Op-ed

Paul Pillar Ostracizing Iran isn’t going to resolve America’s problems. There are other ways for Washington to deal with an adversary that don’t require it to weaken its ability to use diplomacy. Ostracizing another state—isolating it and refusing to conduct normal business with it—to punish or debilitate the …

Mark Episkopos  Moscow has found a like-minded partner in its handling of the Afghanistan crisis in the form of Beijing, holding joint military drills of an unprecedented scale with the People’s Liberation Army on Chinese soil earlier in August. With the Taliban on the verge of victory in Afghanistan, Russia and …

Ahmad Charai When he took the oath of office in January, President Joe Biden vowed “to make America, once again, the leading force for good in the world,” as well as to “repair our alliances and engage with the world once again.” In the months since, he and …

Giancarlo Elia Valori Politics in the world now refers to merely technical rather than purely political issues. In recent years, cyberspace issues, including cybersecurity, Internet freedom and governance, have quickly become ‘politicised’ and a natural global public issue. Important signs of the politicisation of the cyber world are …

Giancarlo Elia Valori  Part two As we continue to examine the studies on climate change that is raising the average temperature of the planet, it must be said that the impact of temperature on production efficiency at too low or too high temperatures negatively affects production efficiency and …

There is another possible future for Afghanistan, and while not pretty, it is strategically far preferable for the United States: a military stalemate, in which the Taliban holds some of the country and the government while friendly militias hold another big chunk. Dozens of Afghanistan’s four hundred or so districts have fallen …

Delwar Hussain  The recent developments of China-led initiatives of regional cooperation involving South Asian countries have come to the forefront as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is in stalemate situation. Founded in 1985, SAARC is coping with several problems within the region and is mostly …

Giancarlo Elia Valori In today’s world, knowledge and technological advantages determine – to a large extent – differences in the management of international policy. The increase in a country’s intellectual power directly defines an increase in its economic power, thus changing its position in the international competition for …

The American exit from Afghanistan has created a power vacuum. The quartet of China, Russia, Pakistan, and Iran stands to benefit the most from the US withdrawal. The area to accrue the least benefit is Central Asia, whose five states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), together with Afghanistan, …