Salman Rafi Sheikh

Today’s global geopolitics is more about great power competition than any other thing. It is evident from the ongoing military conflict in Eastern Europe, and it is evident from the ways in which the US has been trying to build a global coalition against China for the past many years now. So far, Washington has achieved no substantial success. While Washington, presuming that there is a lot of potential for conflict in the region and the countries are eager to find a powerful ally against China…

Termed Saudi’s “new oil” industry, tourism ranks very high on Riyadh’s Vision 2030 strategic plan for the country’s economic transformation away from reliance on oil as the major source of revenue. According to the plan, the Saudis aim to raise about US$46 billion annually from tourism by the end of this decade, i.e., by 2030. Saudi’s goal and China’s contribution to world tourism seem to have a perfect synergy. Before Covid, 155 million Chinese tourists spent US$250 billion world-wide. With Saudi Arabia looking to attract tourism, China becomes a natural partner…

The latest NATO summit has been ‘successful’ insofar as it brought Sweden’s membership very close to becoming a reality. At the same time, the summit also made clear that the alliance, even though it fell short of offering membership to Ukraine, is gearing up for a long war with Russia. The most prominent proponent of this war is, as could be expected, Joe Biden, who is supposedly fighting the war to protect the US-led global world order, and he is doing this by following the legacy of his predecessors who did the same during the Cold War era. It would not be an exaggeration to contend that Biden’s summit…