The writer is a former ambassador to the US, UK and UN.
AT this time of the year many reports and assessments are published looking at the year ahead, identifying global dynamics and forecasting geopolitical shifts. They usually offer a big picture view of trends as well as global risks.
There is little doubt that the coronavirus pandemic that dominated 2020 will continue to be the overwhelming challenge across the world. Managing its economic fallout will preoccupy and test governments everywhere. Several dynamics are in play at the start of the year another surge in Covid-19 cases in many countries and rollout of vaccines that offers the promise of eventually ending the pandemic. But mass inoculation will take time while vaccine distribution will be uneven with richer countries having greater access to supplies while poorer states will have to wait.
Author SIR JOHN JENKINS December 31, 2020 Short Url https://arab.news/ynsv8 It is always sobering to revisit your own predictions. So, before I started writing this piece about the region in 2020 and what we might expect in 2021 I went back to what I wrote last year. I started with what had happened…
World 9:28 AM EST
Syria’s civil war has grown ever more complex in the six years since protesters first challenged the government. President Bashar al-Assad aims to reassert control nationwide, while predominantly Sunni Arab opposition forces seek to wrest the state from him. The diverse groups making up the opposition, however, differ on their visions for a post-Assad state, with their ostensible aims ranging from liberal democracy to theocracy.
Unlike Assad and the opposition, the self-proclaimed Islamic State is intent on erasing Syria’s borders to establish a state of its own in territory spanning parts of Iraq and Syria. Kurdish militants, who have fought to establish an autonomous, if not independent, national homeland in the country’s northeast, are the group’s primary foe.
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Nuclear Policy Program
Ankit Panda is the Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Education
Ankit Panda is the Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. An expert on the Asia-Pacific region, his research interests range from nuclear strategy, arms control, missile defense, nonproliferation, emerging technologies, and U.S. extended deterrence. He is the author of
Panda was previously an adjunct senior fellow in the Defense Posture Project at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and a member of the 2019 FAS International Study Group on North Korea Policy. He has consulted for the United Nations in New York and Geneva on nonproliferation and disarmament matters, and has testified on security topics related to South Korea and Japan before the congressionally chartered U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Com