It’s not a New START. It’s a False START. It’s funny. The United States (and Russia) agree that when placed on bomber aircraft, as many as twenty warheads count as one. They then announce that the New START treaty has reduced the binding caps on deployed warheads by 30% and congratulate themselves. The New York ...
The Taliban’s actions signal a different message from their words Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s spokesman, has been dressed up to sound like a realist. “It’s possible for the Taliban and India to reconcile with each other” he told his interviewer, “(our) complaint is that India backed the (Northern Alliance) and is now supporting the Karzai ...
Barack Obama’s appalling habit of kicking his allies So he flew 13 hours non-stop to Kabul to personally scold his host about not doing enough to tackle corruption in Afghanistan. You will be forgiven for thinking that Barack Obama’s host, Hamid Karzai, didn’t have to worry about taliban types conducting brazen urban warfare right in ...
Walls are better than bridges Nirupama Subramanian, The Hindu’s outgoing Islamabad correspondent, files her last report from the country (well actually, city) she covered for the last four years. Indians and Pakistanis, she concludes: “cannot be friends as long as we continue looking at each other through the narrow prism of our respective states. Pakistanis ...
Wal-Mart provides shelf-space. The goods come from China Gordon C Chang puts it really well: The significance of Khan’s assertions is that they undermine the stout Chinese defense of Iran. First, they highlight long-held Iranian ambitions to build an atomic arsenal. Second, by detailing how the Pakistani government was involved in nuclear transfers to Iran, ...
…but outside the corridors of power Ashley J Tellis’s testimony before the US House of Representatives subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia is one of the most clear-headed assessments in Washington. The only lasting solution to this danger is to press Pakistan to target groups such as LeT conclusively. Many in the United ...
Trying to understand why terrorists are attacking Lahore As Pakistan’s internal jihadi civil war intensifies, it is important to note that the groups targeting Pakistani cities—specifically the Pakistani army and law-enforcement agencies—are not the same ones as those that the Pakistani military establishment uses to attack India. It is highly likely that the perpetrators of ...
Empowering women is not quite the same as creating powerful women (From this blog’s archives, a post first published on August 23rd, 2005.) No nation can stand proud if it discriminates against any of its citizens. Certainly no society can claim to be part of the modern civilized world unless it treats its women on ...
Defence expenditure is the premium paid to insure against the failure of foreign policy A good defence strategy is one that manages the risks of foreign policy going wrong for one reason or the other. It might turn out that foreign policy was based on the wrong presumptions, or unexpected events might upset the geopolitical ...
Did the Ayatollah qualify for a PIO card? From Hooman Majd’s excellent The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran: Some secular Persian intellectuals … reserve a special hatred for Ayatollah Khomeini, not just because he founded the Islamic Republic, but because to them he wasn’t even Persian. Since his paternal grandfather was ...