The fallacy of soccer’s magical bridge-building qualities
Imagining
himself as a peacemaker in a conflict-ridden part of the world, FIFA President
Gianni Infantino sees a 2022 World Cup shared by Qatar with its...
Civilizationism vs the Nation State
Many have framed the battle lines in the geopolitics
of the emerging new world order as the 21st century’s Great Game. It’s a game
that aims...
The battle for leadership of the Muslim world: Turkey plants its flag in Christchurch
When Turkish
vice-president Fuat Oktay and foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu became this
weekend the first high-level
foreign government delegation to travel
to Christchurch they were doing more
than expressing...
The emerging new world order’s alarm bells: Men like Brandon Tarrant and Andreas Breivik
This week’s attack on two mosques in New Zealand reflects a paradigm
shift: the erosion of liberal values and the rise of civilisationalism at the
expense...
Chinese pressure tactics put countries between a rock and a hard place
Recent Chinese pressure on
Myanmar to approve a controversial dam project and the arrest in recent
days in Kazakhstan of a human rights activist suggest that...
Kazakh police raid raises spectre of China’s long arm
A police raid on a
Kazakh group documenting the plight of Kazakhs and Uyghurs caught in a brutal crackdown in China’s north-western
province of Xinjiang is...
Iran and North Korea highlight pitfalls of Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ strategy
Donald J. Trump’s hitherto failed ‘maximum pressure’ approach to Iran,
as well as for that matter North Korea, begs the question what the US
president’s true...
Walking a Chinese tightrope: Kazakh quiet diplomacy produces limited results
The Kazakh government, in defense of Kazakh and by
implication Central Asian behind-closed-doors diplomacy towards China in the
face of mounting domestic pressure, has offered a...
Turkish-Chinese spat puts Central Asian leaders on the spot
A Turkish-Chinese spat as a result of Turkish criticism of China’s crackdown on
Turkic Muslims in its strategic but troubled north-western province
of Xinjiang complicates efforts...
Once the backbone of Middle Eastern protests, ultras are down but not out
Ali Issa Ahmad, a British football fan, who was lingering earlier this
year in jail in the United Arab Emirates for wearing a Qatari soccer...