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.
The international community has a moral obligation to speak up but will not; morality is not a factor in the affairs of the world. Pakistan needs to present a narrative to the world but it is too incompetent to do it and displays criminal indifference to the matter.
Caving in to Saudi and UAE demands that it break its ties to Islamists and militants and curb, if not shutter, Qatar-funded media like Al Jazeera, would amount to Qatar surrendering its ability to chart its own course, and like Bahrain becoming a Saudi vassal.
The Indian Defense Minister Arun Jatley visited the frontlines on the currently active Line of Control (LoC). After meeting field commanders and troops deployed on the Forward Defended Localities (FDLs), he expressed his satisfaction over the morale of the troops and called upon them to maintain heightened vigil.
The US is deliberating upon a military-heavy policy option to turn the tables in Afghanistan since it employed the GBU 43 bomb against IS last month in Nangarhar. A change in policy was deemed necessary because of Taliban’s swift and unabated resurgence. There have been many deliberations and statements but McMaster is the first senior official who has talked about the new policy applying to Pakistan too.
Pakistan’s tenuous house is built on a torturous effort to balance relations with Saudi Arabia and Iran amid rising tension between the two regional rivals, prevent Pakistan from becoming an operational base for possible Saudi and US efforts to destabilize the Islamic republic, and employ militant groups as proxies in achieving its geopolitical objectives.
American efforts in Afghanistan are back to square one these days as a second troop surge seems to be on the cards, recently General Nicholson apprised the Senate that thousands of troops are required in Afghanistan as the U.S. mission is in a ‘stalemate’, he also went on to admit that the Taliban had gained at least 15% more ground in 2016 even though 13,000 international troops remained in the country.
American efforts in Afghanistan are back to square one these days as a second troop surge seems to be on the cards, recently General Nicholson apprised the President Trump’s Pakistan policy is entirely different from his electoral rhetoric, up till now he has not done anything that goes specifically against Pakistan’s interests.
Increasingly caught up in the Middle East’s multiple conflicts, Pakistan is struggling to balance relations with rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran amid concern in Islamabad that potential US-Saudi efforts to destabilize the Islamic republic could turn its crucial province of Baluchistan, a lynchpin in China’s One Belt, One Road initiative, into a battleground.
Pakistan politely declined to attend the US’ “Summit for Democracy” after earlier being invited to participate alongside over 100 others. Islamabad told Washington that it values their bilateral relations and reaffirmed its democracy commitments in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ press release about its decision.
The 21st century’s Great Game is about the creation of a new Eurasia-centered world. It locks China, Russia, India, Japan, and Europe into what is an epic battle.
