FPA’s Must Reads (May 17-24)
May 24, 2013 3 min. read

  Russian Spy Games By Edward Lucas Foreign Affairs The Cold War may have officially ended and the rest may be the new policy, but Russia and the U.S. are still adversaries, says Lucas. While Ryan Fogle’s, the 29-year-old third secretary at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, gamble may seem absurd, the extraordinary thing about […]

Read more
India, Pakistan and China: The importance of regional powers in a post-U.S. Afghanistan
May 18, 2013 7 min. read

By Tyler Hooper With U.S., NATO and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) personnel set to withdraw the bulk of their military personnel from Afghanistan in 2014, regional powers such as China, India and Pakistan will have the opportunity to play an influential role in the country’s future. Both India and Pakistan have historically been involved in […]

Read more
Shadow of Afghanistan (2012)
May 10, 2013 2 min. read

This documentary is all over the place. It is in part a history of modern Afghanistan and also a film about independent journalists – some of whom were killed – trying to report on the situation on the ground. Afghanistan is called “The Graveyard of Empires” for good reason: Every country or empire that has […]

Read more
Pakistan: Will the Youth Bulge turn into a Democratic Dividend?
April 22, 2013 5 min. read

I argued in an earlier post that much of Pakistan’s future direction will hinge on events unfolding this year.  The first of these are the national elections scheduled for May 11, which could be decided by a large number of first-time voters.  These voters are the product of one of the world’s largest youth bulges […]

Read more
FPA’s Must Reads (April 5-12)
April 12, 2013 3 min. read

Each week, the editorial team at ForeignPolicyBlogs.com publishes a list of must-read articles from around the web. This week: Tweeting diplomacy, Cuba, Jordan, the U.S. in Pakistan, and one article on Margaret Thatcher.

Read more
Obama Visit to Israel Key Link in Redesign of U.S. Foreign Policy
April 9, 2013 5 min. read

By Sarwar Kashmeri It would be a mistake to view President Obama’s visit to Israel as just a fence-mending exercise. It is in fact part of a planned redesign of U.S. foreign policy that will change the face of American leadership around the world. The redesign began with the appointment of John Kerry as Secretary […]

Read more
Is the Domestic Use Question Hijacking the Drone Debate?
March 8, 2013 4 min. read

Up until recently, the debate over drone policy has largely been the territory of a small group of vocal critics — a persistent if not particularly high-profile media issue, but not one that particularly troubled the U.S. public. Polls indicated broad popular support for the use of drone strikes abroad, mainly out of a belief […]

Read more
Kargil Disclosures and the Nuclear Proliferation Debate
March 5, 2013 6 min. read

My last post focused on the domestic implications in Pakistan of the latest revelations about the 1999 Kargil mini-war.  Since the crisis is a key point of contention – a sort of Rorschach test, really – in the debate over whether the proliferation of nuclear weapons in South Asia has stabilized or aggravated the India-Pakistan […]

Read more
The FPA’s “Must Reads” (February 16-22)
February 22, 2013 2 min. read

Each week, the Foreign Policy Blog’s editorial team compiles the five best long-form reads and five best in-house blog posts. This week’s features India-Pakistan relations, drones, Gérard Depardieu and much more.

Read more
Pakistan: The Kargil Debate Resurfaces
February 11, 2013 9 min. read

My last post noted how skirmishes in the disputed Kashmir region last month have put a spanner in the promising rapprochement between India and Pakistan.  This is a familiar theme in bilateral affairs.  The exemplar of how military tussles in Kashmir can escalate into a wider confrontation and subvert important diplomatic initiatives is the 1999 […]

Read more
India and Pakistan: The Ties that Bind vs. The Line that Divides
February 5, 2013 5 min. read

Despite the promising rapprochement (here and here) that gathered pace between India and Pakistan last year, disruptive military tensions are never far from the surface.  This point was amply demonstrated by last month’s skirmishes along the 450 mile-long boundary – known as the Line of Control (LOC) – separating the two armies in the disputed […]

Read more
Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
January 28, 2013 2 min. read

This film is riveting. It is a fictional look at the hunt for and eventual killing of Osama bin Laden, the man who is believed to have masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. Jessica Chastain rightfully won the best actress in a drama at the Golden Globes. She has also […]

Read more

Popular from Press