Section: The Huffington Post (USA)
Putin’s Gift
Russia’s sudden, invigorated military posture in Syria has set Western foreign policy pundits on their collective ear. President Vladimir Putin, they say, is further reigniting a cold war with the West, attempting to distract the world from his misdeeds in Ukraine, aggressively reinforcing Russia’s strategic military posture in the...
Russia’s Intervention in Syria: Protracting an Already Endless Conflict
Russia’s intervention in Syria has introduced a dangerous new dynamic into an already volatile and complex conflict. Rather than advancing its self-proclaimed objective of fighting terrorism, many more Russian strikes have targeted moderate rebels — “vetted” and supported by the United States — as well as other...
Why Putin Might Extend Russia’s anti-ISIS Operations to Iraq
On October 6, 2015, Federation Council Chairman Valentina Matviyenko declared that Russia would launch airstrikes against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq, if the Iraqi government gave Russia the green light to intervene. As the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi and Iraqi Shiite leaders have both called for Russian participation in...
Why China’s Belt and Road Plan Is the Best Way to Lift the Global Economy
BEIJING — The much-talked-about “Belt and Road Initiative” has been gaining attention ever since it was first proposed by President Xi Jinping of China in 2013. So has the recent birth of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Silk Road Fund. B&R has been offered as an innovative mode of cooperation in global...
Bashar Assad Meets With Vladimir Putin — In Moscow
MOSCOW, Oct 21 (Reuters) – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad flew to Moscow on Tuesday evening to personally thank Russia’s Vladimir Putin for his military support, in a surprise visit that underlined how Russia has become a major player in the Middle East.It was Assad’s first foreign trip since the outbreak of the Syrian crisis...
Why the New Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich Is the Voice of Modern Russia
Svetlana Alexievich is the voice of modern Russia. Her non-fiction narratives, based on interviews with witnesses, are literary testaments of her country’s turbulent history from the Second World War to the perestroika euphoria and its disenchanting aftermath. The news that she is the receiver of this year’s Nobel prize in literature...
Moscow Nights in Latakia
The swift Russian intervention into Syria exacerbates every one of the contradictory elements in Washington’s various, unintegrated Middle East policies. That is one reason for the unexpected moves by Putin are deeply unsettling. They not only add a major variable, but that factor also involves a self-willed player ready and able to take...
Weekend Roundup: Turkey’s ‘Two Souls’ Are Being Torn Apart
The characters in Orhan Pamuk’s novels are complex, hybrid identities. They are neither purely Islamic traditionalists nor secular fundamentalists, but, as Turkey’s most celebrated writer and Nobel laureate has put it, of “two souls.” “To have two souls,” Pamuk once told me, “is a good thing. That is the...
The European Union And China On The New Silk Roads
By Romano Prodi and David Gosset The complex but irreversible integration of the European continent and the renaissance of the Chinese civilization arguably constitute the most significant factors of change of our time, the wise articulation of these two processes can only be mutually enriching and a source of growth and stability for our global...
The Citizen Journalists Challenging Assad And Putin’s Story Of War
Every week, The WorldPost asks an expert to shed light on a topic driving headlines around the world. Today, we speak with Eliot Higgins, founder of citizen investigative journalism website Bellingcat. Since Russia launched airstrikes inside Syria in late September, the Kremlin’s claim to be bombing Islamic State militants and other unnamed...
