Int’l Affairs

It seems that Afghanistan’s problems aren’t going to end anytime soon. At a time, when the country is slowly yet steadily slipping into the hands of Taliban and the influence of already fragile Unity Government is waning, the top political leadership of the country has resorted to political wrangling. The cleavages in the unity government became more than evident when …

Quietly, amid the carnage and chaos in the daily news, 2016 is shaping up as a good year for peace in the world. You read that right. A significant escalation of war over the past few years is, at the moment, abating. For nearly two-thirds of a century, from 1945 to 2011, war had been in overall decline. The global …

On August 9, an extraordinary event took place at the Constantine Palace in the Russian city of St. Petersburg. The event was the meeting of the presidents of Russia and Turkey which took place in the wake of months-long angry rhetoric and the bad blood between the two countries over the downing of a Russian fighter jet in November last …

On 16th of July 1945 a desert outside Alamogordo, New Mexico, witnessed the test of world’s first nuclear device named the “Gadget”. J. Robert Oppenheimer, often called the “father of the atomic bomb” for leading the Manhattan Project named the site of the test as ‘Trinity’ – a name that evoked his intellectual mysticism. This was the ushering in of …

Since the signing of the P5+1-Iran nuclear deal that lifted most international sanctions on the latter, China has emerged as a principal beneficiary. This is as much a result of aggressive Chinese push as it is difficulties faced by the West. China has pursued opportunities in the Iranian nuclear energy market, increased investment and expanded influence, with what could be …

In an essay published in Time Magazine in 1941, magazine’s founder and “the most influential private citizen in the America of his day,” Henry Robinson Luce proclaimed twentieth century to be “The American Century”. But, now observers and experts of international relations such as Joseph S. Nye and of politics and economics of globalization Rawi Abdelal are declaring a close …

“He has iron in his soul.” —Lee Kuan Yew (Former Prime Minister of Singapore on Chinese President Xi Jinping) President Xi Jinping is the most powerful Chinese leader since Deng Xiaoping, and with his sweeping actions and ambitious directives, he has fundamentally altered the process by which China’s domestic and foreign policy is formulated and implemented. Xi’s popular anti-corruption campaign …

“The United Kingdom’s fateful decision to break away from the European Union makes an eventual dissolution of the 28-member bloc practically irreversible.”  — George Soros Britain’s vote to become the first country to leave the European Union came as a severe blow to those who believed in the integration and cohesion of the European community. The Brexit vote reflects a …

On June 3, on one of the stormiest days in Paris in decades, eminent diplomats met in the city to discuss the possibility of convening an international peace conference between the Israelis and the Palestinians. To bring peace between these two protagonists, the international, community will most definitely need a display of power, similar to the one by the elements …

That the oil age shall not be over because of the exiguity of oil just as the stone-age didn’t end due to the shortage of stones is a phrase which is being used as an opening line, of late, for many of the editorials and articles sprinkled along the vast expanses of World Wide Web. The recent seismic shifts in …