Anthony Cordesman, CSIS
There is no good way that the U.S. can withdraw from Afghanistan. It cannot claim victory, and it cannot wait indefinitely for some cosmetic form of peace. It is all too clear from the reports to Congress by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) and the Lead Inspector General (LIG) for Operation Freedom Sentinel that it will take years to bring Afghan security forces to the point where they can stand on their own if peace fails.
Yu Yongding, SCMP
China's growth in 2020 was driven by fixed-asset investment and exports. This is not ideal.
Mazal Mualem, Al Monitor
It's been three weeks since the March 23 election and Israelis are still waiting to find out who will lead the next government, what parties will make up the new coalition and even if a coalition can be formed.
A. Foxall & J. Rogers, Spectator
The past week has seen the war in Ukraine, which has been simmering for the last seven years, once more come to the boil. According to Kiev, Russia has massed as many as 85,000 troops near its border, while Moscow has actively talked-up the possibility of full-scale war and
Salvatore Babones, 1945
But as the 2023 centenary approaches, the decisive consideration in determining the future of Erdoğan's canal may be national pride. The Montreux Convention is the last vestige of foreign interference in Turkey's territorial integrity. Although often labeled a neo-Ottoman, Erdoğan is every bit as much a Turkish nationalist as was Atatürk. His nationalism may be religious where Atatürk's was secular, but just like Atatürk, he wants to lead a strong, nationalist Turkey,...
Sholto Byrnes, The National
"Diplomacy is back," tweeted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month, in what was seen as a dig at the unorthodox manner in which the Trump administration had conducted international relations. I wish Mr Blinken was right. Instead, though, a number of incidents suggest that diplomacy, as it has traditionally been understood, has of late been remarkably absent in interactions across North America, Europe and Asia.
Gustav Gressel, ECFR
European governments have yet to learn a key lesson from the war in Ukraine. The alternative reality the Kremlin lives in is becoming increasingly dangerous.
Dominic Tierney, Texas National Security Review
Strategic thought in both the United States and China has focused on the potential for a Sino-U.S. interstate war and downplayed the odds of a clash in a foreign internal conflict. However, great-power military competition is likely to take the form of proxy war in which Washington and Beijing aid rival actors in an intrastate conflict. The battlefield of Sino-U.S. military competition is more likely to be Venezuela or Myanmar than the South China Sea. Читать дальше...
E. Sadusky & N. Ghvinjilia, CEPA
Imagine this — late last year, a young investor in New York or London makes a decision and clicks a computer screen to buy cryptocurrency. More than 5,000 miles away, in the mountains of Abkhazia, above the Black Sea, the lights go out. It is nighttime, it is snowing and the temperature is falling fast.
Economist
THE FIRST American forces to enter Afghanistan in 2001 arrived on September 26th when a CIA team dropped into the Panjshir Valley in the north of the country. At the peak of the war a decade later, America had more than 100,000 troops battling the Taliban. Another decade on, all of them will be gone and the longest war in American history will be over—for the Americans, at least. President Joe Biden has decided to withdraw all American forces from Afghanistan by September 11th 2021... Читать дальше...
Frederick Deknatel, World Politics Review
Some things haven't changed in seven years. One of the first pieces I wrote for WPR was on the prospects for transitional justice in Syria someday, roughly three years into a civil war that still hasn't ended today. The news hook back then was the appearance before the House Foreign Affairs Committee of a former Syrian military photographer, hidden under a blue...
Yu Yongding, Project Syndicate
To consolidate its post-pandemic growth momentum in 2021, China should not be in a rush to exit from expansionary fiscal and monetary policy. The government may have to issue more bonds than planned, and the People's Bank of China may need to implement quantitative easing to facilitate this.
Valerie Hopkins, Financial Times
In a socialist-era concrete hall by the Sava river, Serbia is changing its international reputation one jab after another, and showing that vaccine diplomacy is not just the preserve of global powers.
Michael Hirsh, Foreign Policy
Japan's prime minister visits Washington at a time when, thanks to Chinese aggressiveness, U.S.-Japan relations are critical.
Phillip Orchard, Geopolitical Futures
Despite its enormous potential, India is by no means an inevitable counterweight to Chinese ambitions in the Indian Ocean. The country's immense domestic needs and its preoccupation with land-based threats have prevented it from turning its attention fully to the maritime realm. And the more China races ahead with its breakneck military expansion, the harder it will be for India to catch up.
Lola Adesioye, Tablet
In Bring Back Our Girls: The Untold Story of the Global Search for Nigeria's Missing Schoolgirls, Joe Parkinson and Drew Hinshaw provide a powerful account of the April 14, 2014, abduction of 276 Nigerian school girls from the town of Chibok by the extremist militant Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram, and the three-year saga that followed as the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls ricocheted around the world. Back then, I
Jeremy Cliffe, NS
It is harder to define the political "centre" of Germany than it is that of France, the UK or the US. Unlike the first two, it is a polycentric, federal country. Unlike the second two, it does not use first-past-the-post. Also unlike the second two, its political order is still relatively new: the federal republic - founded in 1949 - is younger than Joe Biden. The "Berlin Republic", the reunified Germany that emerged in the 1990s, is only on its third chancellor. After the federal election in September... Читать дальше...
