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The Afghanistan War Is Over, and Pakistan Has Won (by Michael Rubin)

The Afghanistan War Is Over, and Pakistan Has Won (by Michael Rubin)

The open secret—even among those towing Trump’s line—is that the Taliban deal will bring an American exit but not peace.

by Michael Rubin

The U.S. war in Afghanistan is winding down, and Pakistan has won. The basic outline of the agreement negotiated by U.S. Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad is nothing new: The United States withdraws its forces in exchange for a Taliban pledge not to associate with terrorism or allow Afghanistan to be used as a safe-haven for terror groups.

There problems with the agreement are many. Proponents of diplomacy with the Taliban often say that wars can only end through diplomacy. “You don’t make peace with your friends. You have to be willing to engage with your enemies if you expect to create a situation that ends an insurgency,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explained. But the agreement outlined by Khalilzad is little different from that which Clinton administration officials struck with the Taliban in the years prior to 9/11: At the time, the Taliban promised to foreswear terrorism and quarantine Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. The subsequent terrorist attacks in New York and Washington underscored their insincerity. Perhaps the Taliban have changed, but not necessarily for the better, as the uptick in attacks throughout Khalilzad’s negotiations show. In many ways, President Donald Trump and Khalilzad seem to have embraced the John Kerry school of diplomacy, in which desperation for a deal substitutes for bringing leverage to bear and credibly convincing adversaries that failure to bargain will mean for them a far worse fate.

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PM Imran Khan’s Article on Kashmir in New York Times [Complete Text]

PM Imran Khan's Article on Kashmir in New York Times [Complete Text]

The World Can’t Ignore Kashmir. We Are All in Danger

If the world does nothing to stop the Indian assault on Kashmir and its people, two nuclear-armed states will get ever closer to a direct military confrontation.

After I was elected prime minister of Pakistan last August, one of my foremost priorities was to work for lasting and just peace in South Asia. India and Pakistan, despite our difficult history, confront similar challenges of poverty, unemployment and climate change, especially the threat of melting glaciers and scarcity of water for hundreds of millions of our citizens.

I wanted to normalize relations with India through trade and by settling the Kashmir dispute, the foremost impediment to the normalization of relations between us.

On July 26, 2018, in my first televised address to Pakistan after winning the elections, I stated we wanted peace with India and if it took one step forward, we would take two steps. After that, a meeting between our two foreign ministers was arranged on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session in September 2018, but India canceled the meeting. That September I also wrote my first of three letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi calling for dialogue and peace.

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Helsinki Summit – a Diplomatic Fiasco for Trump (Dr. Imran Khalid)

Helsinki Summit – a Diplomatic Fiasco for Trump (Dr. Imran Khalid)

In one sentence, the just-concluded Helsinki summit can best be described as “Russia first”. This is all what Donald did in those five hours of discussions and one-on-one meeting with Vladimir Putin. In the post-summit press conference, both failed to tell the world about a single concrete point that would have a positive impact on global peace and stability. This agenda-less meeting was destined to be a diplomatic fiasco for Trump – but it is a success for Putin who has been able to weaken Trump in his home ground. Prior to the meeting, during the session and after the summit, President Donald Trump did nothing but defending the Russians and Putin and blaming his predecessors and the American establishment for all the troubles between Moscow and Washington.

“Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity, and now the Rigged Witch Hunt!!” is how Donald Trump tweeted just a couple of hours before the start of his much-touted summit with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.  But Vladimir Putin “reciprocated” this welcome tweet by arriving at the meeting room 35 minutes late, while maintaining his long tradition of arriving late at international summits and keeping his counterparts to wait for him. But interestingly, contrary to his extremely egoistic nature, President Donald Trump completely ignored this and remained silent on this deliberate delay. Just imagine, if any of the European leaders had kept Donald Trump waiting like this, then Trump would have made a big issue out of it and walked out of the meeting in rage. But Donald Trump devoured this “mild diplomatic offence” without any hitch and did his best to maintain a jolly mode throughout the marathon sessions with Putin and his team.

