Molly K. McKew writes: A year ago, I was in Kiev when a young Ukrainian soldier was killed. Olesya Baklanova, 19, enlisted in the Ukrainian Armed Forces as soon as she was eligible and fought to be assigned a combat post. Deployed to the front lines of her country’s war against Russia, she was killed during the night while manning an observation post, shot by a sniper stationed among the Russian and proxy forces dug in a few hundred meters…
The Associated Press reports: As dozens of heads of state convene for the annual U.N. General Assembly in New York this week, the lingering conflict in Syria is taking a back seat while tensions in the Persian Gulf and global trade wars take center stage. Now in its ninth year, many Syrians fear the unresolved war has become a footnote in a long list of world crises, with weary leaders resigned to live with President Bashar Assad ruling over a…
David P Barash writes: The most serious problem with [the American anthropologist Napoleon] Chagnon’s influence on our understanding of human nature [through his study of the Yanomami people of the Venezuelan/Brazilian Amazon] is one familiar to many branches of science: generalising from one data set — however intensive — to a wider universe of phenomena. Academic psychologists, for example, are still reeling from a 2010 study by the University of British Columbia which found that the majority of psychological research…
Robert F. Worth writes: Gulf leaders have become uneasy about the mismatch between Mr. Trump’s rhetoric and his actions. In June, he threatened Iran with “obliteration” after it shot down an unmanned American drone, and then backed away from a planned retaliation at the last minute. His decision to fire John Bolton, his hawkish national security adviser, has strengthened a belief that Mr. Trump does not want war. But many feared he would stumble into one. The Emiratis now appear…
June 23, Meet the Press: WATCH: Trump tells Chuck Todd that he wants to talk with Iran with “no pre-conditions.” #MTP #IfItsSunday pic.twitter.com/kie0I91ZbA — Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) June 23, 2019 August 28, Mareike Transfeld wrote: Last month, the UAE said it would withdraw its troops from the northern port of Hodeidah. In reassuring the international community that it had coordinated this with Saudi Arabia, it explained it was just trying to follow terms set down by a United Nations…
Muhammad Idrees Ahmad writes: A week after Damascus feted a delegation of the European far right, Bashar al-Assad’s regime ushered in a new set of suitors. On Sunday, the American blogger and Sputnik contributor Max Blumenthal announced his arrival in Syria with a selfie. The caption read: “Here I am near the border of Jobar, a neighborhood east of Damascus occupied by the Saudi-backed Jaish al-Islam until early last year. Militia control extended close to the tall building behind me….
The Associated Press reports: A weekend drone attack on Saudi Arabia that cut into global energy supplies and halved the kingdom’s oil production threatened Sunday to fuel a regional crisis, as Iran denied U.S. allegations it launched the assault and tensions remained high over Tehran’s collapsing nuclear deal. Iran called the U.S. claims “maximum lies,” while a commander in its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard reiterated its forces could strike U.S. military bases across the Mideast with its arsenal of ballistic missiles….
The Associated Press reports: With a series of tweets, President Donald Trump has upended nearly a year of U.S.-Taliban negotiations on ending America’s longest war. He has “called off” the talks and asserted that a planned secret meeting between him and Taliban leaders at Camp David, set for Sunday just days before the 9/11 anniversary, is now canceled. Some question whether it was a face-saving attempt after the deal his envoy said had been reached “in principle” faced serious challenges….
Anne Applebaum writes: The crisis of Western values has many aspects, many faces. There is a decline in faith in liberal democracy, a loss of confidence in universal human rights, a collapse in support for all kinds of transnational projects. There is a constitutional crisis brewing in London. There is a president who defies democratic norms in Washington. There are challenges to the free press and independent judges in democracies everywhere, from Budapest to Manila. But this same crisis —…
The Daily Beast reports: Presumably there will be some agreement in the not too distant future as the Taliban give Trump enough concessions to save face, but they know what they call the “evacuation” of all American forces, whether in uniform or as covert or contract operatives, will demoralize the U.S.-backed regime in Kabul and especially the Afghan military and security forces. These local soldiers and police, after 17 years and tens of thousands of casualties in their ranks, still…
Muhammad Idrees Ahmad writes: Much of Europe is eager to see the conflict end so that Syria could be designated “post-conflict” and its people repatriated. Myopic proposals have circulated since 2014 for using reconstruction funds as an incentive to secure Assad’s cooperation. But any time refugees are forced to return to an undeterrable state like Syria, they are being sent to an uncertain future with their properties confiscated, facing possible torture or death. Assad has suffered no consequences for his…
Zachary Fryer-Biggs writes: Wallops island—a remote, marshy spit of land along the eastern shore of Virginia, near a famed national refuge for horses—is mostly known as a launch site for government and private rockets. But it also makes for a perfect, quiet spot to test a revolutionary weapons technology. If a fishing vessel had steamed past the area last October, the crew might have glimpsed half a dozen or so 35-foot-long inflatable boats darting through the shallows, and thought little…
The Washington Post reports: As the president’s top aides prepared for a high-stakes meeting on the future of Afghanistan earlier this month, one senior official was not on the original invite list: national security adviser John Bolton. The attendance of the top security aide would normally be critical, but the omission was no mistake, senior U.S. officials said. Bolton, who has long advocated an expansive military presence around the world, has become a staunch internal foe of an emerging peace…
The Washington Post reports: Lebanese and Iraqi politicians denounced Israeli strikes on their territory as a “declaration of war” on Monday as a suspected Israeli aircraft struck another Iran-linked target in Lebanon, marking a new escalation in tensions. The attack on a Palestinian facility in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley was the fourth in the space of just a little over a day to hit locations tied to Iranian-backed groups in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. The strike came just hours after…
An editorial in The Observer says: The crisis in Syria does not feature high on the agenda at this weekend’s G7 summit in Biarritz. The absence of two key players – Russia and Turkey – means any substantive initiatives are unlikely. Donald Trump has washed his hands of the conflict, although Pentagon chiefs are resisting his demand to withdraw all US forces. European leaders, beset by many other urgent problems, seem to prefer not to think about Syria at all….
The Los Angeles Times reports: News that Israel was behind airstrikes in Iraq has reinvigorated calls to oust U.S. forces from the country. A U.S. official confirmed Friday that Israel had struck a base for the Hashd al Shaabi, an umbrella group of Shiite-dominated militias also known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, many with deep links to Iran. Two Iranian commanders were reported killed in the attack, which occurred in July. It was unclear whether Israel was behind three other…