Asia

The argument for nuclear disarmament could not be better expressed than the words: Donald Trump versus Kim Jong-Un. You don’t have to take a side because your side has already taken you. You’ve been conscripted into a potential conflict no one can control. (More…)

It’s highly unlikely that President Trump will adopt Erik Prince’s proposal to privatise the war in Afghanistan. Prince’s plan, first published as on op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in May, triggered a heated discussion that remains ongoing. The piece was especially provocative coming from the nominally reserved WSJ. (More…)

The notion of the gem or ore prospector occupies a certain romanticism in literature, and even historical non-fiction of gold rushes past. For American audiences, a rugged individualism is the norm, and even during the heyday of Soviet extractive resource development in Siberia, concessions were made to individual initiative to encourage the miners (the ones who weren’t forced labor, anyway). (More…)

As refugees continue to stream into Europe from Western Asia, fears of terrorist infiltration grow. The problem does not begin, as most persons believe, with Syria, and Iraq. Its origins go back much further, to Afghanistan, and the refugee crisis which began in the country, during the Russian occupation. (More…)

Karl Marx wrote thirty-three articles on Indian affairs for the New York Tribune, from 1853, to 1858, just after the Sepoy Revolt. His most famous work on India is undoubtedly The Future Results of British Rule in India, published in July 1853. The essay deserves further examination in order to understand Marxs complex positions on the British Empire.  (More…)

The National Action Plan is a crackdown on terrorist groups that was announced by the Pakistani government in January 2015. It was drafted in response to the Peshawar shootings of December 16, 2014, when militants killed 141 people at Army Public School, including 132 children.  (More…)

Significant misunderstanding has developed concerning US policy towards Indochina in the decade of World War II and its aftermath. A number of historians have held that anti-colonialism governed US policy and actions up until 1950, when containment of communism supervened.  (More…)

The $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was finalised during an official visit by Chinese Premier Xi Jinping to Pakistan a year ago. CPEC is arguably the largest infrastructure project in Pakistani history, and includes Eastern and Western Realignment projects that comprise highways, railways, sea-lines, electricity lines, and energy projects.  (More…)

When I step out of the rain and into the restaurant, Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran is already waiting for me. Though I’m seven minutes early, I arrive to find the exiled Sri Lankan lawyer, known to his compatriots as Rudra, sitting at a corner table and peacefully watching the deluge outside. (More…)

Pakistan is facing fresh violence following the deaths of over seventy people, and the injury of several hundred more, during a martyrdom operation on Easter Sunday, in Lahore, directed against Christians. As Punjab prepares for a military crackdown, it is critical to understand the situation in its proper context.  (More…)

All along the north and north-west frontiers of India lie the Himalayas, the greatest disturbance of the earth’s surface that the convulsions of chaotic periods have produced. (More…)

The United States has a long history of supplying weapons to armed proxies by way of deniable third parties. Some of these efforts were deemed successful at the time, such as the arming of the Afghan mujahedeen in the 1980s or Air America supply runs to anti-communist militias in Indochina. (More…)