Taiwan

Chinese intelligence, military, and political agencies view Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa’s strategy of integrating foreign fighters into the institutions of the new Syrian state (by transforming them into regular military units such as the 84th or 88th Divisions and granting...

Turkey and Saudi Arabia have announced ambitious plans to cooperate on renewable energy, as both countries aim to deploy vast amounts of clean power. Saudi Arabia has already invested heavily in Turkey’s solar power sector and aims to deepen its...

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney supports a new global defense bank called the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB), which aims to help allied countries rearm. The bank is looking to raise around €100 billion ($116 billion) to provide low-cost...

Top officials from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan will meet in Istanbul on Monday for the first committee meeting under the “Mecca Joint Defence Agreement,” which they signed earlier this month. This agreement aims to strengthen their collective defense against...

Icelanders voted against joining the European Union, with 52.8% rejecting the government’s proposal to reopen membership talks. The decision reflects a strong sentiment that the nation’s fishing waters are too valuable to risk. After over a decade of debate, the...

This is Weekend Update #200. When I wrote the first of these, in November 2022, I certainly did not expect to be producing these close to four years later. I just went back and read my first update, which was quite...

A few years ago, France was the dominant foreign security partner across much of the Sahel. Today, its troops are gone from Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, and Burkina Faso has severed diplomatic relations with Paris altogether (Reuters, 2026a). In its...

Five ships a day where a hundred used to sail. Six months after the US-Israel strikes on Iran, the world’s most critical energy chokepoint has not merely slowed, it has effectively stopped. The numbers describe a disruption without modern precedent....

The G20 was cartographed because the world economy had become too interconnected to be managed by a handful of powerful states. In 2026, that principle faces an unusual test. Under the United States presidency, Washington has narrowed the forum’s agenda,...

More traumatised civilians are arriving every day at ‘shockingly overcrowded’ El Obeid and camps on its outskirts Humanitarian conditions in the Sudanese city of El Obeid and two camps on its outskirts are dire and deteriorating, according to people on the...

At a time when the global order is in a state of flux, the 30th anniversary of the renowned yet controversial book The Clash of Civilizations & the Remaking of the World Order becomes a fitting moment for taking stock...

Back in 2015, when I was living in Brooklyn, my apartment flooded. My landlord, who owned a bunch of apartments, offered to put me up in temporary accommodations. He and his girlfriend were going to be out of town for...

Bangladesh’s planned J-10CE purchase could significantly strengthen its airpower while tying that capability more closely to Chinese weapons, support networks and supply chains. This month, multiple media outlets reported that Bangladesh is moving toward one of its largest defense procurements...

While Bishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the Holy See’s Secretary for Relations with States, was holding a press conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, another Catholic official landed in Moscow: CIA Director John Ratcliffe – who reportedly went to Moscow...

The Turkish leader may find himself in more trouble just because of his diplomatic successes. Egypt, Israel and the ideal of the Arab Risorgimento (resurgence) are in his path. If there is one thing that cannot be downplayed, it is...

Taiwan has proposed an 18% increase in its defense budget for 2027, pushing military spending above 3% of GDP as Chinese military and political pressure grows. The move comes as the United States remains engaged in its six-month war with...

The war between the United States, Israel, and Iran has caused the oil and gas import bill of the world to swell by as much as $330 billion over the six months between March and August. That’s despite a smaller-than-feared...

The Confederation of Sahel States (Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger) increasingly use a security-for-resources barter model for fighting against growing terrorism in West Africa. They trade vital natural assets like gold, uranium, and lithium in exchange for military protection, weapons,...

For years, the economic case for solar came with an awkward qualification. Yes, it had no fuel bill. Yes, its operating costs were low. And yes, over the life of a project it could already produce cheaper electricity than a...

After a delayed start under the previous government, Mexico is now well on its way to undergoing a green transition. President Claudia Sheinbaum has launched an energy reform that opens Mexico’s energy sector to greater private investment and focuses on...

