Airport
The U.S. will leave a number of troops that is much larger than a typical security detail to guard its embassy in Kabul, along with American forces at the Kabul airport to help protect the vital facility for a time, the Pentagon confirmed Tuesday. “Afghanistan is not going to be …
Read More »Khan: Pakistan Can Never Again Be US Partner in War
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday denounced as “idiocy” his country’s past policy of becoming a “front-line state” in the U.S.-led war against terrorism in Afghanistan, blaming the policy for the persistent security and economic challenges facing Islamabad. “We can be, and will always remain, partners in peace with …
Read More »China’s ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy is anything but effective
Each time they lash out aggressively or pick fights they do the hawks’ bidding, making it easier to stoke resistance and anti-Beijing sentiment. Chinese foreign policy has become more assertive and heavy-handed in the last decade, and as a result it has alienated some of its neighbors and fueled greater …
Read More »The Afghan army we tried, but failed to build
U.S. officials think Kabul could fall to the Taliban within six months, a sad indictment of our multibillion effort to build security there. It is hard to be in a war, but sometimes even harder to leave. One reason is that a war’s goals may remain unfulfilled. Wise states do …
Read More »Chinese Communist party at 100: what does the next century hold?
One hundred years ago, 13 young Chinese men and two Comintern representatives met secretly in Shanghai’s French Concession. Fearing discovery by police, they soon fled to nearby Jiaxing, where they had to conclude discussions on a pleasure boat.
Read More »Sadly China & Russia Remain Quiet Re US Past Genocides & Ongoing Genocide in the Middle East & Africa
The world facing desperate situations of climate change, planetary degradation and nuclear war preparation desperately needs protection from inhumane deceiving war promoting Western media, and from where shall it come if not from the bountiful and powerful two great designated adversaries of the Western powers, China, the world’s most populous …
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