Global affairs | The Daily Star

  • Hard power and the war on terror in South Asia

    Hard power or the coercive use of force has emerged as the most preferred tool in combatting terrorism in the post-9/11 era.

  • Turning Bimstec into a vehicle for regional cooperation

    The 4th Bimstec summit is being held in Kathmandu after a lapse of four years. The last summit was held in Naypyidaw, Myanmar in 2014. For the Bimstec that celebrated 20 years in 2017, four summits in 20 years is not certainly a time for celebration and does not add to the credibility of the organisation that has the potential to transform the eastern South Asia.

  • Competition and conflict in knowledge economies

    It's not a trade war, stupid! In today's world where everything hinges on technology, competition and conflict between states is really about who gets to Industry 4.0 faster than the others.

  • Saudi Arabia and Iran woo incoming Pakistani prime minister

    An offer by a Saudi-backed bank to lend financially strapped Pakistan USD 4 billion is likely intended to bolster Saudi influence when former international cricket player Imran Khan is sworn in as the South Asian country's next prime minister.

  • 'Contemporary India: Its foreign policy, security and development strategy'

    India's foreign and security policy imperatives are underpinned by the desire to achieve sustained and inclusive economic growth. The focus is on creating an enabling environment for national growth and development by maintaining peace and stability...

  • Cracks in Saudi hold on the Muslim world

    Saudi conduct of its ill-fated war in Yemen coupled with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's alignment with the Trump administration and Israel,

  • Imran Khan's biggest challenge? 'It's the economy, stupid!'

    Shakespeare had once observed, through his character Marcellus addressing Horatio in the drama Hamlet, that there was something rotten in the State of Denmark.

  • Assam register: politics, citizenship and beyond

    The draft final list of citizens in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam is out. But the controversy over the fraught exercise continues. A little over four million people—mostly Bengali Muslims and some Hindus—have gone missing from the list, leaving them staring at an uncertain future and all sorts of anxiety.

  • The future of 'Naya Pakistan'

    The “second democratic transition” in Pakistan was marred with pre-poll suicide attacks which killed three contestants as well as scores of their supporters especially in Quetta.

  • Imran Khan faces tough pitch on India-Pakistan ties

    In his very first media interaction after the election in Pakistan, flamboyant former cricketer Imran Khan, who appears well-positioned to become the country's newest prime minister,

  • Lack of global leadership spurs instability in the Middle East

    With multiple Middle Eastern disputes threatening to spill out of control,

  • The people speak

    Amidst all the acrimony about the extent to which what took place on Wednesday was actually democratic, it is worth dwelling at least briefly on the most important element of the electoral exercise—the “demos” or people themselves.

  • The Afghan conflict: How far away is peace?

    In the recently concluded NATO summit, Afghanistan yet again surfaced as the boiling pot that witnessed off-beat power play in the last few years.

  • What lies beyond the hug, wink and no-trust motion

    In keeping with predictions, Prime Minister Narendra Modi easily defeated the first opposition-sponsored no-confidence motion that he faced in his four-year tenure on the floor of the Lok Sabha, the lower House Parliament.

  • Pakistani elections spotlight the country's contradictory policies

    A virulently anti-Shiite, Saudi-backed candidate for parliament in Pakistan's July 25 election symbolises the country's effort to reconcile contradictory policy objectives in an all but impossible attempt to keep domestic forces and foreign allies happy.

  • Can a no-trust motion breed confidence?

    Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi faced the first no-confidence motion on the floor of Parliament by the combined opposition yesterday (July 20).

  • Srebrenica genocide: A lesson for the future

    The July 1995 attack on the UN-declared “safe area” in Srebrenica by the Bosnian Serb forces is a reminder of the incalculable losses suffered by the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).

  • The world to the rescue

    Caves capture the imagination like no other feature of the natural world, perhaps because they tap into our deepest, atavistic fears of darkness—and our insatiable curiosity for the unknown.

  • The handling of Donald Trump

    A seventeenth-century English satirist, Tom Brown, penned a doggerel about the Dean of Christ Church, one of the most prominent colleges, then as now, at Oxford. It went: I do not like thee, Dr Fell

  • The battle for Iran

    Iran, in the latest of a series of incidents on its western and south-eastern borders, said it had disbanded a Pakistan-based cell of anti-Shiite militants in a clash this week on the Iranian side of the border.

  • China surging ahead at bullet speed

    Cruising at a speed of 307 km/h, the bullet train ride from Shanghai to Beijing was smooth as silk—there was no klik klik sound typical of conventional trains as the wheels hit the short gaps between rails that we are all too familiar with on our all-too-typical trains. The only slight movement one feels on the Chinese version of the bullet train is when the turbulent wake of a passing bullet train makes the train squeeze against the air envelope of the opposing train.

  • India-US ties set upon an uncertain path

    India is in for a testing time for conducting its complex relations with the United States. This was clearly brought out by US' inability made public on June 27 to hold the crucial dialogue at the level of foreign and defence ministers in the first week of July in Washington and seek a rescheduling of the events.

  • The Middle East: History threatens to repeat itself

    If the notion that history repeats itself is accurate, it is nowhere truer than in the Middle East where the international community, caught by surprise by the 2011 popular Arab revolts, has reverted to opting for political stability as opposed to sustainability, ignoring the undercurrents of change wracking the Middle East. Major powers do so at their peril.

  • Widening cracks in Europe

    There is an ancient Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times”—interesting as opposed to blessed periods of peace and tranquillity. In this sense, Europe is certainly interesting these days. Its cracks are beginning to multiply and widen ominously.

  • Signals of global shifts?

    Yahya Staquf, a diminutive, soft-spoken leader of Nahdlatul Ulama, the world's largest Muslim movement, and Indonesian president Joko Widodo's advisor on religious affairs,

  • End of an uneasy alliance in Jammu and Kashmir

    Power politics makes strange bedfellows. But perhaps none stranger than the coming together of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and People's Democratic Party (PDP) in the terrorism-hit state of Jammu and Kashmir. After a little more than three years of uneasy co-existence, the alliance is in tatters. There is no popularly elected government in the state now under the rule of the federal BJP government.

  • Who wins the ICC-Duterte tussle?

    The International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda on February 8 announced the start of a preliminary investigation into a complaint by a Filipino lawyer and two lawmakers which accuse President Rodrigo Duterte and his government of crimes against humanity.

  • Parallels between Turkish soccer and general elections

    With electoral upsets having become the norm, the latest upheaval that swept aside the long-standing president of Fenerbahce SC, the political crown jewel of Turkish soccer, has taken on added significance with Turkey heading into crucial snap presidential and parliamentary elections on June 24.

  • Five reasons why Kim agreed to meet Trump

    No sitting US president has ever met a North Korean leader before. The historic meeting on June 12 between US Donald Trump and North Korean Supreme leader Kim Jong Un ended with historic results. The meeting generated so much goodwill that the US President expressed his desire to visit North Korea and to invite the North Korean leader to Washington.

  • The new sun that reddens the East

    In China, in the 1950s and '60s, the most popular song was entitled, "Dongfang Hong," or "The East is Red". Unmistakably, and understandably, it eulogised the Great Helmsman of the Peoples' Republic, Mao Zedong. The lyrics, an unabashed paean of fulsome praise to the undisputed leader, ran thus: "Dongfang Hong, from China comes Mao Zedong … Hurrah he is the Great Saviour, Lead us forward,…Hurrah he is our guide!" Much has changed in

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