The US’ interest in replacing the 1995 Status Of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Sri Lanka stems from its desire to turn the island nation into its unsinkable aircraft carrier in South Asia and possibly even the base of a prospective “Eighth Fleet” tasked with controlling the so-called “Indian Ocean”, but its long-term strategic plans won’t…
The success of Turkey’s takeover of Syria’s most pro-jihadist province, Idlib, is making less and less likely that Syria will be able to continue maintaining Idlib as being a part of Syria. (This is something I had predicted, back on 14 September 2018, to be possible or even likely, and now it is actually happening.)…
After President Trump decided not to launch an air strike against Iran in response to Iran shooting down a Global Hawk surveillance drone, the big question was, “Okay, now what?” My initial thoughts on this centered on Russia. And Russia’s affirmation of its relationship with Iran saw Trump begin a pivot towards a different strategy…
It’s always the oil. While President Trump was hobnobbing with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the G-20 summit in Japan, brushing off a recent U.N. report about the prince’s role in the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Asia and the Middle East, pleading with…
Since mid-2014, Libya has been mired in civil war, pitting the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli against a rival administration in Tobruk, the House of Representatives (HoR), which is allied with General Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA). Despite lacking UN legitimacy, Haftar and his forces have received backing from a host…
Today, the realities of the South China Sea have changed so drastically that we’re dealing with a whole new reality that is nothing like what we used to analyse or discuss. The tensions within this region were purely local in their nature and concerned China and its immediate neighbors, but now it’s obvious that they have evolved…
