Asia

Trump Confronts a Rising China: Can He Manage U.S.-China Relations Without Precipitating World War III?

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Gaza, Haiti, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Russia, Syria, Ukraine, and Venezuela: President-elect Donald Trump will face no shortage of foreign-policy challenges when he assumes office in January. None, however, comes close to China in scope, scale, or complexity. No other country has the capacity to resist his predictable antagonism with the same […]

Featured

Consumer Solar Surge: Pakistan Shows you Don’t Need Government Programs to Green the Grid

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – While no one was looking, the Pakistani public took matters into their own hands, adding 17 gigawatts of solar power this year. These installations are mostly in the form of Chinese panels for rooftop or ground level solar in towns and villages. Pakistan has abruptly become the world’s sixth-largest consumer […]

Afghanistan

How to Lose a War: The Story of America’s Intervention in Afghanistan

Marc Martorell Junyent

Review of Amin Saikal, “How to Lose a War: The Story of America’s Intervention in Afghanistan” (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2024). Munich, Germany (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) –– More than three years have passed since US troops left Afghanistan in August 2021, putting an end to an occupation that lasted two […]

Afghanistan

How the Taliban are seeking to Reshape Afghanistan’s Schools to push their Ideology

The Conversation

By Enayat Nasir, University at Albany, State University of New York | – (The Conversation) – The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 was a blow for education across the country – but especially for girls and women. Since then, the Taliban’s leaders have outlawed education for girls after sixth grade, expanded religious seminaries known […]

China

China’s Green Energy Wave enters the Middle East

Neil Thompson

London (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Facing rising trade barriers and diplomatic tensions with the US and the EU, Chinese renewable energy companies are turning to Middle Eastern states as an alternative market for goods including electric vehicles (EVs), lithium-ion batteries, and solar panels. The US, the EU and Canada have all imposed tariffs […]

China

Powder Keg in the Pacific: America’s new Cold War with China

Alfred W. McCoy

( Tomdispatch.com ) – While the world looks on with trepidation at regional wars in Israel and Ukraine, a far more dangerous global crisis is quietly building at the other end of Eurasia, along an island chain that has served as the front line for America’s national defense for endless decades. Just as Russia’s invasion […]

Featured

Nobel Prize-Winning Japanese survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki see themselves in the Palestinians of Gaza

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The decision of the Truman administration to use nuclear weapons on the civilian cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 is one of the great stains on the United States. There are other blots on our escutcheon, including the perfidious treatment of Native Americans and the enslavement of millions of […]

China

At UN, China slams US Sanctions on Iran, Accuses Israel of ‘Indiscriminate attacks on Civilians’

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, during his first appearance at the annual UN General Assembly meeting, met on the margins of the conference with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. He elicited from the Chinese one of the strongest statements of Chinese support we have seen. According to the UAE’s al-Khaleej, Wang […]

Afghanistan

Afghan Women have been robbed of Health Care, Education and now their Voices. But they won’t remain Silent

The Conversation

By Susan Hutchinson, Australian National University | – (The Conversation) – Last month, the Taliban passed a new “vice and virtue” law, making it illegal for women to speak in public. Under the law, women can also be punished if they are heard singing or reading aloud from within their homes. It was approved by […]