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Are cracks emerging in the Russia-Iran alliance in Syria? | CSS International Relations

Are cracks emerging in the Russia-Iran alliance in Syria

Are cracks emerging in the Russia-Iran alliance in Syria?

By: Eric Randolph, Anais Llobet 

Russia’s recent call for foreign forces to leave Syria was seen as a possible turning-point in its tricky alliance with Iran, though analysts say their partnership still has a long way to run.

“With the start of the political process in its most active phase, foreign armed forces will withdraw from Syrian territory,” President Vladimir Putin vowed after meeting his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad in Sochi .

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The World in Transition: Relevance of Nation State Concept in the Era of Global Interdependence

Relevance of Nation State Concept in the Era of Global Interdependence

The World in Transition: Relevance of Nation State Concept in the Era of Global Interdependence

By Gen. Rajiv Narayanan

**The contents of this piece were presented at the Herat Security Dialogue – VI (13-14 October 2017). Note that references have been omitted here to help with the flow of the text.**

The extant World Order is in a state of flux in this ‘Age of Strategic Uncertainties’, with the US in strategic retrenchment and the EU in an economic slowdown and internal dissonance. In this vacuum a rising, revanchist China seeks to gain more geo-strategic and geo-political space using geo-economic coercion to achieve its phase one of the Chinese Dream – a unipolar Asia within a multi-polar World. China reckons that the ‘Shi’, i.e. the ‘Strategic Construct of Power’, is now flowing in its favour but it opines that this window is narrowing as other Middle and Rising Powers (like India, Japan, Russia, etc.) exert their own ‘Shi’ to carve out their respective space in Asia.

The recent events and trends show that the emerging World Order is tending towards multi-polarity leading to another period of jousting due to the ‘balance of power’. However the world today is very different from the previous centuries wherein such a change was preceded by a bloody carnage from a clash of arms – the ‘Thucydides Trap’. In this flux come other Middle and Rising Powers with their own national interests to guard and expand their influence creating a combustible environment.

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Current Affairs Foreign Articles

Syria: Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time

Wrong War

Syria: Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time

What about all the other, deadlier weapons? A PR exercise will change nothing.

President Donald Trump has received applause from all the wrong places for his latest attack on Syria. The Bashar al-Assad regime is brutal, but the U.S. government should not police arbitrary rules of war or, even worse, get involved in someone else’s civil war. The president is being pushed into adopting Hillary Clinton’s policy.

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How Is The Border Between Europe And Asia Defined?

How Is The Border Between Europe And Asia Defined

How Is The Border Between Europe And Asia Defined?

Transcontinental countries, mountains, and rivers are part of the physical border between Asia and Europe. However, political factors also play a part in its definition.

Boundaries between continents are somewhat a matter of geographical convention. The number of continents that the Earth is considered to have can range between six or seven, although the count can go as low as four when Afro-Eurasia and Americas are combined as continents. There are only three overland boundaries in existence. These boundaries include the ones between Asia and Europe, between Africa and Asia, and between North and South America.

Overview Of Eurasia

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Politics and the White House: from Clinton to Trump

Politics and the White House from clinton to trump

Politics and the White House: from Clinton to Trump

Two decades ago this week US president Bill Clinton declared that he “did not have sexual relations with that woman.”

As it turned out, he did – and he was impeached for lying about his trysts with Monica Lewinsky.

Today, another US president is accused of sexual impropriety – specifically of paying off a porn star one month before the November 2016 election to keep their adulterous liaison quiet.

Such a bombshell allegation would be the kiss of death to most political careers. But Trump is no normal politician and in his tumultuous administration, “it’s not even the biggest story of the week,” wrote Aaron Blake in The Washington Post.

Political analysts are scratching their heads to explain why – when it comes to Trump – such a revelation barely elicits a collective shrug.

