Etiket arşivi: China

Time for Tough Choices

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April 20, 2026

The Iran-US ceasefire expires on Wednesday. Yet, there is still some uncertainty regarding the second round of the “peace negotiations” in Islamabad. The past ten days have seen intense diplomatic activity, Trump’s flurry of comments and threats, Iran’s defiant statements and vows of retaliation, the IMF’s warning that disruptions to oil markets could slow global growth, and further strains in transatlantic relations. Moreover, it now appears that, for Washington and Tehran, the “marketing of a deal” has also become an important issue, with both sides fighting to win the edge. Thus, the Middle East’s fortune-tellers are at a loss.

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The Myth of the Rules-Based Order

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February 9, 2026

Only a few years ago, the “rules-based international order” was the northern star of American foreign policy, a recurrent theme in policy statements by senior officials of the Biden administration.

In an interview with  Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC on May 6, 2021, Secretary of State Blinken said, “… we are determined to uphold the so-called rules-based international order that we’ve invested so much in over so many decades and that has been good for us and good for the world, and I think even good for China.”[i] (emphasis added)

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Another Regime Change Project

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January 5, 2026

Saturday’s attack on Venezuela, the abduction of President Maduro, and his being brought, handcuffed, to New York was a shock to the world. This was a brazen violation of international law. Moreover, President Trump’s press conference about  Operation Absolute Resolve and the future must have been a second, and even a greater shock.

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2025: A Year of Disappointments                

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December 15, 2025

In two weeks, the year 2025 will be behind us. The end of a year is a moment of reflection on the achievements, disappointments, and failures of the past twelve months and whether different paths could have been taken. In international relations, those who choose between “new chapters” and “the same old story” are world leaders, primarily among them the leaders of major powers. And “new chapters” are not easy to start writing.

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UN Security Council Adopts Resolution 2803 (2025)

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November 19, 2026

In my last post, hours before the UN Security Council began its deliberations on the draft US resolution on November 17, I said that the authority to be given to the Board of Peace (Bopp), the lack of detail about the International Stabilization Force (ISF), and the issue of UN Security Council monitoring might require further negotiations; that whether Russia will persist or accommodate Mr. Trump remained uncertain; and that it was unlikely that Beijing and Moscow would readily give him carte blanche in Gaza.

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President Trump’s Secondary Tariffs

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August 11, 2025

As the relationship between China and the US started to sour after the Nixon-Kissinger years, Washington paid more attention to expanding its cooperation with India as a counterbalance to China. Many visits were exchanged at the highest levels.[i]

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The Year 2024 in Review

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December 16, 2024

People aspire to democracy.  Regardless of their respect for fundamental rights and freedoms, and the rule of law, all regimes claim to be democratic in some form because it remains the ultimate source of legitimacy to govern. Sadly, the year 2024 was not an inspiring year for democracy.

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The Incremental Cost of the Wars in Ukraine and Gaza

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April 30, 2024

The world remains focused on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the Iran-Israel confrontation. The former defines relations between Russia and the West and unfortunately, there is no path yet for a negotiated solution. The latter two are more of a challenge for the US, with Russia and China watching on the sidelines. How the Gaza conflict would evolve is likely to impact Washington’s standing in the world. In brief, these are not great times for global powers to stand up together against other global threats such as ISIS, a radical group that has proved its outreach on numerous occasions.

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A Critical Year

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March 4, 2024

The anxiety reflected in the major headlines of the past week has confirmed that 2024 is going to be a critical year for the West.

It seems that a growing number of Americans are not happy with the looming Biden-Trump rematch. The latter’s threatening remarks to European allies about their inadequate defense spending have added to worries in European capitals on the future of their relations with Washington.

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Russia, China, and the War in Gaza

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January 25, 2024

On October 7, 2023, a comment by Russia’s Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated that the conflict, which has continued for 75 years, cannot be resolved by force and can be settled exclusively by political and diplomatic means, by engaging in a full-fledged negotiation process based on the well-known international legal framework stipulating the establishment of an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with a capital in East Jerusalem that co-exists with Israel in peace and security.

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