The tragic events of September 11, 2001 were conducive to the conduct of the October 7, 2001 US-NATO invasion of Afghanistan on the grounds that America had been “attacked by an unnamed foreign power.” There is continuity from the colonial style legitimate “drug war” led by the British Empire, to the present drug trafficking structures: Afghanistan under US ...
The trade war between Washington and Ottawa has escalated from a tariff dispute into an aggressive campaign against Canadian sovereignty and identity. United States President Donald Trump recently signed an order renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” a move that has no legal force in Canada but is a national...
On 1 September 2026, the 26th meeting of the Council of Heads of State (CHS) of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was held at the Yrys-Ordo Congress Hall in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, under the chairmanship of the President of the Kyrgyz Republic, Sadyr Japarov. While this was the 26th conference of the SCO’s Heads of State, the Bishkek summit did celebr...
Western commentary likes to file these under “South Asian instability,” but a closer look suggests something more structural: both countries were shaped by the same colonial extraction model, and took some catastrophically bad decisions. It is a deeply sorrowful sight to see two countries decline in almost the same way, yet their leaders continue to maintain...
The future of regional connectivity will depend not only on how many railways, ports, and highways are built but also on whether countries can turn the movement of goods into production, investment, jobs, and locally retained value. For decades, the Middle East’s strategic importance was defined largely by oil, geopolitical conflict, and its location between...
The month of August lived up to the caption of “the living, dead and disappeared.” The month saw the end of the 10-day Kandy Esala Perahera festival in all its glory. The festival, organized by the Sri Dalada Maligawa (Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic) is a grand expression of Sri Lanka’s ancient Buddhist heritage, religious and cultural traditions. Over 60 ...
To achieve this goal, two large-scale projects were launched. The first, initiated in 1995 after a widely publicized conference in Barcelona, was called the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership and brought together the 15 EU member states of that time and 10 countries of the Southern Mediterranean. The second project, launched in 2008 under the name of the Union f...
Recently there have been striking new developments that imply major changes in the correlation of forces. These developments have largely gone unacknowledged and their implications unexamined. I made the effort in online interviews on Dialogue Works and On Target. I will now attempt to do so in...
In the wake of setbacks over Iran, stalled Middle East diplomacy, and hollow peacemaking claims, Donald Trump is scrambling for any foreign policy win he can claim - real or manufactured. A disastrous last-ditch push to drag Russia into US-led sanctions against...
On 24th August 2026, Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir paid a high-level visit to Iran, amidst the ongoing exacerbating regional tensions and complete halt of trade through the Strait of Hormuz. This visit came at a time when President Donald Trump announced ‘Economic D-Day’ against Iran. Although it was decided in the MoU signed that the US would provide ...