Regions

While Chinese President Xi Jinping is busy greeting world leaders this week at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing, here in the quiet, old Dutch town of Galle, Sri Lanka, Chinese tourists are visiting one of the best preserved colonial-era cities in Southeast Asia.

Eight Egyptian men were sentenced to three years in prison plus three years on probation for allegedly attending Egypt’s first same-sex wedding. The harsh sentence was condoned by Egyptian TV host Tamer Amin and the Egyptian Minister for Religious Endowment. Despite the high hopes that existed in the wake of the Arab Spring, the plight of homosexuals in Egypt and the Arab world has deteriorated.

Some describe it as the result of a disengaged American foreign policy; some look at it as a byproduct of an aggressive post-Saddam Iranian foreign policy in the region; then there are those who regard it as a creation of Sunni Arab states to undermine Assad and Iranian interests and contain Iran’s ambitious foreign policy in the region.

This year, the centenary of the start of World War I, has seen reexaminations of its immediate causes. Reexamination of the historic peace attempted at its conclusion, however, is even more relevant to the current crises in foreign policy.

It is that cyclical season of winner takes all. It is that all too familiar gladiatorial executive combat all over again. Yes, the Villa Somalia has once again turned into a roaring amphitheater.

The disputed status of Jerusalem will ostensibly be under review by the U.S. Supreme Court today. Zivotofsky v. Kerry asks whether the president’s so-called “foreign affairs power” — based on his textual duty to “receive ambassadors and other public ministers” — ousts Congress from directing foreign policy.

Even if war is not always good for business, it is at least a business. Whether dealing in arms, antiquities, oil, grain, taxes or international aid, the Islamic State is building the basis for the sort of exploitative economy whose inequities and corruption (ironically) helped its star rise among the poor and discontented.

Avinoam Bar-Yosef is the President and the Founding Director of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute (JPPI), an independent policy planning think tank based in Jerusalem.

As the level of Palestinian incitement calling for violence against Jews in Jerusalem increases, two terror attacks were implemented, Palestinian riots within the Holy City intensify, and Fatah called for a day of rage. The prospects for a Palestinian-Israeli peace seem more distant than ever.

In a new piece in the London Review of Books, Patrick Cockburn writes on the rise of the Islamic State — also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) — and elaborates in detail on the factors that have contributed to its military success in Syria and Iraq despite American air raids against the group since August of this year.

Industrial espionage has been a constant source of tension between the U.S. and Chinese governments; however, last year, it was China that was on the defensive for the theft of American trade secrets.

Akın Ünver sits down with Reza Akhlaghi of the Foreign Policy Association to discuss Turkey’s current foreign policy challenges and the situation in Kobane.