India’s Security Policy: Balancing Its Russia Dilemma with New Partnerships

Russia's President Vladimir Putin, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and China's President Xi Jinping during the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, June 2019. Photo credit: REUTERS

Introduction: Recurring Pakistani And Growing Chinese Challenges   India faces disputed boundaries and territorial claims with both Pakistan and China. Though the direct threat from Pakistan has become less salient, the boundary dispute with China remains a massive problem. Furthermore at a time when the US and China are locked in a global competition, China’s assertiveness […]

Southeast Asia between Major Powers: Lessons for the Middle East

US President Joe Biden with ASEAN leaders during the 2022 ASEAN summit in Cambodia, November 2022. Photo credit: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarqu

I once asked a Vietnamese friend what an impending leadership change in Hanoi meant for his country’s relations with China. “Every Vietnamese leader,” he replied, “must get along with China; every Vietnamese leader must stand up to China; and if you cannot do both at the same time, you don’t deserve to be the leader.” […]

The New Great Game for Leadership in Asia

US President Joe Biden meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 in Bali, November 2022. Photo credit: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

The strategic complexion of Asia has shifted substantially in recent years. The United States is no longer the predominant military, diplomatic, and economic power across the region, as it was for the last half of the 20th century and the first decade of this century. China actively contests American leadership as it strives to restore […]

Russia-Ukraine Information Warfare and the Challenge for Liberal Democracies

Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen on a screen broadcasting Russian TV news programs in Mariupol. Photo credit: REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

On November 15, 2022, NATO and Russia had a tense moment that might have escalated into a military confrontation. A missile hit a Polish village near the Polish-Ukrainian border, killing two civilians. Associated Press cited unnamed Western officials that it was a Russian missile. It might have been the basis for Poland invoking Article 5, […]

American Military Guarantees Boost Ukraine’s and NATO’S Long-Term Prospects

US President Joe Biden during the press conference at NATO Summit in Madrid, Spain on June 30, 2022. Photo credit: Jakub Porzycki via Reuters Connect

Introduction  In a hard-hitting essay published here in the Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, A Year of War, the Washington Institute’s Anna Borshchevskaya paints a sobering picture of what Ukrainians, and all in NATO, face. She argues that Russians view the war as an existential struggle for their future. Washington and the rest of NATO are now rightly ensuring that at a minimum […]

How Would Republicans Conduct American Foreign Policy Today?

Governor Ron DeSantis gets ready to speak during a campaign rally former US President Donald Trump in Florida, October 2018. Photo credit: REUTERS

The global order is changing rapidly. China is brokering normalization between Iran and Saudi Arabia while the United States brokers normalization between Arab states and Israel. Turkey and Russia are both antagonists and collaborators in multiple hot spots. Ukraine’s military is proving stronger than Russia’s. Alliances and friendships in the Indo-Pacific are coalescing against Chinese […]

A Year of War

Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in a ceremony on the "Defender of the Fatherland Day" in Moscow, February 23, 2023. Photo credit: via REUTERS

A year after invading Ukraine, Vladimir Putin defines the war as an existential battle for Russia’s survival. In a classic case of the aggressor blaming the victim, Putin says the West invaded Russia using Ukraine. “It’s they [the West] who have started the war. And we are using force to end it,” he said on […]

How Russia Used Gas Exports to Try to Overthrow a Government

New Moldovan Prime Minister Dorin Recean kneels down in front of a state flag as President Maia Sandu stands nearby during an inauguration ceremony in Chisinau, Moldova, February 16, 2023. Photo credit: Reuters

To avoid receiving an energy bill she couldn’t afford, Zinaida Negruti, like countless others in Moldova, began spending more time in the dark as fall transitioned into winter. “Most of the time I don’t turn on the lights because I am worried it will be too expensive,” she says. “I try to use as little […]

Lessons of the Russo–Ukraine War

Russian President Vladimir Putin. Photo credit: via REUTERS

Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has been underway for almost nine years and is closing on one year in its current, full-scale form. What we can learn from the war’s origins and initial stages may assist us in finding the right policies to help end it on the best possible terms for Ukraine and […]

When Nation Building Works

Reconstructing the Grand al-Nuri Mosque in the old city of Mosul, Iraq. Photo credit: Credit: REUTERS

Nation building is a US policy for transforming post-conflict countries, a policy discredited among a broad swath of Washington because of Iraq and Afghanistan. But I question this consensus and recommend rehabilitating the policy in time to help reconstruct postwar Ukraine. >> Diplomatic Dispatches: Read more from Robert Silverman Didn’t the US role in postwar Japan […]