For most of the past decade, the Arab world has been facing many complicated, although at times overlapping problems, as it struggled to overcome political turmoil and historical transition that followed the 2011 Arab Spring and its ramifications. It seems that the dramatic events that changed the region mark an important milestone in the modern history of A...
Iran potentially could emerge as an unintended winner in the escalating crisis over Ukraine. That is, if Russian troops cross the Ukrainian border and talks in Vienna to revive the 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement fail. An imposition of tough US and European sanctions in response to any Russian incursion in Ukraine could likely make Russia more inclined to ign...
The last article on the Taiwan issue in NEO focused on the referendum held on December 18, 2021, on four questions. Of those four questions, only one has any real foreign policy implications, touching as it does on the relations between Taiwan’s current leadership and Washington, its main supporter in the international community.
The referendum attracted c...
A bill of goods was accepted by Khalilzad and Co. and sold to the Americans at Doha by the English-speaking Taliban leaders, a Mullah Mohammad Hasan Akhund, who is on a United Nations sanctions list and has been named a leader of the new government, and a Kandahari Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar – none of whom made any effort to fulfill the de...
It could also be argued that Washington’s decision to hand over power to the Taliban in 2021 had a lot to do with its desire to halt the deterioration in its relations with Islamabad. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s decision to incorporate Pakistan into China’s march to Iran and Arabia to establish a strong economic and security base in a region overflowing w...
That President Bush’s rebuilding of Afghanistan was an absurd concept became evident early on. The reconstruction of Afghanistan in 2002 had inherent difficulties, the most important of which is the country’s geographical location as a land-locked nation, bordering Pakistan - the principal backer and protector of the Taliban - and Iran, whose leaders have...
Dec 10: The recent chaotic withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan, and whirlwind takeover of the country by the Taliban, has evoked some ugly memories and presents fresh threats to the region. Though most regional powers have welcomed a powerful foreign power’s departure from its vicinity, they also realize that the US departure could bring about...
The Western press fails to follow the relationships between the Big Three (China, the United States and Russia) because it segments them. It considers each issue separately and ignores the links between them. Above all, it ignores the difference between Anglo-Saxon and UN law, which leads to many misinterpretations. The United States and Russia met three ti...
There is a great paradox in the increasingly aggressive US and NATO military stance towards Russia, and China, when measured against the clearly suicidal national Green Agenda economic policies of the USA as well as the EU NATO states. An astonishing transformation of the economies of the world’s most advanced industrial economies is underway and gaining mom...
The January events in Kazakhstan and the CSTO’s response proved to be a real litmus test of many countries’ attitudes towards Russia and the regional balance of power in modern times. Turkey was no exception here, as it showed what was behind its active assurances to Russia and the Central Asian countries of “bona fide development of friendly relations.” S...
Kazakhstan has suffered severe nationwide violence allegedly prompted by fuel price concerns. However, it quickly became clear that it was instead actually foreign-sponsored destabilization which was, at best, using legitimate public concerns as cover for attempted regime change. A Russian-led deployment of Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) forc...
After the disgraceful flight of United States troops from Afghanistan, when the whole world watched with surprise and horror the nightmarish scenes at the airport, the rate at which the once-US-friendly government collapsed, giving way to the Taliban (banned in Russia), and experienced the tragic human stories of those Afghans who remained in the country, a ...
Presidential speeches are typically bland – bland to the point of insipidness. We are treated to the hollow, mock sermon of the Inaugural Address and the tedious monotony of the annual State of the Nation. Whatever that state might be at the outset, at the conclusion it is unavoidably one of drowsy apathy. Admittedly, we recently were subjected to quite the ...
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have drawn praise for social reforms that have domestically reduced the role of religion in public life, enhanced women’s rights, and, in the case of the UAE, catered to non-Muslim lifestyles. Yet, Saudi and Emirati efforts to position their countries as the Muslim world’s beacons of an autocratic notion of moderate ...
US President Joe Biden responded to Russia’s proposal for a Treaty guaranteeing peace on the basis of strict compliance with the UN Charter and keeping one’s word [1] in a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on December 30, 2021. Unsurprisingly, he did not respond to the substance of the Russian request, merely mentioning a p...
The world today is ruled by the United States of America and NATO, which present themselves as the only global powers, while the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China are more powerful than them, both economically and militarily. On December 17, 2021, Moscow released a draft bilateral treaty with Washington providing guarantees for peace ...
