The European Union’s foreign policy chief on Monday criticized the lack of international attention being paid to Afghanistan despite the suffering of the people.
In a speech to EU ambassadors on Monday, Joseph Borrell told countries not to only look at the Ukrainian crisis.
The United States’ newly released national security strategy calls for restrained use of the American military in the Middle East.
Instead, it prioritizes “out-competing China and constraining Russia” while criticizing the expanded missions of U.S. wars in recent decades.
Cracks have emerged in their marriage of convenience, but the two autocrats are in it for the long haul.
Anyone who has been in a relationship knows there are good days and not so good days. While trust and respect are the bedrock of healthy partnerships, transactional and even toxic relationships have proven, time and again, to be just as durable. Sometimes more so. That is why Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s marriage of convenience will endure, not despite Russia’s recent battlefield setbacks, but because of them.
Beijing is Poised to Dominate the Low End of the Arms Market
Shortly after Russia’s annual military expo concluded in August, Alexander Mikheyev, the head of the country’s state arms export agency, predicted that revenues from Russian arms exports in 2022 would be down 26 percent from last year. Russia remains the world’s second-largest arms exporter after the United States, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute; it would take a far larger drop in revenues to change that. But it has become clear that since Moscow’s disastrous decision to invade Ukraine in February, the Russian military’s need to replace its own equipment, U.S.-led sanctions, and buyers’ concerns about Russian equipment’s performance on the battlefield have reduced Russia’s ability to export weapons.
Iran is working on a major project to link its national grid with Russia and other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization through a transmission line in the east of the Caspian Sea, an official said.
In an interview with IRNA, the Iranian energy minister’s adviser in international affairs said efforts are underway to connect the country’s national grid to Russia and other SCO member states through a transmission line passing through Turkmenistan.
The U.S. has the power to stop North Korean missile tests but has chosen not to do so. This is true not only of the Biden administration but also its predecessors. The U.S. has continually decided to adopt feeble options.
Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s foreign minister, says Daesh group has lost its ability to carry out operations in Afghanistan, adding that it; therefore, targets defenseless people in the country.
After their husbands’ killings, these women desperately sought to protect their sons from ongoing violence, even as they are largely shunned by society.
Every time Jameela Begum, 46, wants to talk to her late husband, she digs out a worn photo album from an old wooden almirah.
How Beijing’s Aggression Pushed New Delhi to the West
In June 2020, the Chinese and Indian militaries clashed in the Galwan Valley, a rugged and remote area along the disputed border between the two countries. Twenty Indian and at least four Chinese soldiers were killed, and debate flared about the long-term implications of the skirmishes. Some analysts believed the Sino-Indian relationship would soon return to normal, with regular high-level meetings, increased Chinese investment in India, defense exchanges, and multilateral coordination. Record-high bilateral trade and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s trip to India in March 2022 seemed to support the notion that the two countries could set aside the border dispute and keep strengthening ties. So, too, did Chinese and Indian officials’ agreement in September to pull back from confrontational positions along one of the sections of the border in the Ladakh region where the militaries had been facing off since 2020.
Security at Home, Influence Abroad
In April 2022, Chinese President Xi Jinping gave a speech on foreign policy at the Boao Forum for Asia, an annual conference of business executives and world leaders in Hainan Province. In it, he proposed what he called Quanqiu Anquan Changyi, or the Global Security Initiative (GSI), which he framed as “promoting the common security of the world.” Xi offered few details of how the initiative might be put into practice, however, and with Western governments intensely focused on Russia’s unfolding war in Ukraine, the speech did not receive much attention.