Space stations are the harbinger of a deepening bipolarity in the international relations of space. The United States leads the International Space Station (ISS), and will lead whatever comes after it, but it is no longer seen as the uncontested unipolar power in space. China now also has a national space station, named Tiangong, which represents a momentous achievement for the country’s space program.
Secular countries in the developing world are using religion to knit their constituent peoples into a nation. Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and Myanmar are recent examples. Why is this so?
While developed countries in the West have knit their diverse peoples into a nation on the basis of “citizenship” and not ethnicity or religion, in many parts of the developing world, countries are increasingly using religion and/or ethnicity to knit their constituent peoples into a nation.
On November 30, 2022, the Islamic State (ISIS) spokesman Abu ‘Umar Al-Muhajir announced the death of ISIS leader Abu Al-Hasan Al-Hashemi Al-Qurashi in battle and the appointment of a new leader, fourth since the inception of the organization, known as Abu Al-Husayn Al-Husayni Al-Qurashi.[1]
On September 4, 2022, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the Iran-backed Afghan Shi’ite militia, the Fatemiyoun Brigade, had begun training its fighters to operate drones at the airport at Palmyra in Syria.[1] The Syrian opposition website also noted that officials from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were training the militia.
The Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) is speeding up its design of a common payment system, which has been closely discussed for nearly a year with the Chinese under the stewardship of Sergey Glazyev, the EAEU’s minister in charge of Integration and Macro-economy.
India and issues relating to the country figure large in the latest US Department of Defense (Pentagon) report to Congress released on Tuesday. It needs to be emphasised that this is a report of a major US department which spends a great deal of money on ensuring the security of the United States (US). The money is appropriated by the US Congress, and therefore, there is often a tendency to overstate threats or to make them sound more immediate than they actually are. At the same time, while the Pentagon may be guilty of overstatement, its assessments are not figments of their imagination, but extrapolations of actual developments on the ground.
The splendour of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s crowning moment where he wangled a third term during the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the rising protests by demonstrators calling an end to his signature zero-COVIDstrategy and even seeking his ouster are a study in contrast. As Xi commences his third term in office, he is confronted with a virulent resurgence of the pandemic, which has kicked in lockdowns in cities, and simmering discontent that has led to protests in universities across the nation.
In order to fill the depleted ranks of the Russian army fighting in Ukraine, Moscow is making it easier for persons with dual citizenship to be drafted and serve and for those with citizenship in other countries to volunteer to serve in the Russian armed forces.
Chinese influence in Africa is high on the global agenda, as China within just a few decades has become a key political and economic power in the continent. Indeed, its emergence as a dominant economic and political actor might be the most important development in Africa since the end of the Cold War. This paper analyses China’s economic and political relations with Africa beginning in the 1990s. It argues that the concern is not that China has expanded its economic and political presence in the African continent; rather, that the other stakeholders have ignored it for long.
The latest issue of “Voice of Khurasan,” an English-language monthly magazine published by Al-Azaim Foundation, the media arm of the Islamic State’s Khurasan Province (ISIS-K), eulogizes the slain Indian jihadi fighter Abu Khalid al-Hindi, condemns Egyptian Islamic scholar Yusuf Al-Qaradawi for digressing from shari’a and for supporting the regimes in Qatar and Turkey, and is sharply critical of Hamas, the Afghan Taliban, and the Muslim Brotherhood, all of whom, the magazine declares, are working for Iran and the U.S.