Of late there has been an attack on Hindu tradition by questioning the relevance of surya namaskar during the practice of Yoga. The argument seems to be that it encourages idolatry, in this context, the worship of the sun, rather than the worship of the Creator. The question of the physical benefits of Yoga is a separate but relevant question, but here we...
When Pompey the Great made his triumphant return to Rome in 61 BCE from his stunning conquests in the East, a spectacular ceremony was planned. Pageantry on a grandiose scale was designed both to satisfy his outsized ego and to display superior status in his rivalry with Julius Caesar. The centerpiece was to be a towering throne where a regally costumed Pomp...
During the previous US Administration we heard a lot of talk about connections with Russia, and Trump supposedly doing Putin’s bidding. Trump was depicted as the most pro-Russian president in the land of the Alger Hiss spy scandal, Joe McCarthy and the Red Scare and Trygve Lie being forced out of the UN because he was allegedly filling it with Communists. Ho...
Russia has recently set out its list of demands for a resetting of the position of the United States in Europe. The Americans have reacted cautiously, promising to give the Russians an answer “shortly”. It would be unwise to hold one’s breath awaiting a positive response from the Americans. Even in the highly unlikely event they respond positively to the Rus...
The mood in Sri Lanka at the end of the year 2021 is not unlike the aftermath of the Boxing Day tsunami that struck the island nation 17 years ago, on December 26. The tsunami attributed to the 9.1 Richter earthquake in the Indian Ocean took a toll of over 35,000 lives including 4000+ missing persons and a million and half people were displaced from their ho...
Knowledge of Kazakhstan in the West is extremely slim, particularly among western media, and many responses to events there have been wildly off-beam. The narrative on the right is that Putin is looking to annex Kazakhstan, or at least the majority ethnic Russian areas in the north. This is utter nonsense. The narrative on the left is that the CIA is attempt...
Qatar has begun to cleanse its schoolbooks of supremacist, racist or derogatory references as well as celebrations of violent jihad and martyrdom, according to a recently released study. The revision of textbooks in the final year leading up to Qatar’s hosting of the 2022 World Cup is designed to keep the Gulf state in the beauty pageant for the beacon of mo...
The energy crisis is perhaps the worst since 1973, when the Arab countries imposed an oil embargo, protesting against Western support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Combined with a pandemic, new strains, and a lockdown relapse threat, it is a deadly blow to economies and industries worldwide. Bloomberg sounds the alarm: problems with the galloping price o...
Sounding the alarm this December [2021-Ed], Nicholas Papachrysostomou, MSF head of mission in Yemen, made clear that well beyond the many casualties War claimed over the past seven years, famine weighs much heavier on the war-torn nation, a fate Afghanistan unfortunately shares. “A nearly seven-year long conflict has badly affected the country’s economy and ...
Turkey’s economy is in freefall: the lira is falling, inflation is rising, and food prices are spiraling. The government has resorted to disinformation, lies, and conspiracy theories to deflect blame from itself and shift it to others. But the lower living standards of the common people and the country’s future is unlikely to end the rule of President Recep ...
Javed Ahmad Ghamidi is a rare clerical voice in Pakistan. A prominent religious scholar and former member of the state-appointed Council of Islamic Ideology that ensures that legislation conforms with Islamic law, Mr. Ghamidi calls a spade a spade in a country in which that can have dire consequences. To be sure, Mr. Ghamidi can do so because he is no longer...
As the year 2021 comes to an end, it would be worthwhile to take stock of the highlights of the year gone by. This is not an attempt to list every major event, focus will be limited to the US economy. It is obvious that the economy was ravaged by the pandemic for most of the year although there were signs of abatement in the later part. In a series of positi...
I appreciate very much your generous invitation to be here tonight. You bear heavy responsibilities these days and an article I read some time ago reminded me of how particularly heavily the burdens of present day events bear upon your profession. You may remember that in 1851 the New York Herald Tribune under the sponsorship and publishing of Horace Greele...
The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (Unicameral Parliament) adopted a law that allows foreign forces on its territory to participate in multinational exercises in 2022. The decision was made at a meeting on Tuesday and was supported by 318 parliamentarians (out of the 423 seats that are occupied), far surpassing the required minimum of 226 votes. Ukrainian Presi...