Restrictive measures against the Taliban now affect the country as a whole
The fall of the Afghan government amid the withdrawal of American troops and the capture of most of Afghanistan by the Taliban raised a number of questions regarding international and unilateral sanctions. Since 1999, the Taliban have been under UN sanctions. Restrictive measures have been applied to the movement by the United States, the European Union and a number of other jurisdictions, its leaders and individual branches...
... so large and heavy that the idea of them fitting into something like a large-caliber projectile any time soon was totally unthinkable. Besides, only heavy aircraft could at that time offer the capability of delivering nuclear weapons across many thousands of kilometers, which was the ultimate requirement in the stand-off between the United States and the Soviet Union.
The AGM-28 “Hound Dog” missile mounted on the pylon of a Boeing B-52 “Stratofortress”.
Not so obvious were the next steps ...
... the agreement of the leading regional powers like Russia and China that the Taliban movement should be given a chance to show prudent behaviour inside and outside. For China, this is cooperation in the implementation of major economic projects and refusal to support those religious groups that pose a threat to the security on the Chinese territory. For Russia, this means the absence of aggressive intentions towards the countries of Central Asia. To independently ensure its security, Moscow cannot ...
The Kremlin succeeded in making its presence in Syria stable, financially affordable and generally acceptable to the Russian public. The White House failed to do the same in Afghanistan
The U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was launched in October 2001 to be nearly two decades long. Russia’s military operation in Syria was launched in September 2015, and it has been going on for six years. Both powers justified their interventions by the need to combat international terrorism: while the U.S. was...
Towards Brave New Post-Unipolar Order
While the impact of the terrorist attacks and the following military mobilization of the U.S. leading to invasion of Afghanistan influenced the geopolitical debate in the post-9/11 period, the country’s early victories provided solid ground to the general belief that global order was best described by a stable U.S.-led unipolarity.
Unipolar hubris sustained
Back in 1999, William C. Wohlforth famously wrote in his
article
titled
The Stability of a Unipolar...
... Asian Region and the Influence of China, Russia, and the U.S.
The Conference is administered in cooperation with the Almaty Management University, Kazakhstan, The Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), and Webster University in St. Louis, MO, USA. The event will provide an exclusive forum to discuss and explore contemporary thinking of leading academic and business practices related to the economic transformation of economic policies and practitioners in countries of the Central Asian region....
The effect of US sanctions will be much stronger in comparison with the restrictive measures of the EU and other countries
Another package of economic sanctions has been introduced against Belarus. US President Joe Biden signed a new executive order expanding both the number of Belarusian persons under sanctions and the range of
restrictive measures applied
. These actions mark another stage in the escalation of pressure on Minsk. They are largely the same as
previously-imposed EU restrictions...
China now seems the most likely actor to take a position in the post-withdrawal Afghanistan, while it remains to be seen whether Beijing wishes to engage in a conflict that the USSR and NATO had difficulty in controlling before it
Afghanistan has been a priority area for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) since the 1950s as a result of the growing influence of the two adversaries, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the People’s Republic of China, which share borders with the country. This is evidenced...
The beginning of August was marked by two events that, in the absence of their fundamental significance for the global agenda, are essential for understanding what international politics may look like in the future
The beginning of August was marked by two events that, in the absence of their fundamental significance for the global agenda, are essential for understanding what international politics may look like in the future. First, there was a de facto rupture of relations between China and the...
Finding solution to some problems would actually be easier without Washington, since the U.S. is often part of the problem rather than part of the solution
The United States is often referred to as an “indispensable nation.” The term was first used in January 1997 by President Bill Clinton during his second inaugural address. Madeleine Albright would mention it in her speeches and writings on numerous occasions after that. The underlying idea of “indispensability” here is that it suggests it would...
