The promised U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan allows the Taliban to ramp up its offensive in Afghanistan. They have taken over six cities in a week while Washington and NATO stick to their plans. The Afghan forces alone, with their incompetent commanders and dependency on the U.S. military, have been unable to stop the Taliban, who are responsible for committing repeated human rights violations and imposing Sharia or Islamic law in its strictest form.
Two decades after the intervention of a U.S.-led international coalition to overthrow the Taliban, Afghanistan is once again threatened by the group, as the coalition could not be trusted to keep its promise to keep the Islamic State or al-Qaida at bay.
Unlike Iraq and Syria, where President Joe Biden found a strategy to maintain a U.S. presence, Biden plans to withdraw from Afghanistan mainly for economic reasons. The war on "global terror" unleashed by George W. Bush after 9/11 cost $1.9 trillion. The Taliban resurgence adds up to a failure of such huge amounts of money to rebuild Afghanistan. In this context, the withdrawal ordered by the White House adds even more uncertainty to the situation. The U.S. risks creating a scenario of further destabilization and a refugee crisis.
The Beijing summit did not produce a major agreement between the great powers on the region, but it firmly established that Middle Eastern crises are now deeply tied to the great-power dialogue.
Secretary Rubio’s ‘diplomatic masterstroke’ in Delhi unintentionally transformed political damage control into an involuntary roast of his own boss.
The Beijing summit did not produce a major agreement between the great powers on the region, but it firmly established that Middle Eastern crises are now deeply tied to the great-power dialogue.
During the Cold War, the United States occupied the apex of this triangular dynamic, pitting China and the USSR against each other. Today, it is Beijing that occupies that apex.
A summit that would normally send a reassuring message ... faces total uncertainty thanks to the weakness of the United States. The only person to blame for this is Trump.
Washington has demonstrated beyond any doubt that its rift with Europe is irreversible, by deliberately choosing to go to war against Iran without consulting its European allies.