Guy Chazan, Financial Times
Steffen Bockhahn does not mince his words when it comes to Germany's Covid-19 vaccination campaign. "We are the laughing stock of the world," he says. "Germany was supposed to be world champion at organising things, and look at us."
RFERL
Rome has ordered the expulsion of two Russian officials over an escalating espionage case that Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio called an "extremely serious incident" between the NATO member state and Russia.
David Ignatius, WaPo
China's top diplomat had an interesting rejoinder to Secretary of State Antony Blinken's call in Anchorage this month to "strengthen the rules-based international order." Such an order already...
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Indian Express
By sidelining even the most basic humanitarian impulses in its response to Myanmar crisis, India will neither realise its ideals nor its strategic objectives.
Читать дальше...
Jack Detsch, Foreign Policy
Off-the-shelf air power changes the battlefield of the future.
George Friedman, Geopolitical Futures
I've often written about chokepoints - those narrow passageways, on land or at sea, that are essential for the movement of goods and people - in the context of waging war. They can be blocked by military means or by natural forces or, as we've recently seen, by human error in times of peace.
Nick Westcott, African Arguments
Abiy is known to have strong convictions but also for having a pragmatic streak. To find a path to peace, he will need both.
Vladimir Kara-Murza, Washington Post
There are many ways to kill an opponent. Sometimes it's done out in the open, for the whole world to see — as happened with Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was gunned down in plain sight of the Kremlin by an Interior Ministry officer. Often it's done...
Sabena Siddiqui, Al Monitor
China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi must take care not to "underestimate the differences" between Iran and the GCC countries.
Nury Turkel, NRO
By wearing Nike apparel, teams are unwittingly excusing the company's past complicity in China's human-rights abuses. The Uyghur people deserve better.
Andrei Kolesnikov, Moscow Times
By arresting family members of persecuted individuals, today's authorities openly declare themselves to be the direct successors of Stalin's repressive system.
Aryaman Bhatnagar, WPR
In late February, India and Pakistan announced a cease-fire along their de facto border in the contested region of Kashmir. In a joint statement, the two countries' military authorities said that there will be a "strict observance of all agreements, understandings and cease firing," while also claiming they will seek to "address each other's core issues and concerns" to ensure sustainable peace between the two long-time enemies.
F. Gregory Gause III, Foreign Affairs
U.S. President Joe Biden has taken a much harder line toward Saudi Arabia than did his predecessor. Whereas President Donald Trump's administration coddled the country's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, often referred to by the initials MBS, Biden has released damning information about MBS's involvement in the 2018 killing of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, sanctioned a long list of Saudi officials thought to be involved... Читать дальше...
Janan Ganesh, Financial Times
The US-Soviet conflict was an inexact trailer for today's great power tussle. Communism was a mostly closed world: a "cold war" with the globe's number one goods trader will take some doing. Still, one theme promises to hold and that is the company the US had to keep, or felt it had to keep, against the lapping tides of communism. The Greek colonels, the Pakistani generals, the gallery of rogues in Latin America: it was at times a flexible sort of free world that America led. Читать дальше...
Stuart Lau, Politico EU
Europe's attempt to keep politics and business apart in China is blowing up in its face.
Ross Clark, Spectator
Of all vaccines in use in the world, Sinovac is the one with the least impressive and most inconsistent results. A Brazilian study in January suggested that it had an efficacy rate in preventing symptomatic illness of 50.4 per cent, way below the 95 per cent reported for Pfizer and 76 per cent measured for AstraZeneca in its recent US trial.
David Adesnik, Foreign Policy
His call to wage a global war for freedom echoes the dawn of the Cold War.
Barak Ravid, Axios
The Biden administration's efforts to re-engage with Iran over its nuclear program are coming up against three major obstacles: a lack of direct channels of communication, divisions within the leadership in Tehran, and looming Iranian presidential elections, U.S. officials involved in the talks tell me.
