Evaluates macro-level shifts in global power, including Great Power Competition, supply chain vulnerabilities, and sovereign stability. This hub translates complex political events into actionable risk assessments for institutional decision-makers.
A two-week old conflict in the Gulf goes to the core of key issues in international relations that hamper the fight against political violence and govern diplomatic relations: the absence of an agreed definition of terrorism that allows autocrats to abuse efforts to counter extremism by repressing non-violent critics and the ability of small states to chart their own course and punch above their weight.
The stakes for both sides of the Gulf divide could not be higher. Saudi Arabia and the UAE cannot afford to fail in their effort to force Qatar’s hand after leading several Arab and non-Arab states in a rupture of diplomatic relations and declaring an economic boycott that also targets Qatar’s food supplies.
Cracks have appeared in a Saudi-led, US-backed anti-terrorist political and military alliance days after US President Donald J. Trump ended a historic visit to Saudi Arabia. The cracks stem from Qatar’s long-standing fundamental policy differences with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates about Iran and the role of political Islam.
Following the 9/11 incident in 2001, US and its allied forces invaded Afghanistan in a bid to eliminate Al-Qaida and Taliban, their safe-heavens and free the country from their “oppression.” Apart from providing billons of aids for reconstruction and development of Afghanistan, the United States have spent $70 billion thus far to build 350,000 strong Afghan National Army and Police to fight against terrorism and provide better security to the people.
To Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the 2011 Arab popular revolts that toppled autocratic leaders in four countries and sparked the rise of Islamist forces posed a mortal threat. In response, the two countries launched a counterrevolution that six years later continues to leave a trail of brutal repression at home and spilt blood elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa.
The stakes are far higher than when Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain withdrew their ambassadors from Doha in 2014 for a period of ten months, but failed to force Qatar to change its policies. Saudi Arabia and the UAE by now also breaking off economic ties are also seeking to disrupt Qatar’s air, sea and land links and complicate its exports and imports, and particularly its food supplies.
In Afghanistan, Pakistan has been scapegoated for a while – tactical failures and strategic reverses are conveniently justified by blaming it on Pakistan. It is fashionable for our own intellectuals to join in the chorus and blame the infamous Establishment. At times, I feel that Pakistan would be a better place to live in and things would be so much more stable and peaceful if this establishment was taken out of the equation.
Amid ruckus and mayhem in Afghanistan, top US officials, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, have given a good account of what is the offing for the country. The day president Ghani offered an olive branch to the Taliban, James Mattis rejected the very idea.
A Saudi and UAE-led campaign to force Qatar to halt its support for Islamists and militants is little else than a struggle to establish a Saudi-dominated regional order in the Middle East and North Africa that suppresses any challenge to the kingdom’s religiously cloaked form of autocratic monarchy.
There seems to be an endeavor to prove that we can do without Kashmir and it should not be central to our relations with India. People have quoted from history, that it was we who invaded in 1948, sending in tribesmen into Kashmir and that India was justified in sending troops at the request of the Maharaja and Hyderabad was offered in exchange etc.
