Despite continued clashes between the government and rebel forces, the ceasefire brokered by Turkey and Russia appears to have significantly reduced the violence in Syria. Following the fall of Aleppo to Assad’s forces, we should be reflecting upon what lessons can be drawn from Syria. I would offer a few. First, in wars that involve…
Have you ever met someone in a narrow passage and found it difficult to get around them because they kept moving the same way as you? Did you ever see a bird attacking his reflection in a window, thinking it was another bird? What about the foretelling of an experience in déjà vu? These are…
How far is Saudi Arabia complicit in the Isis takeover of much of northern Iraq, and is it stoking an escalating Sunni-Shia conflict across the Islamic world? Some time before 9/11, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, once the powerful Saudi ambassador in Washington and head of Saudi intelligence until a few months ago, had a revealing…
The rising hysteria about Russia is best understood as fulfilling two needs for Official Washington: the Military Industrial Complex’s transitioning from the “war on terror” to a more lucrative “new cold war” – and blunting the threat that a President Trump poses to the neoconservative/liberal-interventionist foreign-policy establishment. By hyping the Russian “threat,” the neocons and…
Place yourself in the mind of a Palestinian. You have just been told by the Secretary of State of the outgoing US Administration in Washington that your people should have «a future of freedom and dignity» and «the Israeli Government’s program of establishing civilian settlements in the occupied territory is inconsistent with international law». Might you have…
A remarkable geopolitical shift has taken place in this part of the world as the traditional pattern of friends and adversaries is broken. India and Pakistan have been in opposite camps since the partition of the subcontinent in 1947. India and Russia have been all-time strategic partners while Pakistan was more mindful of American interests…
