The arrest by Belarusian authorities of Nexta Telegram channel founder Roman Protasevich on board an Irish plane travelling from Greece to Lithuania shows that Alexander Lukashenko is far from the provincial dictator that his opponents both inside the country and abroad make him out to be. There is no point […]
Month: May 2021
Laying The Bear Trap: Orbán Visits No 10 Downing Street
His comments would not have fallen on deaf ears. While metropolitan London would have been aghast at his pedigree and remarks, a Brexit-audience in the rustbelts and areas of deprivation, would have felt a twang of appreciation. For them, migration has not been a boon and glory. For Hungary’s Viktor […]
The Trouble With Hierarchy
It is fair to say that many people react negatively to the word “hierarchy”. The allergic reaction to the word has deep roots, going back to the Reformation and the secularism of the Enlightenment. Protestants of the sixteenth century tended to identify hierarchs with the distant and pompous prelates of […]
Biden Wants To Remain Engaged With Russia, China
Anyone who tried to divine the Russia policy of the Biden presidency out of the corpus of statements by current and prospective officials in the new administration would know by now that the range of instincts and perspectives contained in those statements did not really reflect or anticipate what was […]
Afghan Nationalism Faces Existential Challenge (II)
Part I The Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said on May 13, “We will not allow boots on the ground or military bases on our territory.” He was referring to the future US security operations in the region. The Pentagon’s stated position is also not about establishing any new […]
Russia’s International Tourism Reforms Show That It Has Nothing To Hide
The law that President Putin recently signed allowing tourists to remain in Russia for six months so long as they’ve booked their hotel stay in advance for the duration of their trip shows that Moscow has nothing to hide and is actually eager to encourage as many people as possible […]
The Dominic Cummings Show
The former chief strategist for Prime Minister Boris Johnson was in a stroppy mood before the UK parliamentary Health and Science committee. For seven hours, Cummings unleashed salvo after salvo against his former boss and the government coronavirus response. Boiling down some points of the Cummings show: there was a […]
Turkey’s Military Engagement With The Lublin Triangle Aims To Balance Russia
Poland’s agreement to purchase Turkish attack drones speaks to Ankara’s desire to enhance military engagement with the Warsaw-led “Lublin Triangle” in order to balance Russia’s recent geostrategic gains in the Black and Mediterranean Sea regions that the West Asian country might have suspiciously considered to be an unstated attempt by […]
How It All Went Wrong: The Global Response to COVID-19
The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response was never likely to hand down a rosy report with gobbets of praise. Organised by the World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus last May, the panel’s gloomy assessment was grim: the COVID-19 pandemic could have been avoided. Almost nothing in the […]
Afghan Nationalism Faces Existential Challenge (I)
Afghan conundrum is mutating The commencement of the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan by the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has got off to a flying start. So far there has been no hiccup. One significant landmark has been the vacation of the big American base at Kandahar, […]
The Rumsfeld/Cebrowski Doctrine
For two decades, the Pentagon has been applying the “Rumsfeld/Cebrowski doctrine” to the “wider Middle East”. Several times, it thought of extending it to the “Caribbean Basin”, but refrained from doing so, concentrating its power on its first target. The Pentagon acts as an autonomous decision-making center that is effectively outside the power of the president. It is a civil-military administration that imposes its objectives on the rest of the military.
The Middle East Needs Sustainable Peace And Stability
After 11 days of Israeli aggression against Palestine, finally, the ceasefire has been reached. 11 days of bombing of Gaza cost 250 precious human lives, including around 70 innocent children. Thousands of houses were destroyed, even hospitals and schools were targeted deliberately. Infrastructure was damaged, causing a shortage of electricity […]
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