Tag: War and Armed Conflicts

Why Pakistan and Afghanistan Are Still Fighting

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Pakistan’s leaders are playing a big role on the global stage, traveling around the world to try to broker peace between the United States and Iran. But while it plays peacemaker, Pakistan remains locked in a conflict of its own, battling its neighbor, Afghanistan, with no end in sight. Since Pakistan declared an “open war” on Afghanistan in late February, the two countries have been clashing regularly, despite efforts by China to resolve the dispute by sending an envoy to both capitals and hosting talks last month. As the violence…

What Questions Do You Have About the Trump-Xi Summit?

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President Trump and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, are set to meet for a summit in Beijing in mid-May, a meeting that was first scheduled for March but postponed by Trump because of the war in Iran. The world looks a lot different from when Trump and Xi first agreed to the meeting last October. Then, one of the biggest issues for the two leaders was extending a newly announced yearlong trade truce. Now, the U.S. and Israel are at war with Iran, China’s closest partner in the Middle East. The…

A Times Reporter Goes Inside a Cyberscam Center in a War Zone

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Holy moly. Look at these phones. The floor is just littered with SIM cards. We’re in Myanmar. Only weeks after rebel fighters took control of a cyberscam center near the border with Thailand. For years, Chinese criminals have used ordinary office spaces like this in the middle of the jungle to target Americans in elaborate online fraud. OK, here we are, the nerve center of this multibillion-dollar industry that is scamming people all across the world. More than 3,000 people from dozens of countries were once employed here, joining an…

Trump Broke the World Order. Now What?

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Adam Tooze The Energy Giants Face Off Dr. Tooze is a professor of history at Columbia University. In the early 1910s, Winston Churchill ordered the conversion of Britain’s giant fleet of dreadnought battleships to oil fuel from coal. In so doing, the story goes, he ushered in the age of oil power. He also effectively anointed the United States — at the time the world’s largest producer of oil — as the 20th century’s natural hegemon. If global competition is inextricably interwoven with technology and energy, how states power themselves…

America Can’t Make What the Military Needs

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In 2020 the Navy had a simple plan to build its next fleet of small warships, the Constellation class: take a European design and build it in America.In 2020 the Navy had asimple plan to build itsnext fleet of small warships,the Constellation class:buy a European design andbuild it in America. Opinion The Editorial Board make what the Military needs By The Editorial BoardThe editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom. At…

Overmatched: Why the U.S. Military Must Reinvent Itself

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Opinion The Editorial Board By The Editorial BoardThe editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom. This is the first installment in a series from the editorial board on why the U.S. military needs to reinvent itself. NYT

Iran and Saudi Arabia Demand Gaza Cease-Fire

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After the Saudi and Iranian leaders finished their speeches, they left the main conference hall for a bilateral meeting. Prince Mohammed’s welcoming of Mr. Raisi amounted to a remarkable departure for the Saudi leader, who once bluntly warned Iran not to pursue expansionist policies in the region. “We won’t wait for the battle to be in Saudi Arabia,” he said in a televised interview in 2017. “Instead, we will work so that the battle is for them in Iran, not in Saudi Arabia.” He also once likened Iran’s supreme leader,…

Syria’s Leader, al-Assad, Visits China in Search of Friends and Funds

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The News President Bashar al-Assad of Syria arrived in China on Thursday as he sought financial support to rebuild his country and to improve his international standing after being ostracized over atrocities committed during Syria’s ongoing civil war. His visit takes place as China seeks to present itself as a powerful influence in the Middle East, and a partner to nations that are shunned by the United States and the West. He is expected to meet with China’s top leader, Xi Jinping. Background Mr. al-Assad’s trip is his first visit…

Book Review: ‘On Wars,’ by Michael Mann

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ON WARS, by Michael Mann If wars are “the least rational of human projects,” why have there been so many of them all over the world, in every era? This is the question that the sociologist Michael Mann poses in the boldly titled “On Wars.” It is an ambitious book, plumbing the roots of war from the early Roman Republic to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, with intermediary chapters on ancient and imperial China, Mongol conquests, feudal Japan, the carnage of European Christendom, clashes in pre-Columbian and Latin America, the two world…

How Russia’s Allies May React to Prigozhin’s Mutiny Against Putin

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Even before President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia broke his public silence on Monday about the aborted mutiny that brought rogue troops to within 125 miles of Moscow, he was on the phone to the leaders of Iran, Qatar and other friendly countries, soaking up their expressions of support while presumably promising a return to stability. For Mr. Putin, who has cobbled together a surprisingly sturdy list of countries that either back his war on Ukraine or have stayed neutral, it was a much-needed display of mutual reassurance. Russia’s message,…