Plainly, Syria’s success – notwithstanding the caution of President Bashar al-Assad in saying that signs of success are not success itself – in resisting, against the odds, all attempts to fell the state suggest that a tipping point in the geopolitics of the region has occurred. We have written before how the Syria outcome dwarfs…
With Spain facing an insurmountable economic crisis and Europe failing, Catalonia would be better off on its own On Oct. 1 the citizens of Spain’s northeastern province of Catalonia will vote in a referendum for national independence, despite arm-twisting by the Spanish government and stern warnings by world leaders – including Donald Trump, who last…
What is Donald Trump’s policy towards Israel and the Palestinians? No one from within the president’s administration seems able to say. During an interview with an Israeli news site, David Friedman, Trump’s ambassador in Tel Aviv, advanced views contradicting decades of US policy, as well as the professed positions of the administration. The State Department’s…
Whether Iraqi Kurdistan’s independence vote leads to statehood remains to be seen, but the referendum has led to other impressive things. Ankara today stands together with Tehran and Baghdad — the same neighbors it was slamming for “Persian expansionism” and sectarian policies yesterday. The trilateral front, driven by a shared fear of partition, is hailed…
To many mainstream pundits, the solution to the crisis in Korea is for U.S. officials to sit down and “talk” to North Korea in the hopes of negotiating a mutually beneficial agreement. While it won’t guarantee that a deal will be worked out, they say, “talking” is the only chance there is to resolve the…
Russia and Pakistan, the two Cold War rivals, are holding joint military exercise “Druzhba-2017” (September 25-October 4) in Russia’s North Caucasus. The September 25 opening ceremony in the village of Nizhny Arkhyz was attended by 200 troops and special forces commanders from both countries, Pakistani General Saeed Alamdar Houssein Shah said the exercise was “of great importance” to both…
