The small wooden boats slowly make their way down the brown waters of the Mekong at sunset. Flowing meditation – just enjoying the silence, watching the river flow. Then, suddenly, in the distance, an apparition – a row of cement Ts. Like a high-tech divinity, the 21st century irrupts across the immemorial Mekong, which in…
For its reconstruction, Syria can only count on itself, because not one of the powers that spent hundreds of billions of dollars to destroy it is prepared to spend the first cent to help rebuild it. In these conditions, the future of the country depends on reconnecting with its past – the time at which…
On April 10th, China’s Premier Li Keqiang celebrated the completion of the 1st phase of the 2.5 kilometer Chinese-built Pelgesac Bridge in Croatia across the Bay of Mali Ston alongside Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic. This ceremony marked a striking victory as the following day ushered in an important 16+1 Heads of State summit that saw Greece inducted as…
The Russian Ambassador to China’s latest statement of intent to pursue the integration of Beijing’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) with the Moscow-led economic and security structures in Central Asia strongly hints at the Eurasian Great Power’s interest in N-CPEC+ as the most viable way for bringing this about. The Russian-Pakistani Strategic Partnership might soon…
Relentless reports that the New Silk Roads, or the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), are a perfidious neo-imperial debt trap set up by Yellow Peril 2.0 are vastly exaggerated. With less than one week to go before the next BRI forum in Beijing, a quick overview of what’s been happening in Europe and Southwest Asia…
A little more than a decade ago, I was asked to address a London dinner-table of about twenty Gulf ‘figures’ – a mix of Ambassadors and those with ‘ties to power’. All represented the cosmopolitan, rich élite of the Gulf. Then, towards the evening’s end, talk turned to Hizbullah: the gathering simply erupted into flames….