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Essay: The US-EU relation in a Trump Administration

Essay The US-EU relation in a Trump Administration

The US-EU relation in a Trump Administration

“As you go forward, you can be confident that your greatest ally and friend, the United States of America, stands with you, shoulder-to-shoulder, now and forever. Because a united Europe remains the hope of the many and a necessity for us all.” With those unequivocal words, President Obama concluded his “Address to the People of Europe” delivered in Berlin, April 25, 2016; a few months later, the 44th President addressed once again —and for the last time as a President— a gesture of friendship and consideration to his European partners, as he chose the Old Continent for his farewell foreign tour, visiting Germany and Greece. The relations between the Obama Administration and its European counterparts, although consistently cordial, had nevertheless not always been as warm as they were in 2016; in particular, as he stepped into the Oval Office, some policies of the former Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on European Affairs, such as the “Russian Reset” and the “Pivot to Asia,” indeed made the European leaders fear an American disinterest in the century-old American-European alliance. Yet, those tensions and worries were to be short-lived, as President Obama demonstrated on many occasions that he was willing to work in close cooperation with the European heads of states and the EU leadership on decisive issues like, to name but a few, the financial crisis of 2008-2009, the Iran nuclear deal, and the fight against global warning, culminating in the Paris Agreement. What is more, President Obama had consistently expressed, throughout both of his terms, his support for a strong and integrated European Union, to the point of getting occasionally involved in the EU internal affairs. He notably visited London a couple of months before the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, and strongly warned the British people against a potential Brexit. “The European Union doesn’t moderate British influence; it magnifies it,” he declared, before stressing as a conclusion of his speech the exceptional ties which have bound and still bind the Atlantic partners, stating “together, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union have turned centuries of war in Europe into decades of peace, and worked as one to make this world a safer, better place.” Yet, it seems that the transition from the Obama to the Trump Administration will trigger— and actually has already triggered— a radical shift in US-EU relations.

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Rohingya Crisis: A Pragmatic Approach for Pakistan

Rohingya crisis a pragmatic approach for Pakistan

By: Sadia Kazmi

The killing of Rohingya Muslims through systemic ethnic cleansing by the state of Myanmar is the most horrific genocide in the history of mankind. In the garb of security operation against the Rohingya militants/insurgents in Rakhine state, the government of Myanmar has carried out the most brutal and disproportionate act of slaughter ever. More than half a million Rohingya Muslims have fled the army campaign since August 25 and have escaped to Bangladesh. Despite the recurrent news flash on TV channels and social media handles, the very existence of this humanitarian crisis has been denied by Myanmar’s Security Advisor U Thaung Tun who while addressing the UN Security council stated that “there is no ethnic cleansing and no genocide of Rohingya Muslims”. Even though the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres termed it as the “the world’s fastest developing refugee emergency and a humanitarian and human rights nightmare”. However, Myanmar views them as mere allegation and maintains that if at all there is a mass exodus, the reasons behind it is not the crackdown by Myanmar army but the act of terrorism. The security operation as is claimed by Myanmar government, has led to 400 deaths, which are mostly terrorists, belonging to Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA).

However, this doesn’t really explain the satellite images of civilians being viciously murdered. Nor does it change the fact that unarmed civilians are being killed even if it is at the hands of terrorists and the government is not only unable to control the situation but apparently is largely unaware of the whole fiasco. The state Counsellor of Myanmar Aung San Suu Kyi has been widely criticized for not being able to address the issue adequately. However, at the same time, China extends its support to Myanmar government and expresses the need for strict action against the elements causing unrest for the state. This makes the situation a bit complicated as while on one hand there is a growing international pressure on Myanmar as the United Nations rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein stated that this is a typical example of “textbook ethnic cleansing”, on the other hand China expresses appreciation and encouragement to Counsellor Kyi. China’s foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang supported the state effort to “uphold peace and stability” in Rakhine. A possible reason as to why China has adopted this stance is because Myanmar serves as an important pillar in China’s energy, trade and infrastructure strategy in the Southeast Asian region. Aung Suu Kyi maintains that the army was only doing its “legitimate duty to restore stability” and that the troops were under the orders by the state to “exercise all due restraint and to take full measure to avoid collateral damage”.

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