In The News

Caixin: One Belt, One Road as China’s 21st Century Marshall Plan?

David Vines May 17, 2017
China could be on its way to leading the global economy, helped by One Belt, One Road. David Vines, writing for Caixin, compares the initiative to the Marshall Plan during the last century, which benefited Europe and Japan. China, with big investments in infrastructure, could emerge as a leader in setting rules and standards for global governance, but Vines points to two risks: First, “The Belt...

The Washington Times: Resolving the Afghanistan Crisis

Seyed Hossein Mousavian April 26, 2017
Peace has evaded Afghanistan for decades. The Russians fought in Afghanistan from 1979 until 1989. The brutal Taliban regime, a minority group, took control in the 1990s until the US-led invasion in 2001. Since 2001, the United States and its allies tried to rebuild communities with schools, agriculture projects, road construction, clinics and more. “By early 2017, the situation had deteriorated...

The Diplomat: Will Central Asia Water Wars Derail China's Silk Road?

Nishtha Chugh March 31, 2017
China continues to expand influence with its modern version of the Silk Road, a “prodigiously bold economic ambition to connect with potentially 40 countries across Europe, Asia, and Africa,” reports Nishtha Chugh. “The vast economic corridors and infrastructural network, when fully functional, will potentially give China unprecedented access to 60 percent of the world’s population and a third of...

Congress Overrides Obama on Bill Allowing 9/11 Lawsuits Against Saudi Arabia

Joe Gould September 30, 2016
US Congress defied some of the nation's top military commanders by overriding President Barack Obama’s veto of a law allowing those who lost family members in the 9/11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia in US courts. The country is a key US ally in the Middle East, but most of the 19 attackers who used commercial jets to attack New York and Washington in 2001 were Saudi citizens. Analysts have long...

Uzbekistan Juggles Ties With Russia, China, Other Great Powers

Dilip Hiro September 13, 2016
Uzbekistan in Central Asia commands enormous attention from great powers, and Islam Abduganievich Karimov was adept at exploiting such interest. His death will do little to change the country’s manipulative or authoritarian ways, suggests author Dilip Hiro: “Karimov succeeded in getting the better of all three world powers, offering them what each needed at a particular time: local oil and gas...

Taliban Calls for Aid in Areas Ravaged by Quake

Mirwais Harooni and Ashraf Hamid October 27, 2015
A 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck a remote parts of northeastern Afghanistan and Pakistan, leaving at least 300 dead with more than 4000 homes and compounds destroyed. Complicating search and rescue are aftershocks, harsh winter weather, mountainous terrain, Afghanistan’s heavy dependence on foreign aid combined with threats of attacks by extremist groups who resent Western influences. “But the...

The Silk Road – Old and New

Nayan Chanda October 26, 2015
In the summer of 2011, the US secretary of state called for a “new Silk Road” throughout Asia, investment in trade and infrastructure to counter extremism. China used the term But then China used the term for its own ambitious plans. “President Xi Jinping launched with fanfare an ambitious New Silk Road project on land and sea,” writes Nayan Chanda for Global Asia, a publication of the East Asia...