Americans may not even know that China has struck the first blow until months after it has occurred… Americans think China’s war planners think like America’s war planners. Unfortunately, the Chinese ones do not. First strikes, despite what former intelligence officials believe, do not have to look like the invasion of Normandy in 1944.
The Wakhan Corridor, a narrow strip of territory in the Badakhshan Province of Afghanistan, is situated at the crossroads of four countries: China, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Wakhan Corridor is about 350 km long with 16 to 64 km wide at its eastern end, the corridor forks into two prongs that wrap around a salient of Chinese territory, forming the 92 km boundary between the two countries.
The difficult reality is that we may never know what would push Putin to make the decision to go nuclear…. The U.S. objective should be to deter him: make the potential cost to him so high that it would be suicidal for him even to try.
The clearest and most welcome statement was made by Biden himself in March: he stated, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”
“While the majority of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Parliament chants ‘Death to America’ & supports the Khamenei loyal police for their barbaric actions the leader of the free world (Joe Biden) is silent. Why?” — Iranian Americans for Liberty, Twitter, October 2, 2022.
Nika Shakarami, a 17-year-old girl, was one of the many women who was arrested for burning her hijab. According to the forensic doctor, she was repeatedly raped, beaten and her dead body was delivered to her family with smashed nose and broken skull.
In the latest of a 16-year effort to eradicate the al Qaeda-linked terror group al Shabaab, a new militia of farmers become the first line of defence in the battle for Somalia’s stability.
Deep in the Buloburde bush in the Hiiraan region of central Somalia, there’s a ragtag regiment gathering around a missile launcher.
On October 6, former US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy joined the Atlantic Council to discuss, ahead of China’s Twentieth Communist Party Congress, how the United States should invest in military capabilities in the short term to deter China in the 2020s. Below, edited for length and clarity, is her conversation with Clementine Starling, the deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Forward Defense practice.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has ordered the energy ministry to work on building a gas hub in Turkey following talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the issue, NTV and other news channels reported on Friday.
On the eve of the opening of a key Chinese Communist Party congress, party leader, head of state and commander of the armed forces Xi Jinping seems more in charge than ever, having given no indication of stepping away from power or anointing a successor.
China’s support for ruling parties undermines its ability to be an impartial arbiter of conflict resolution in the Horn of Africa and highlights China’s use of mediation to pursue its geostrategic interests.
China launched the “Outlook on Peace and Development in the Horn of Africa” in March 2022 to facilitate a Chinese-led peace process in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. Since then, China’s special envoy to the Horn of Africa, Xue Bing, has made a series of whirlwind visits to the region. China’s flurry of diplomatic activity in the Horn has raised eyebrows and a growing number of concerns in the region, however.
As concerns grow of a possible nuclear conflict between Russia and the West over Ukraine, there are hopes China could defuse the crisis.
But Russia’s most influential ally may not have the desire or the ability to help, according to analysts.
“If any power has influence over Putin, it is China,” said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS University of London’s China Institute.