When Russian President Vladimir Putin lands in Riyadh this week for the second time in 12 years, his call for endorsement of his proposal to replace the US defense umbrella in the Gulf with a multilateral security architecture is likely to rank high on his agenda. So is Mr. Putin’s push for Saudi Arabia to…
“If we burn, you burn with us.” “Self-destruct together.” (Lam chao.) The new slogans of Hong Kong’s black bloc – a mob on a rampage connected to the black shirt protestors – made their first appearance on a rainy Sunday afternoon, scrawled on walls in Kowloon. Decoding the slogans is essential to understand the mindless…
“Most who watched the Chinese military parade on October 1 saw what looked to be some interesting missiles. For the informed observer, however, they were witnessing the end of an era” For decades, the United States has taken China’s ballistic missile capability for granted, assessing it as a low-capability force with limited regional impact and…
70 years ago in April 1949 the last Western military action took place on Chinese territory. The ‘Amethyst Incident’ saw Chinese Red Army troops fire on a British warship sent to remove UK embassy staff from the Chinese capital. At this time Chinese communist forces, on the verge of victory in their civil war against…
The rapid military-strategic inroads that India’s making with Vietnam should be taken very seriously by China because of the challenge that they pose to its claims over the South China Sea, thus representing yet another geopolitical fault line between the two BRICS and SCO “frenemies” in the New Cold War. *** One of the most…
Convinced of its invincibility, even as partisan politics threatens to topple Washington, US policymakers remained strangely oblivious to the dangers of a resurgent Russia-China alliance. Although it may be too early to call ‘check mate’ on the US just yet, the nuclear superpower finds itself increasingly restrained. Although it is easily forgotten in these clinically…