The United States’ energy grid is under extreme duress as rapid electrification and energy demand place increasing and unprecedented demand on transmission infrastructure. The artificial intelligence boom is sending energy demand rates into the stratosphere as hyperscalers race to develop...

Mette-Marit was 25 years old and a single mother when she met Norway’s Crown Prince Haakon in 1999. They began their relationship secretly, but the news eventually came out. Mette-Marit pushed back against media portrayals of her as a Cinderella...

The US government is exploring an unusual legal route for dealing with Iranian oil and ships captured as part of its blockade: bringing back a wartime maritime system that has barely been used for generations, according to Bloomberg. The Justice Department,...

Italian opposition parties have criticized an attack on press freedom after RAI, the state broadcaster, removed veteran journalist Sigfrido Ranucci from hosting its main investigative show, “Report.” Government allies support the decision, reflecting a debate over RAI’s independence, as its...

The upcoming official visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Egypt, scheduled for August 30 to September 3, 2026, coincides with the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit. The visit will address economic and technological cooperation, as well as regional and...

Azerbaijan is one of the world’s oldest oil producers and exporters, having pumped crude since the mid-19th century, and remains a major global oil producer. It has long relied on oil and gas to meet its energy needs and as...

Good things are happening! Meta gets a very expensive timeout, regulators kill a killer weedkiller, big money gets the cold shoulder, and Trump’s trans-care crackdown gets blocked. You Love To See It is a benefit of a Lever paid subscription. If...

On 11 February, NATO launched Arctic Sentry — Swedish Gripen jets patrolling Greenlandic airspace, German Eurofighters overhead, nine flags behind a single new command. Officially, it answers Russian submarines in the GIUK gap. Unofficially, it arrived three weeks after Donald...

Adam P. Liff’s book is a concise yet conceptually rich contribution to the study of the Taiwan Strait. It argues that the US allies are more autonomous, which is empirically convincing but not fully causal. While the book challenges US-centrism,...

Rivalry between the United States and China plays a pivotal role in the geopolitical dynamics of Southeast Asia. There are many challenging decisions to be made, starting with the South China Sea and continuing on through the global supply chain....

Africa does not simply have a shortage of capital. Its deeper problem is that the capital mobilized by its financial systems does not consistently reach firms in the form, at the maturity, and on the terms they need to invest,...

On August 26, the Himalayas seemed to move. An enormous mass of ice and rock broke loose near the Nepal-Tibet border, plunging into the Lhende Khola River and unleashing a wall of water, mud, boulders and debris down the mountain...

This article first appeared in Pacific Forum and is republished with permission. Read the original here. There are multiple interpretations of where the India-China relationship stands today. Is there a thaw? Are the two sides gradually moving toward a reset?...

Central Claim The diplomatic traffic through Tehran this week, Qatar, Pakistan and Oman all visiting in seven days, has generated the appearance of momentum toward reopening the Strait of Hormuz. The substance tells a different story. Iran is not negotiating...

In the wake of setbacks over Iran, stalled Middle East diplomacy, and hollow peacemaking claims, Donald Trump is scrambling for any foreign policy win he can claim—real or manufactured. His latest gambit? A disastrous last-ditch push to drag Russia into...

The war propaganda machine in the US is a ceaseless, multifaceted contraption that includes legacy media, the educational system and the entertainment industry. A nation does not eviscerate tens of millions of “enemy” civilians without first laying a meticulous foundation...

As rescue and recovery efforts continue in the areas that were flooded along the border between Nepal and China on Wednesday, the danger of a second flood is building as a barrier lake has been formed by a landslide dam...

Islam Times - Donald Trump has long portrayed himself as a master of the “deal,” but the war with Iran has put that claim to a serious test. A professional negotiator must manage the cost of reaching an agreement, rather...

There is, once again, something both depressing and hilarious about Washington’s search for a Trump foreign-policy doctrine. Well over a year into Trump’s second term, the exercise has resumed with the same misplaced confidence that animated it in 2017: op-ed...