The pressure is escalating against the development of China as a global factor. At the same time the Pentagon released its 2018 US National Security Strategy paper explicitly targeting Russia and China as prime USA strategic threat overshadowing that from international terrorism, India, a member of a new alliance fostered recently by Washington to target…
US President Donald Trump named China as a major US competitor on both economic and military fronts in his first state-of-the-union address, another sign that Washington is putting great power rivalry at the heart of its national strategy. Analysts said Trump’s explicit references to China contrasted with Beijing’s view of the Sino-US relationship and those…
The unsung star of the World Economic Forum in Davos last week was not a head of state, but the Chinese Politburo member Liu He. The 66-year-old is a trusted confidant of President Xi Jinping and will soon be appointed vice-premier to oversee the Chinese economy. Last year in the Swiss ski resort, Xi stole…
The Afghan province of Badakhshan borders China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. It used to be part of an artery between the East and West known as the ancient Silk Road. Today, that road is being revived as an element of China’s “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) initiative, which has prompted major infrastructure construction in Afghanistan and Central Asia,…
On 27 November Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, already at odds with the unelected bureaucrats of the European Union over his insistence on the right to decide whether Brussels or national elected governments shall be allowed to become citizens in Europe’s ongoing refugee crisis, waved another red flag, this potentially a future game-changer for the…
If Turkey is not bluffing, U.S. troops in Manbij, Syria, could be under fire by week’s end, and NATO engulfed in the worst crisis in its history. Turkish President Erdogan said Friday his troops will cleanse Manbij of Kurdish fighters, alongside whom U.S. troops are embedded. Erdogan’s foreign minister demanded concrete steps by the U.S….
