Seth Jones & Jude Blanchette, Foreign Affairs
The hasty and tumultuous U.S. drawdown from Afghanistan and the Taliban's subsequent military victory have occasioned more than a little gloating from China. According to Chinese state media, the U.S. withdrawal marked "the last dusk of empire." China's Foreign Ministry declared that the experience of the war in Afghanistan should teach Washington a lesson in "reckless military adventures." And some in Beijing even claimed that China would succeed where the United States had failed. Читать дальше...
Sean Kelly, Sydney Morning Herald
By October last year, the federal government had been sitting on draft legislation for an anti-corruption commission for almost a year. In the Parliament, Anthony Albanese asked Scott Morrison why it hadn't been released. A little snidely, Morrison said that, while Albanese might not have noticed, the government had been dealing with bushfires and a pandemic.
David Loyn, Spectator
Some western governments and media have been involved in a collective act of wishful thinking in recent months over the Taliban—believing them somehow to be ‘moderate' and on the way to forming an inclusive government. The idea began with their elevation of status as a partner in negotiations with the US in Doha. They were legitimised, so some believed they had changed.
Mustafa Sonmez, Al-Monitor
Turkey's industry remains heavily reliant on imported materials, meaning the country's current account deficit problem persists despite a record increase in exports.
Shane Mason, WOTR
It was a typical late summer day at the U.S. embassy in Islamabad — oppressively hot when the sun was out with a twinge of cool air in the evening that
Matti Friedman, Tablet
The rule for watching the Israel-Lebanon frontier is that although nothing seems to be going on, something always is. Nothing seemed to be going on, for example, on one of the afternoons I recently spent along the electrified fence trying to sense the course of events this fraught summer, gazing out at a green blanket of shrubbery stretching toward a cluster of Lebanese homes nearby. All was still in the late summer heat.
Hans Kundnani, Guardian
The EU increasingly embraces the idea of a continental identity, one that's white and Christian. Is it really the liberal body of remainer lore?
Robert Farley, 1945
Where will the next 9/11 fall? This question dominated American security thinking for the seventy years prior to September 11, 2001. The answer is likely less surprising than we think.
Declan Leary, The American Conservative
Last September 11 a writer not much older than myself worried that, as more and more people too young to remember the terrorist attacks of 2001 aged into adulthood, the date might lose some of its emotional charge and political significance. I fall comfortably into the age group in question here: I turned two a few months before that fateful day, and my first memories all come from years later. The events of...
Emily Tamkin, New Statesman
The "theatre of war" is a term used to describe the area in land, sea or air that becomes a site of military operations. Carl von Clausewitz described it in On War (1832) as denoting "a portion of the space over which war prevails as has its boundaries protected, and thus possesses a kind of independence".
Ben Noble, Moscow Times
Manipulating elections isn't necessarily a centralized affair in Russia, but high-profile cases of electoral malpractice are awkward for Moscow all the same.
H.R. McMaster, Times of London
he surrender of Afghanistan to the Taliban is the result of an extreme case of collective amnesia and self-delusion that continues to undermine the international response to the unfolding catastrophe there. Motivated by the desire to justify that surrender and rationalise the humiliating retreat from Kabul, western military and political leaders have forgotten who it was we fought in Afghanistan and Pakistan for two decades.
