Op-ed

There may be few people who have done more to improve China’s image around the world than Donald Trump. What Beijing could not accomplish through decades of diplomacy, trade and public diplomacy, Trump’s confrontational approach toward America’s allies and partners has, in many respects, helped accelerate. A recent …

Eng. Saleem Al-Batayneh The most disturbing thing revealed by the Fourth Gulf War and its aftermath is not that it answered old questions. It is that it opened a much larger set of new ones. Perhaps the most unsettling is also the simplest: Is the Arab world approaching …

For more than three decades, Canada and the United States built one of the world’s most deeply integrated economic relationships on an assumption that once seemed almost axiomatic: geography, shared infrastructure and an extraordinarily dense network of trade would ultimately prove stronger than political disagreements. That assumption is …

Saad Ilyas Lebanon’s southern frontier is no longer merely hovering on the edge of escalation. It has entered a new phase of strategic brinkmanship between Israel and Hezbollah, in which every drone, artillery strike and political statement risks becoming part of a much larger contest over who ultimately …

Six months into America’s war with Iran, the conflict is beginning to resemble another version of the “forever wars” that Donald Trump once condemned—except that this one bears his unmistakable political signature. It has no clearly defined objective, no credible endgame, and increasingly no obvious path to victory. …

Qatar is pursuing two parallel tracks in an increasingly turbulent regional environment: diplomacy on the one hand and security fortification on the other. While Doha continues to present itself as a player capable of opening channels for dialogue, mediation, and de-escalation, it is simultaneously expanding its network of …

Farhat Asif  Today 23 August 2026, citizens across Kazakhstan are electing the first Kurultai under the country’s new Constitution. This is far more than a change in the name of Parliament. The vote will create a new 145-member unicameral legislature with the authority to make laws, represent public …

HCSS – The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies The events of this year have made that abundantly clear. The war in the Middle East and the renewed risk of disruption to the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint for global fuel supplies, demonstrated how quickly geopolitical crises can …

Dr. Yashwant Singh Abu al-Duhur matters less for what happened there on Tuesday, August 18, than for what it revealed. Strip away the incident report and what’s left is a familiar shape: two regional powers reading the same collapsing order and drawing opposite lessons from it. Assad’s fall didn’t create a …