Page 7 - Fast Thinking News Today

FAST THINKING: Is the Iraq War over… again? Fast Thinking by Atlantic Council JUST IN First Afghanistan, now Iraq. Seven years after US troops returned to the country to fight ISIS, US President Joe Biden and Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi announced on Monday that the American combat mission in Iraq will wrap up by year’s end. As the US military formally transitions to an advisory role with ...

FAST THINKING: Nord Stream 2 gets the green light Fast Thinking by Atlantic Council JUST IN It’s no longer just a pipe dream. Berlin and Washington have ended years of political wrangling by striking a deal over the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which is slated to deliver natural gas from Russia to Germany. Critics have long argued that the project will increase Russia’s geopolitical influenc...

FAST THINKING: Biden’s China policy is coming into focus Fast Thinking by Atlantic Council GET UP TO SPEED Corporate America is on notice. This week, the Biden administration warned businesses that investing or operating supply chains in Xinjiang province, where China’s repression of the Uighur people includes reports of slave labor, “could run a high risk of violating US law.” Then on Friday, th...

FAST THINKING: The geopolitics of Iran’s kidnapping plot Fast Thinking by Atlantic Council GET UP TO SPEED It sounds like a Hollywood script. The United States has indicted four Iranians and accused them of a scheme to abduct the Iranian-American journalist and activist Masih Alinejad from her New York home. The Iranian regime-backed group had planned to take Alinejad out to sea by speedboat and eventu...

FAST THINKING: What Biden’s airstrikes left behind Fast Thinking by Atlantic Council GET UP TO SPEED The fight isn’t over. The Iraqi government on Monday sharply criticized US airstrikes that took place overnight in Iraq and Syria. President Joe Biden’s first known strikes in Iraq hit operations and weapons-storage targets that the United States says were used by Iran-backed militias to attack Amer...

What forms of cooperation will the charter unleash for democracies? What will it mean for the struggle between democracies and autocracies?

FAST THINKING: Europe strikes back at Belarus Fast Thinking by Atlantic Council GET UP TO SPEED How do you respond to air piracy by Europe’s last dictator? After Belarusian authorities forced a Ryanair passenger jet flying through their airspace to land so they could imprison dissident blogger Roman Protasevich, world leaders are scrambling to put the screws on the country’s president, Alyaksandr Luk...

Our experts break down the White House meeting between US President Joe Biden and South Korean President Moon Jae-in on North Korea, space, trade, and more.

FAST THINKING: Mars, with Chinese characteristics Fast Thinking by Atlantic Council GET UP TO SPEED It’s a Red Planet traffic jam. This weekend China announced that its rover, Zhurong, had touched down on Mars—a massive step forward for the country’s space aspirations. The US rover program, which recently launched a helicopter over Mars, is considered more advanced. But Zhurong, which boasts an imp...

FAST THINKING: How bad will Israeli-Palestinian violence get? Fast Thinking by Atlantic Council GET UP TO SPEED A new conflict has erupted on an old battleground. Israeli bombings of the Gaza Strip intensified today, following Hamas rocket attacks on Israel. It’s the worst outbreak of violence there in at least seven years and has left dozens dead, mostly in Gaza. The attacks follow weeks of tensions a...