Sigurd Neubauer, Foreign Policy
By playing a productive role mediating between Qatar and its foes, the country has carved out a position as the one actor that could ease regional tensions.
Doug Bandow, The American Conservative
Much like Trump, Xi's grand ambitions are checked by his inability to make friends.
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Shay Khatiri, The Bulwark
The relationships that Trump takes for granted matter.
Richard Rhodes, The Bulletin
Since the first use of nuclear weapons in war, 75 years ago this August, people concerned with the danger of large-scale nuclear war keep rediscovering a powerful tool for its prevention. If it were made of metal we would have built and deployed it long ago. It’s made instead of thought, and because thought has no permanence in and of itself, people keep forgetting it. But because thought is, or can be, insistent, urgent, compelling, they keep rediscovering it. Читать дальше...
Terry Glavin, National Post
Senior Lebanese officials were warned a half-dozen times that the stockpile of ammonium nitrate presented a grave danger.
Economist
Lebanon was in a mess even before the explosion, thanks to a squabbling, inept government
Yo Zushi, New Statesman
Gennady Rudkevich, Moscow Times
The real question is what happens after Sunday’s election.
Daniel Twining & Scott Mastic, Dispatch
Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko faces a real challenge in this weekend’s election.
M. Kofman, WOTR
At a gathering in October 2019, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia has been helping China develop a ballistic missile early warning system. Without offering specifics, Putin suggested that “This is a very serious endeavor that will fundamentally and radically increase the defense capability of the People’s Republic of China because only the United States and Russia have such a system at present.”...
Michael Carpenter, Politico EU
It is not too late to repair the relationship, however. To do so, the next U.S. administration will need to urgently restore a common strategic vision with its European partners and jumpstart cooperation in five key areas.
Jacob Kurtzer & Nadia Schaaphok, CSIS
Following the onset of Sudan’s political transition in August 2019, high-level visits by the World Food Programme (WFP) to the South Kordofan and Blue Nile states offered a rare moment of hope for millions of civilians in Sudan’s disputed southern and western regions. Following the trips to the previously restricted regions, the transitional government announced that NGOs expelled during the previous regime were welcome to
Seth Frantzman, Nat’l Review
If Hezbollah does capitalize on this disaster, it will only accelerate Lebanon’s economic collapse, and hold the country hostage in a future war with Israel.
Picarsic & De La Bruyere, Wash. Times
Hagar Hosny, Al Monitor
Turkey conducted a military drill in the eastern Mediterranean that was followed by an Egyptian-French drill amid tensions in the region among Turkey, Greece and Cyprus on gas exploration, and between Turkey and Egypt on Libya.
Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/08/egypt-turkey-military-drills-eastern-mediterranean-libya.html#ixzz6UM3dme3i
Robin Wright, New Yorker
