Allison Kaplan Sommer, Haaretz
As Israel draws international attention as a COVID vaccine success story, and as the country's ability to document inoculation with vaccine passports has allowed for something resembling a return to normal life, anti-vaccine activists have taken notice.
E. Malfatto, NYT
On my most recent visit to the Mesopotamian marshes, in March, I arrived at Sayeed Hitham's for breakfast. The pandemic had kept me away for more than a year.
Tzvi Joffre & Yonah Jeremy Bob, JP
The attack was reportedly carried out through a remotely detonated device smuggled into the facility.
Edward Fishman, Foreign Policy
Quiet negotiations with Berlin can do what economic coercion can't.
Müjge Küçükkeleş & Selim Koru, Newlines
An emerging style of right-wing politics among Turkey's Kurds defines itself in opposition to both the Turkish state and the PKK's left-liberation mythos. It could upend the country's politics
Ian Bond, Centre for European Reform
In recent weeks fighting has surged in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian casualties have increased along the line of contact between Ukrainian government-controlled territory and the parts of region under the control of Russian puppet regimes. As before they invaded in 2014, Russian regular forces are poised near the Ukrainian border. Open source intelligence shows that some units have redeployed to Ukraine's north-eastern border from bases much further east. Читать дальше...
James Stavridis, Bloomberg
This is not just about Ukraine — there are bigger stakes at play in the international system. China, surely, is watching how the West responds in Eastern Europe as the U.S. simultaneously seeks to maintain Taiwan's independence.
Youngseok Park, East Asia Forum
In December 2020, China blocked Australian coal imports after an increasingly tense political confrontation between the two countries. In August 2019, Japan strengthened restrictions on exports to South Korea following a South Korean Supreme Court decision on disputed historical issues between the two countries....
Jack Broome, Jamestown
On March 23, the Arakan Army (AA)—an ethnic armed organization (EAO) based largely in Myanmar's Rakhine State—finally released a statement condemning the military's seizure of power in the February 1 coup. AA spokesperson, Khine Thu Kha, said that the AA was "together…with the people" and would "continue to go forward for the oppressed Rakhine people" (Dhaka Star, March 23).
Bruno Philip, Worldcrunch
For the first time in 20 years, Myanmar regime fighter jets dropped bombs on territory partly controlled by the KNU, an armed group that has been fighting the central government for seven decades and bears the name of a large ethnic minority, the Karen.
Hannah Beach, New York Times
Late last month, foreign officials in army regalia toasted their hosts in Naypyidaw, the bunkered capital built by Myanmar's military. Ice clinked in frosted glasses. A lavish spread had been laid out for the foreign dignitaries in honor of Myanmar's Armed Forces Day.
Pinar Tremblay, Al Monitor
A recent move by Turkey's ruling party to override opposition in parliament, alongside an ongoing crackdown on dissent more broadly, has cast doubt on the path of Turkish democracy.
Akram Umarov, FPRI
The recent escalation in diplomatic tensions between the U.S., EU, China, and Russia is an unwelcome development for Central Asia. With the recent complicated visit to Moscow by the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell marred by aggressive bilateral rhetoric, the White House labelling China as its major competitor, and...
Martin Sandbu, Financial Times
Anyone who, like me, was a student in the 1990s will remember how international governing institutions were then the chic thing to demonstrate against.
Howard French, New York Review of Books
Down to the final days of Donald Trump's time in office, any attempt to measure the much-commented-upon decline of American power in the world had to contend with the unceasing abasement of the presidency itself. Under Trump, once-unimaginable shocks, outrages, and demolitions of norms and decorum were routinely eclipsed by even greater ones just a day or two later, and sometimes sooner. They became such a commonplace feature of life that many Americans experienced them as almost self-erasing. Читать дальше...
David Lepeska, The National
Turkey has been in a tizzy of late over a letter by 104 retired admirals. The letter, made public on April 3, criticised President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's long-gestating plan to build a canal parallel to Istanbul's Bosphorus Strait, potentially voiding the 1936 convention regulating maritime traffic in and out of the Black Sea.
Elise Labott, Foreign Policy
Jake Sullivan, Biden's "once-in-a-generation intellect," is facing a once-in-a-generation challenge.
S. Shkel, A. Shcherbak & T. Tkacheva, Riddle
Russian elections obviously do not reflect the will of the people, given their massive administrative control and widespread falsifications. Even so, the level of electoral support for the Russian president and the United Russia Party varies considerably from region to region.
M. Flynn, WOTR
In trying to understand America's "great power competition" with China, observers have offered a range of historical analogies. Graham Allison invoked the "Thucydides Trap," referring to Athens and its war with Sparta, while a recent compilation asked, in reference to World War I, if a U.S.-Chinese clash could be the next great war. But perhaps the Napoleonic Wars...
