Germans say the moment of truth for most children comes at the end of Grade 4 when primary education ends in Grundschule. By that reckoning, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) at 73 is in “second childishness and mere oblivion / Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything” — to borrow from Jaques’ famous soliloquy …
As UAE embraces Iran, fizz goes pop for Abraham Accords
Iran’s Dy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani (C) with diplomatic adviser to UAE President Anwar Gargash (L) and Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Khalifa Almara, Abu Dhabi, Nov. 16, 2021 The terrible secret about Faustian deals is that they need a Mephistopheles to nurture them. That said, Goethe’s Mephisto is very different from the …
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Ukraine, Belarus in the eye of the storm
President Vladimir Putin addressing the expanded meeting of the Russian Foreign Ministry Board, Moscow, November 18, 2021 Wouldn’t that be a delicious irony — the British defence secretary Ben Wallace rushing to Warsaw on Thursday to work up detailed plans to strengthen Poland’s border fence with Belarus? Britain had partnered the US in the invasion of …
Afghan Ghani makes farewell call on Biden
When the anointed king receives his vassal formally at his durbar for the first time, it is a moment of truth conveying that the latter’s obeisance is noted, while the vassal hopes to claim legitimacy. A US president is due to receive Afghan president Ashraf Ghani in the White House on Friday after a gap …
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Fizz is gone from Biden-Putin summit
The morning after a Russian-American summit is most critical to know whether the previous day’s bonhomie was real, surreal or unreal. Surveying the Geneva Summit (June 16) between presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin, I cautiously assessed the next day, “Does Biden have the political capital to press ahead with a project to create “stability and …
Gulf security paradigm in historic shift
Foreign Ministers of Cyprus, Israel and Greece and the diplomatic adviser of UAE’s President met in Paphos, Cyprus April 16, 2021 The geopolitical alignments of the Gulf region are rapidly transforming both in bilateral and multilateral formats. Starting with the rapprochement between Qatar and Saudi Arabia in January, the common thread here is that the …
US, Turkey, ISIS, al-Qaeda, Taliban make one happy family
Exactly a decade after the United States sought a pioneering role by Turkey for launching the regime change project in Syria, it has solicited help from Ankara in regard of another political transition in the Greater Middle East — in Afghanistan. Analogies never hold one hundred percent in politics or diplomacy, but the similarities are …
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The China-Iran pact is a game changer — Part I
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (R) and China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) exchange documents during the signing ceremony of a 25-year cooperation agreement, Tehran, March 27, 2021. Part I : China neutralises the US campaign on Muslim Uighur issue When China and Iran, two of the United States’ main adversaries in the contemporary …
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Russia takes charge of Nagorno-Karabakh
Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) met Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev (C) and Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan (L), Moscow, Jan. 11, 2021 The trilateral meeting of the leaderships of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Kremlin on January 11, exactly two months after the ceasefire in the 44-day Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, can be seen as a robust …
Medium and small states in the time of multipolarity
Three developments this week underscore that the growing multipolarity in the world order is inexorably loosening up established alliances that provided underpinnings previously for the United States to preserve its global hegemony through the past century. Given the magnitude of the domestic crisis in the US, it is not going to be able to reverse …
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