The dogs of war – cold, hot, trade, tariffs – bark while the Chinese caravan plies the New Silk Roads. Call it a leitmotif of the young 21st century. At the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Beijing, President Xi Jinping has just announced a hefty US$60 billion package to complement another US$60 billion pledged…
Russia, the United States and Tajikistan have all denied that they were behind a series of mystery airstrikes that took place along the Tajik-Afghan border on Sunday, while the identity of the targets also remains unknown. The 800-mile border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan consists of mountainous terrain. Unlike the Afghan-Pakistani border, which is rife with…
Russia has amassed large naval and air forces in the Mediterranean opposite the Syrian coast under the command of the Russian Navy commander Admiral Vladimir Korolev. 25 warships and 30 aircraft are involved in these extensive maneuvers: Tu-160 bombers, Tu-142s, II38 anti-submarine, Su-33s and Su-30SMs, and other aircraft. The drill is announced to end one…
The next Tripartite Summit between Russia, Turkey, and Iran is scheduled to take place in Tabriz this Friday. The three countries’ presidents will gather in the Mideast city to discuss the most important points of convergence and divergence between them, with the first-mentioned being the increasing multisided pressure that they’re all coming under from the…
As the Trump administration escalates its trade war measures with China, a powerful group of US lawmakers headed by Senator Marco Rubio issued a letter last week calling for sanctions against Chinese officials allegedly responsible for human rights abuses against the Muslim Uyghur minority in the western province of Xinjiang. There is no doubt that…
“He does things the right way,” US President Donald Trump said of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last month. It shouldn’t have been a surprise; the two men have much in common, as nationalist, tub-thumping autocrats with a contempt for constitutional limits on presidential might, who see few problems that cannot be solved through the…
