Situation update
Situation update
Situation Update on COVID-19, 20 September, 2020
Analysis
The Taliban sanctions
THE initiation of the intra-Afghan dialogue in Doha has raised optimism about achieving political reconciliation in Afghanistan. The stakeholders are apparently aware that this could be…
Analysis
How Poverty Reduction Can Survive Deglobalization
By sharply curtailing international trade, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated a trend that was already underway. It is now more important than ever for developing countries…
Republished
Can Moscow Manage a Power Transition in Belarus?
From an overripe apple that looked sure to drop into Moscow’s lap all on its own, the Belarusian regime is increasingly coming to resemble a toxic…
Republished
Foreign-policy sleepwalking: Wake up to Germany no longer being such a good ally
A line in the sublime Hilary Mantel trilogy of Henry VIII's fixer, Thomas Cromwell, perfectly encapsulates the highest aspirations of the political risk profession. The goal…
Republished
Iran’s secular shift: new survey reveals huge changes in religious beliefs
Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution was a defining event that changed how we think about the relationship between religion and modernity. Ayatollah Khomeini’s mass mobilisation of Islam…
Analysis
Biden’s foreign policy fairy tale threatens a strategic train wreck
It is mid-September, under two months until the presidential election, and it’s finally time to start taking the polls seriously. And, at present, despite some slippage,…
Republished
Time for the Palestinian people to take the initiative
As Palestinians protested against the deals signed in the White House by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the foreign ministers of the UAE and Bahrain…
Analysis
India’s silenced parliament
After a nearly six-month hiatus, the Indian parliament reconvenes today in the midst of a deepening national crisis. But I fear that it may be unable…
Situation update
Situation Update on COVID-19, 19 September, 2020
Analysis
Donald Trump’s lonely victory in the Middle East
The US president has trampled over the conventional wisdom of the whole foreign policy establishment Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan, an old…