Int’l Affairs

When the economic history of our times is eventually written, 2016 will be remembered as the year in which the two countries that had laid the foundation for globalisation, free markets and prosperity in the early 1980s, switched course and chose to hit the stop button. It was the leadership of Ronald Reagan in the United States (US) and Margaret …

In the post-Cold War world, especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was expected that the situation regarding the universal human rights would improve. However, very sadly, this has not happened. At present, the world is weeping, not celebrating. More and more people are suddenly realising we can no longer afford …

At the end of the Cold War, Samuel P. Huntington presented a hypothesis that people’s cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world. This hypothesis, commonly known as the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ (CoC), remains one of the most controversial theoretical models in international relations. Nearly twenty-four years have lapsed since its publication …

The most conspicuous headlines of the year 2016 were those related to political turmoil, violent conflicts and escalating human rights abuses across the globe. International agencies and human rights NGOs are increasingly warning of a looming decline in human rights globally particularly as a result of humanitarian crises across the Middle East and Africa, and a soaring populist nationalism in …

The year 2016 has been one of tumult and turmoil for Afghanistan. The Afghan government like the previous year i.e. 2015, kept grappling with multiple challenges the most daunting among them being the increasing terrorism incidents and futile efforts to find negotiated settlement to the country’s lingering crisis. The ongoing militancy in Afghanistan has claimed countless lives including those of …

Donald Trump’s inauguration speech on January 20 repeated the disruptive message of his election as US president. It was a call of defiance against the political and media mainstream in the USA, which also rattled the political and business elites in many European countries. The Trump administration wants good relations with other powers, but it will pursue US political and …

The phenomenon of globalisation has entered a new era and China is a country that will play a pivotal and leading role in the process. In the recent years, China has continued to participate in and promote the international affairs. In particular, the 2016 G20 Hangzhou Summit hosted by China had concluded 29 achievements, which significantly boosted China’s influence and …

Following his campaign promise to curtail immigration from Muslim countries, the US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on January 27 by which he barred citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen – from entering the US for at least the next 90 days. The executive order puts a bar on all …

The growing use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – commonly known as drones – in both military and commercial settings, has ensued in a debate as to whether it is moral and ethical to use machines and robots to take lives of humans or should there be an outright ban on the ‘killer robots’. Since these machines (flying or otherwise) …

Globalisation is under attack these days from all quarters. The headlines before, during, and after the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos scream with indignation: globalization is bad, the world is divided, and trust in leaders is plummeting. None of this should surprise us, though as the referendum in the United Kingdom and the Presidential election in …