Wahabists, Salafists and ISIS
Amanda Taub tries to explain why the war on Yemen is mostly ignored and Syria’s conflict is not: Conflicts gain sustained American attention only when they provide a compelling story line that appeals to both the public and political actors, and for reasons beyond the human toll. That often requires some combination of immediate relevance…
The impotency of New Zealand as a nation is reflected in its tendency to compensate by sanctimonious lectures at world forums on any possible occasion. The use of moral humbug as a diplomatic weapon is the resort of hypocrites who have an agenda in which they wish to give moral sanction to amoral methods, such…
Almost six years ago, President Putin proposed to Germany ‘the creation of a harmonious economic community stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok.’ This idea represented an immense trade emporium uniting Russia and the EU, or, in Putin’s words, “a unified continental market with a capacity worth trillions of dollars.” In a nutshell: Eurasia integration. Washington panicked….
With a swift, determined twist, Russian leader Vladimir Putin has wrong-footed his American adversary, pinning him to the ground over the Syrian crisis. Writhing and flustered, the American opponent is protesting at being upended. First, in the form of a contorted media campaign smearing Russia’s military operations as somehow criminal. Second, the Americans are breathlessly…
US troops invaded Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, less than a month after the 9/11 terror attacks in New York and Washington. What seemed like a quick victory over the Taliban regime turned into a bloody, endless guerrilla war that continues to this day. President George W. Bush’s administration accused Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network…