Washington’s overt aggressive behavior on the international stage provoked by its desire to impose its own vision of the way that the Middle East must look in the future has pushed most of its traditional allies away from it. So it’s only natural that the US keeps losing allies left and right, gradually alienating Qatar, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The mu...
Pakistan risks falling off the tightrope it walks as it attempts to balance its relations with rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran. Developments in recent days, including this weekend’s Baloch nationalist attack on a luxury hotel in the strategic port city of Gwadar [May 12-ed] and a legal dispute over completion of a gas pipeline against the backdrop of Saudi-Iran...
On 30 April 2019, the former Emperor of Japan, Akihito, abdicated, and the next day his 59-year-old son, Naruhito, took over the Chrysanthemum Throne. This signaled the end of the 30-year period in Japan’s modern history, known as “peace everywhere” (or Heisei), and the start of the new epoch, denoted by two Kanji characters, which, on transcription into the...
Let’s start with the “long” 16th century - which, as with the 21st, also saw a turbulent process of marketization. At that time, the Jesuits and the Counter-Reformation were trying to rebound across Asia - but within a context where the rivalry between the Iberian superpowers of the age, Spain and Portugal, still lingered. The Reformation first attached itse...
Mounting tension between the Trump administration and Iran are likely to shed light on US dynamics shaping today’s geopolitical environment. Looming large is the figure of US national security advisor John Bolton, a proponent of a muscular US foreign policy in which the United States employs military force to impose its will and fortify its superpower status...
The liberation of the zone administered by Daesh as a state does not mean the end of this jihadist organisation. Indeed, while Daesh is a creation of the NATO Intelligence services, it represents an ideology which mobilises jihadists and may outlive it. Al-Qaida was an auxiliary army for NATO – we saw them fight in Afghanistan, then in Bosnia-Herzegovina, an...
After the Second World War, in 1947, ambassador George Kennan created the policy of containment [1] and President Harry Truman constituted the apparatus of national security (CIA, Joint Committee of the Chiefs of Staff, National Security Council) [2]. Washington and London then turned against Moscow, which had only recently been their ally. They were plannin...
It is unproductive to speculate why, but a vocal section of the Western commentariat is showing an increasing intolerance towards strong and nation-centric leaders in the rest of the world. Three notable examples are Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Narendra Modi. Putin won in May 2018, Xi Jinping can’t be toppled, and Modi is currently fighting...
The effectiveness of China’s effort to brainwash Uyghurs and Central Asian Muslims in the troubled north-western province of Xinjiang may be tested. With the recent release of 40 Uyghur wives of Pakistani traders, businessmen and professionals, some of the former re-education camp detainees hope that after three months of observation by Xinjiang authorities,...
Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the elusive chief of the Islamic State (IS) in a rare video released after five years on April 28, 2019, has claimed that the IS was responsible for carrying out the Easter Sunday serial suicide blasts in Sri Lanka that left 253 people dead and over 500 injured. The video said that the attacks were in retaliation for the loss of Baguz, ...
The Cathedral of the Resurrection of Lahore proudly exhibits a small cross in a glass case. It is known as the dubious “Taxila Cross”. When the cross was discovered in 1935, Cuthbert King, the British deputy commissioner of Rawalpindi, knew of The Acts of St Thomas and seized upon this find as ‘proof’ of the existence of Christianity in northwest India...
It is now confirmed that Rajiv Gandhi in 1987, when he was prime minister used the carrier INS Viraat for a family vacation for his family (Sonia’s family) and some friends. A carrier does not go alone. It is accompanied by escort vessels like destroyers, frigates and a submarine or two. So what you have is not a carrier, but a carrier group or carrier...
Sri Lanka, Easter Sunday, 21 April 2019: More than half a dozen bomb blasts shook the country killing from 250 to more than 350 people. Depending on who counts, the death toll varies. The devastation took place in in several Catholic churches and luxury hotels. Other explosions, including from – what they say – are suicide bombers, have since killed...
As the country is observing the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, there are voices – some quite shrill and strident – exhorting fellow countrymen to come out of his lingering influence in one area where he failed miserably – communal harmony or, more bluntly, Hindu-Muslim relations. One such voice is Radha Rajan, whose latest book, The Shrinking Hin...
In Indonesia, both presidential candidates have declared victory, just a few days after the elections that were held on 17th April, 2019. Both of them are pro-business, both Muslim, and both insist that the Communist Party should continue to be banned. Neither of them is even thinking about stopping their country from committing one of the bloodiest genocide...
The people of Pakistan are looking for a game changer political leadership. It is so because, for too long now, the Pakistan Army has maintained proxy control over politicians and political parties. It has either ruled through dictatorships or by proxy, as it is doing presently by placing a pliable Imran Khan at the helm of the political spectrum. Such a sit...
If 7,000 Greeks can stop the Persian empire at the narrow pass at Thermopylae, I think it’s absurd to think Iran can’t stop 20-30% of global oil traffic at the 3 kilometer-wide shipping lane in the Strait of Hormuz. That would, of course provoke a global crisis and economic disaster. That’s the “nuclear option” for Iran. It is reportedly part of a military p...
In the famous detective story, Silver Blaze, the following conversation takes place between the legendary detective Holmes and Scotland Yard detective Inspector Tobias Gregson:
Inspector Gregson (Scotland Yard detective): “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
Sherlock Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the nig...
As everybody predicted, Poroshenko completely lost the election. As I wrote in my previous column, this is both amazing (considering Poro’s immense and extensive resources and the fact that his opponent was, literally, a clown (ok, a comic if you prefer). His defeat was also so predictable as to be almost inevitable: not only is the man genuinely hated all o...
The Élysée used the fire of Notre-Dame de Paris to carry out a project that was sleeping in the boxes. It has set new rules, outside tender procedures and respect for heritage not to restore the cathedral, but to transform the Île de la Cité into Europe’s leading tourist destination on the eve of the Olympic Games of 2024. To avoid judicial constraints, he a...