Category: Blogs

ASEAN and the Qatar Crisis

By Giorgio Cafiero

The months-old diplomatic crisis involving Qatar and the quartet—Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, and Bahrain—has given Doha more reason to push for deeper energy, trade, and investment ties with dynamic economies of the Far East. To pursue these opportunities, last month Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani travelled to Malaysia, Singapore, […]

Trump Goes to Asia: An Opportunity to Assert US Leadership

By Ashish Kumar Sen

On his first full business day as president, Donald J. Trump withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a multilateral trade agreement with eleven other Asia-Pacific nations that was viewed as a pillar of US commitment to Asia. At the height of a nuclear crisis with North Korea, he instructed his advisers to […]

Turkey’s presence in Afrin changes the Syria equation (again)

By Aaron Stein

The Turkish government, along with Iran and Russia, met this week in Astana, Kazakhstan to discuss events in Syria and the enforcement of four-de-escalation zones spread across Syria. In the previous Astana meeting in September 2017, the three sides agreed on a plan to send up to 500 Turkish troops into Idlib to man checkpoints, […]

Pragmatism Prevails over Populism in Ukraine

By Brian Mefford

Successful politics is about getting things done. By that standard, October was a successful month. Not only did the government pass sweeping healthcare reform, pension reform, and judiciary reform, it also staved off populist protests. In short, pragmatism prevailed over populism. Each of the reforms passed was significant, but healthcare reform was the most far-reaching. […]

Saudi’s ‘reforms’: Interview with Dr. H.A. Hellyer

By MENASource

The Saudi Arabian Crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, recently declared that the kingdom sought a ‘return’ to the ‘moderate Islam’ of pre-1979. The international media understandably paid a great deal of attention—but how significant is this? Martin Chulov, the Guardian’s Middle East Correspondent, asked our non-resident senior fellow, Dr HA Hellyer, some questions about it—the […]

Asia Trip Seen as Opportunity for Trump to Articulate Policy

US President Donald J. Trump’s upcoming trip to Asia presents him with an opportunity to articulate his policy toward the region and “dispel the uncertainty about US engagement that has haunted the region since January,” according to a former US official. “It is about time,” said David Shear, who served as assistant secretary of defense […]

Trump Risks Ceding World Stage to an Emboldened Xi

By Craig Hart

China steps up on climate change and United States steps down In the wake of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s reelection, the Communist Party of China has begun to take steps to realize Xi’s vision of China as an authoritative power on the world stage, adeptly exploiting the vacuum created by a lack of US leadership […]

Four Questions For Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Everyone Else

By Ben Nimmo and Graham Brookie

On October 31, Twitter, Facebook, and Google finished the first of two days of public hearings on Capitol Hill on social media’s influence on the 2016 U.S. presidential election. After a hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, the social media giants testify to the Select Committee on Intelligence […]