Now that so many sad truths about Afghanistan are being spoken aloud, even in the major media - let me add one more: The war, from start to finish, was about politics, not in Afghanistan but in the United States (US).Afghanistan was always a sideshow. According to the official report, the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks were launched from US soil, by people who trained in Florida.Most of the named perpetrators were Saudis.

I’ve been a professional free-expression advocate for more than a decade. That is why I support the Facebook Oversight Board’s recent decision to uphold former President Donald Trump’s suspension from the platform and Facebook’s new protocol whereby public figures may be banned for up to two years during times of civil unrest.

China's President Xi Jinping will attend United States (US) President Joe Biden's virtual climate summit this week, Beijing said Wednesday, as the world's top polluting nations seek rare common ground despite wider political tensions.Biden has invited 40 world leaders including Xi and Russia's Vladimir Putin to the meet starting on Earth Day, meant to mark Washington's return to the front lines of the fight against climate change after former president Donald Trump di

Unfathomable just one year ago, the United States (US) Monday passed the horrific marker of 500,000 dead from COVID-19.Here is a look at the past 12 months and how the coronavirus came to exact such a devastating toll on America.Early CasesOn 22 January, 2020, then-president Donald Trump describes the presence of the coronavirus in the US as "just one person coming in from China" and says his administration has the new disease "totally under control."Comments like these so

United States (US) President Joe Biden revealed Thursday that his first phone call with Xi Jinping lasted a marathon two hours, during which he challenged his Chinese counterpart on human rights, trade and regional muscle-flexing.But an increasingly assertive Xi pushed back, according to Chinese state media, telling Biden that issues such as Beijing's crushing of opposition in Hong Kong and saber-rattling on Taiwan are China's "internal affairs.""Last night, I was in

I don’t know whether United States (US) President Joe Biden, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and their foreign-policy advisers have read Robert Axelrod’s classic book on international relations, The Evolution of Cooperation.

In his inaugural address, United States (US) President Joe Biden declared that Americans “will be judged” for how they “resolve the cascading crises of our era.” He expressed confidence that the country would “rise to the occasion,” and pledged that the US would lead “not merely by the example of our power but by the power of our example.” The contrast with President Donald Trump’s divisive, isolationist rhetoric could not be sharper.

Donald Trump has left the White House, but Trumpism has not left United States (US) politics. With Joe Biden as America’s president, the world hopes that the US will shift away from Trump’s disruptive confrontational approach toward China relations and embark on a path of pragmatic engagement. At stake is whether this crucial bilateral relationship serves to strengthen or shatter the global order.

When the time comes to evaluate United States (US) President Joe Biden’s international legacy, one variable will be enormously significant: the relationship that his administration forges with China.

In celebrating the liberation from Donald Trump’s misrule, we must not forget that Trump’s presidency embodied the raw politics of United States (US) white supremacy. He often spoke like a segregationist Southern governor of the 1960s, and, after losing the 2020 election, like a secessionist senator on the eve of the Civil War.