The Trump-Kim geopolitical reality-TV show – surreal for some – offered unparalleled entries to the annals of international diplomacy. It will be tough to upstage the US President pulling an iPad and showing Kim Jong-un the cheesy trailer of a straight-to-video 1980s B-grade action movie – complete with a Sylvester Stallone cameo – casting the …
Continue reading The Key Word in the Trump-Kim Show
The sudden burst in Japanese foreign policy efforts over the last few months cannot go unnoticed. It is hard not to note Tokyo’s attempts to influence and probe the state of its relations with Washington, Beijing and Moscow. It is worth mentioning that the political landscape in the critically important North East Asia sub-region are …
Continue reading Japan is Seeking Balance in its Relations with the US, China and Russia
Saudi Arabia did not come to Jordan's rescue with a $2.5bn aid package, although King Salman very much wanted to appear as if it had. What happened was an attempt by King Salman to take the credit for the money that Kuwait had already pledged. What resulted was a scramble by rival Gulf states to …
Continue reading How Jordan’s Economic Crisis Exposed Saudi Arabia’s Leadership Vacuum
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg articulated the bloc’s policy during an interview with the German publication Der Spiegel, explaining that Israel isn’t a member of the alliance and therefore ineligible to receive multilateral mutual defense commitments from it. This came as a shock for some people who had hitherto assumed that the organization would take Israel’s …
Continue reading What Does It Really Matter If NATO Won’t Help Israel Against Iran?
Little more needs to be said about events in Singapore. Slings and arrows finally parked after a 65-year war in which millions died on a divided Korean peninsula where a nuclear slingshot was assembled and decommissioned. The world was taken to the brink of war and then back again. That Donald J Trump will now …
Continue reading Singapore Slings and Arrows: How Donald Trump Confounded His Enemies
Stranger things can happen. Maybe – just maybe – the United States and North Korea can find a way towards securing a lasting peace – despite being sworn enemies for the last seven decades. Recall how only a few months ago, President Trump and Chairman Kim were threatening to go to war. Trump infamously had said at one …
For several years now, I have been writing these regular blog posts with one end in mind: to help open a door for readers and encourage them to step through. I select issues, usually those that dominate western media coverage and represent a consensus that we might term the Great Western Narrative, and try to …
Artificial intelligence (AI) is seen as both a boon and a threat. It uses our personal data to influence our lives without us realising it. It is used by social media to draw our attention to things we are interested in buying, and by our tablets and computers to predict what we want to type …
April 24 marks the 15th anniversary of my initial entry into Baghdad as the senior oil advisor to retired Lieutenant General Jay Garner, our US government civilian leader in Iraq. It was the beginning of my six plus years in Iraq working on the oil sector and denying the allegation that the Iraq war had …
Continue reading Oil for Israel: The Truth about the Iraq War, 15 Years Later
