International Relations and World Affairs

The CPEC is an ongoing development mega project which aims to connect Gwadar Port of Pakistan to China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang, via a network of highways, railways and pipelines. The economic corridor is considered central to China–Pakistan relations and will run about 2700 km from Gwadar to Kashghar. China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and its connectivity with Central Asia, Middle East and Africa will help to shape entire region. Overall construction costs are estimated around $46 billion, with the entire project expected to be completed in several years. The Corridor is an extension of China’s proposed 21st century Silk Road initiative. This is the biggest overseas investment by China announced so far and the corridor is expected to be operational within three years. The corridor will be a strategic game changer in the region and would go a long way in making Pakistan a richer and stronger entity. The investment on the corridor will transform Pakistan into a regional...

A  theory of international relations  is a set of ideas that explains how the international system works. Unlike an ideology, a theory of international relations is (at least in principle) backed up with concrete evidence. The two major theories of international relations are realism and liberalism. National Interest Most theories of international relations are based on the idea that states always act in accordance with their  national interest, or the interests of that particular state. State interests often include self-preservation, military security, economic prosperity, and influence over other states. Sometimes two or more states have the same national interest. For example, two states might both want to foster peace and economic trade. And states with diametrically opposing national interests might try to resolve their differences through negotiation or even war. Realism According to  realism,  states work only to increase their own...

Russia has been dealing with terrorist actions since the late 20 th  century (as well as much earlier in its history if one goes back to the People’s Will movement of the late 19 th  century) and on a similar scale to the atrocities conducted in Paris by ISIS. The terrorism in its earlier phase was a reaction to the initially disastrous intervention in Chechnya, authorised by first Russian president Boris Yeltsin in December 1994. Several bombs exploding in apartment blocks in distant parts of Russia in 1999 were never satisfactorily explained. A common opinion is that they were carried out by the FSB to encourage support for a renewal of the assault on Chechnya, which took place in late 1999. In September 2001, after the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, Russia’s president offered a united front with the United States in a common cause against terrorism: Chechens were linked to the extremists that carried out the attacks on the World Trade Center. At that time, Presid...

Analysts and intelligence officials periodically get together to anticipate what tomorrow's terrorists might do. Will terrorists threaten mass destruction with nuclear weapons or global pandemics with designer pathogens? Will cities be contaminated with dirty bombs? Will tech-savvy terrorists remotely sabotage power grids or other vital infrastructure via the internet? Are terrorists capable of triggering electromagnetic pulses that fry electronics, reducing modern technology-dependent society to a Mad Max movie? Will they shoot down airliners with hand-held missiles or bring them down with miniaturized bombs concealed in laptops or perhaps surgically implanted? Will they attack crowds in stadiums with drones carrying hand grenades or anthrax or merely white powder to provoke deadly panics? Or might there be a mass uprising of individual fanatics ramming trucks into pedestrians, attacking diners with machetes, and carrying out other primitive, but nearly-impossible-to-preve...

Islamophobia is a potent factor, but not the whole story June 20 was “World Refugee Day,” but the following days witnessed strong debates over the refugee issue inside China. Many Chinese newspapers and websites highlighted the news of Yao Chen, who is a famous Chinese movie and TV star, visiting foreign refugees in both China and abroad. Those reports about refugees were viewed by Chinese public as attempts to “create a public atmosphere,” or a sign that Chinese government is preparing to accept Middle East refugees (an assumption made largely because of the official background of Chinese news agencies). Countless discussions and petitions denouncing Yao Chen and the possibility of China accepting refugees have emerged, not only on social media sites such as Weibo and WeChat, but also on several leading internet blogs. Public surveys show that a massive majority of Chinese (in some surveys, nearly 99 percent) strongly oppose t...

South Korean President Moon Jae-in oversaw the test firing of a new land-launched ballistic missile with an estimated range of 800 kilometers at 10:30 am Friday morning, the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae (Blue House) announced in a statement on June 23.       " The new 800-kilometer missile can purportedly hit targets anywhere in the North" . “President Moon visited the test site at the Agency for Defense Development this morning, where he observed the test-firing of the ballistic missile and inspected the readiness posture against possible missile threats from North Korea,” Blue House spokesperson Park Soo-hyun said in a briefing. The missile test is seen as a strong warning to North Korea. The launch was conducted by the Agency for Defense Development and occurred approximately 200 kilometers southwest of Seoul at the Anheung test site, near Taean on the country’s western coastline in South Chungcheong Province.  According  to a video released ...

The candidate that India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has put forward for the largely ceremonial post of president looks like a canny choice: Ram Nath Kovind, a longtime devotee of a Hindu group allied with the party, but also a dalit—the bottom rung in India’s caste system. He should appeal both to the party’s religiously motivated base, but also to other dalits, who make up close to 20% of the population. Given the strength of the BJP and its allies in Parliament, which elects the president, his ascent is all but assured. Narendra Modi's government is extremely sensitive to criticism The BJP is always looking for ways to shore up its support, but not all of them are so positive. When Mr Kovind’s nomination was announced, Rana Ayyub, a journalist critical of the party, lambasted the choice on Twitter. It took a spokesman for the party less than eight hours to file a complaint with the police, claiming that she was stirring up hatred on the basis of caste—an of...

But can the PTI stay in power? “They are getting away with murder,” says Khalid Masud, director of the Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar, the largest in a province long racked by insurgency. Dr Khalid was not talking of the Pakistani Taliban or other extremist groups, but of his own doctors. Of the 45 senior consultants at the hospital, many pop in for no more than an hour a day if at all. Then they leave for their private clinics, taking with them those patients who can afford to pay. Patients without money can die before they see a specialist at the 1,750-bed facility. Such is the state of public health care for the 27m residents of Pakistan’s mountainous, troubled border region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Things may be changing, though. A recent law seeks to pin wayward doctors to their official place of work. Only a handful have reappeared at the notorious Lady Reading. But about 60 are back at work at another Peshawar hospital nearby. That reform is possible in Khyber Pak...

Saudi Arabian King Salman bin Abdulaziz has shaken his nation’s closed political system by making his youngest son his heir. Although heralded as a “modernizer,” 31-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS, is the architect of Riyadh’s disastrous attack on Yemen and disingenuous campaign to turn Qatar into a Saudi satellite. Given President Donald Trump’s warm embrace of the monarchy, Prince Salman’s recklessness is likely to draw the U.S. more deeply into destabilizing regional conflicts. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is an anachronism, an absolute monarchy in a democratic age. A few thousand princes sit atop a society of roughly 32 million, treating the nation’s wealth as their family’s piggy bank. The royals live a generally licentious lifestyle outside of public view, but buy off the KSA’s fundamentalist Muslim clergy by promoting the intolerant Islamic sect of Wahhabism worldwide. The kingdom’s population long has been a generous source of people and money fo...

* In second confessional video, Indian spy admits to involvement in espionage, terrorism and seeks pardon for crimes committed against Pakista n. An Indian national facing execution after being convicted of spying in Pakistan has sought clemency from the army chief, the military said in a statement Thursday. Kulbushan Sudhir Jadhav was arrested in Balochistan last year and officials claim he has confessed to spying for Indian intelligence services. He was found guilty in a closed hearing in April. “Seeking forgiveness for his actions, he has requested the Chief of Army Staff to spare his life on compassionate grounds,” the statement said. In his plea, Jadhav has admitted to his involvement in espionage, terrorist and subversive activities in Pakistan and expressed remorse at the resultant loss of many precious innocent lives and extensive damage to property due to his actions, the ISPR statement said. Jadhav had earlier appealed to the Military Appellate Court which was rej...