Salman Rafi Sheikh
What Turkey Tries to Achieve by Opposing NATO's Expansion
Internal divisions in NATO are not a new phenomenon, with tensions between Turkey, due to its ties with Moscow, and the US and the rest of NATO being its primary manifestation. Turkey’s recent objections to NATO’s expansion by including two Nordic states of Sweden and Finland reveals, yet again, that the organisation is far from a house united...
Biden Promises Conflict and Elusive Developments in his Asia Visit
In his maiden tour to Asia as the US President, Joe Biden announced that the US will “defend” Taiwan if China attacked. The announcement, while very significant, signals a concerted US attempt to up the ante against China at a time when Washington is already fighting a war against Russia in Ukraine. This announcement, thus, signals how...
US-ASEAN Summit Leaves Washington Empty-handed
The recently held US-ASEAM summit in Washington was meant to serve what an official of the Biden administration called the need for “step[ing] up our [the US] game in Southeast Asia” against China. The underlying logic of this politics of increasing US strategic engagement with ASEAN is a more strategic realignment of the latter’s foreign policy with Washington...
