The Biden administration’s announcement in mid-April to withdraw American troops looks like a positive first step in the right direction in ending America’s longest military conflict to date. Undoubtedly, questions remain about the sincerity of such a withdrawal, and whether there will still be a residual military presence left over under the cloak of “counterterrorism” or some type of arrangement with private defense contractors to maintain order in the graveyard of empires.
Looking back, it was rather amusing all the stops the corporate press pulled out to derail former president Donald Trump’s previous attempts to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. The Russian bounty program took the cake as the most significant news story used to thwart Trump’s sensible withdrawal proposal in Afghanistan. On that occasion, the media started spreading stories about Russian military intelligence paying militants connected to the Taliban bounties for killing Americans and allied armed f
Joe Biden s first budget proposal indicates that the US is leaving Donald Trump s non-interventionist diplomacy behind and embracing an expansionist approach with a.
Ahead of a landmark summit with U.S. President Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin is putting down a marker in Belarus over the limits of western encroachment on Russia.
Richard Javad HeydarianProfessorial Chairholder in Geopolitics, Polytechnic University of the Philippines
“Meeting jaw-to-jaw is better than war,” the British Premiere Winston Churchill once memorably said. Since its very inception almost five decades ago, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has embraced this Churchillian dictum with gusto. The upshot is the emergence of the most successful regional integration experiment in the post-colonial world, which has often drawn direct comparisons with the European Union.
Born in the crucible of the Cold War, the regional organization has become the preeminent platform for institutionalized dialogue and constructive multilateralism in Asia. Among its extremely diverse members, even the threat of use of force has become virtually unthinkable, while intra-regional commerce and people-to-people interaction is increasingly seamless.