Asia Pacific

The upcoming meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in Beijing is not a bilateral summit between two competing powers. It is a test of whether the United States can still manage major international crises on its own terms.  The agenda is expected to include Iran, Taiwan, trade, …

Trump is heading to Beijing for the most consequential foreign policy meeting of his second term. He arrives as the first US president to visit China in nearly nine years — the last visit was his own, in November 2017, when Xi rolled out a “state visit-plus” with …

Dr. Shehab Al-Makahleh On the eve of his arrival in Beijing, Donald Trump chose a phrase that was deceptively simple: “I respect Xi, and I hope he respects me.” Beneath that carefully calibrated diplomatic phrase lies a far more consequential reality: this is not a courtesy visit between …

Dr. Shehab Al-Makahleh In war, the first casualty is not truth. It is hierarchy. The missiles over Iran did more than rupture military installations and redraw escalation maps across the Gulf. They exposed something larger and far more consequential: the quiet disintegration of the geopolitical order that governed …

Sana Kan The continued clashes and drone strikes reported by Ukraine despite a United States brokered ceasefire reveal the deep structural difficulties facing diplomatic efforts to end the Russia Ukraine war. Although both Moscow and Kyiv formally agreed to a temporary ceasefire between May 9 and May 11, …

Rameen Siddigi Trump arrives in Beijing on May 14. The summit was originally scheduled for March, then postponed because the US got embroiled in a war in the Middle East that nobody fully planned for and nobody has yet fully ended. That delay, accidental as it was, turned …

Dr. Dan Steinbok Israeli military aggression has “reshaped both the physical and ecological landscape” of southern Lebanon, according to the Lebanese report (which does not consider the impacts of Israel’s latest barrage of attacks this spring). In her foreword, Lebanon’s minister for the environment Tamara el Zein notes: …

Iran is currently examining a new proposal from the U. S. aimed at ending the war in the Gulf, as both nations reportedly approach an agreement. This agreement would consist of a one-page memorandum that sets aside complex matters, such as Iran’s nuclear program, for later resolution. An …

Racardo Martins Greater Israel: Beyond Biblical Mythology, a Geopolitical Blueprint When Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich talks about expanding Israel’s reach “to Damascus,” or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expresses personal attachment to broad territorial ambitions or Israel being not only a “regional superpower” but “in some respects, a …