International Relations and World Affairs

This week conflict between the U.S. and its allies in Syria against the Syrian regime, Russia, and Iran heated up. A US F-15 has shot down what has been reported as an  armed Iranian made drone  operated by Syria as well as the downing of a Syrian SU-22 strike aircraft that was shot down by a US F/A-18E a few short days earlier. The response by Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov was to pull back on coordinated communications between the different forces in the region and issue a statement claiming that any U.S. or allied aircraft incurring into the Syrian territory will be painted/tracked by Russian and its allies anti-aircraft radar and fired upon if a threat is demonstrated against forces aligned with the Kremlin Reporting on the  facts of the incidences has been somewhat consistent , but the rationale behind the attacks has been confused in interpretation by many writing on the issue. The U.S., especially under the new  Trump administration, has focused ...

Egypt’s former foreign minister, Nabil Fahmy, who also served as his country’s ambassador to the United States from 1999 until 2008, once quipped that the U.S.-Egyptian relationship was like a “mature marriage.” This was during a particularly troublesome moment when the George W. Bush administration was squabbling with then-President Hosni Mubarak over political reform. The bickering between Washington and Cairo was hard not to notice at times, but there was no breakup. Alliances are, like a lot of successful marriages, hard work. Even the best of them go through periods of tension. The “special relationship” between the U.S. and the United Kingdom has often seemed less than that, for instance. The French can be so infuriating that former President Bill Clinton reportedly dreaded dealing with his then-counterpart, Jacques Chirac. It sometimes seems that the prime directive of Canada’s foreign policy is to portray itself as the anti-America — righteous in the world, in contrast to t...

At the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman payed a state visit to China. The visit by the monarch, arguably the most strategically significant leg of his month-long Asia tour, comes as Riyadh has boosted its efforts to diversify the economy away from oil dependence, and broaden the Kingdom’s foreign partners. Although energy and trade will likely occupy an important place in the talks between the two leaders, the relations between both countries have expanded in various fields, especially in defense and security. Energy cooperation remains the foundation of relations between Saudi Arabia, the world’s top exporter of crude oil, and China, the world’s biggest importer. China’s oil consumption has risen dramatically from 2.9 million barrels per day (mbpd) in 1993 to 11.90 mbpd in 2016. Thus, oil imports have also rapidly increased, rising from zero percent in 1993 to more than 66 percent of China’s total oil supply, or around 7.6 mbpd last year....

Balance of Power Theory As a theory, balance of power predicts that rapid changes in international power and status—especially attempts by one state to conquer a region—will provoke counterbalancing actions. For this reason, the balancing process helps to maintain the stability of relations between states. A balance of power system functions most effectively when alliances are fluid, when they are easily formed or broken on the basis of expediency, regardless of values, religion, history, or form of government. Occasionally a single state plays a balancer role, shifting its support to oppose whatever state or alliance is strongest. A weakness of the balance of power concept is the difficulty of measuring power. Behavioralism An approach to the study of politics or other social phenomena that focuses on the actions and interactions among units by using scientific methods of observation to include quantification of variables whenever possible. A practitioner of behavioralism is...