US President Donald Trump’s brief, but substantive, visit to India heralds a renewed US-India partnership designed to address the challenges of the 21st century. It is difficult to overstate the importance of this partnership, one that has the potential of having a profound impact on the geopolitical dynamics. Agreements in…
[This column was written before Trump’s trip to India. This interview with Lawrence Sellin took place at the end of the trip] American and Indian national interests are clearly converging. President Donald Trump will, therefore, strive to enhance US – India bilateral relations within the context of a multilateral…
There were literally thousands of qualified Trump supporters eager to join his administration, yet, those responsible for personnel decisions decided to retain Obama employees or hire NeverTrumpers, who, collectively, either resisted or actively undermined Trump and his America First agenda. The consequences of that neglect are now playing out in…
According to the recently published “Afghanistan Papers,” for over eighteen years, U.S. civilian and military leaders have been simultaneously clueless and deceptive. “We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing,” said Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general who served as the White House’s…
The answer is exemplified by the 1980 to 1988 Iran-Iraq War, where we allow, even encourage, the fanatics to kill each other, given their seemingly insatiable appetite for internecine warfare, preferably, without an American presence. It is a foreign policy based, not on altruism or quaint notions of “breaking the cycle…
According to the latest news reports, a US airstrike at Baghdad International Airport killed the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force unit, General Qasem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy head of the Iran-backed Iraqi Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), a Shia paramilitary force made up of…
If a recent article published by the Modern War Institute at West Point, “Don’t Let Kabul 2020 Look Like Saigon 1975: The Dangers of a Precipitous Afghanistan Withdrawal,” represents the prevailing American views on military strategy, then it goes a long way to explain why the United States lost the…
The partisan impeachment of President Donald Trump, its shredding of the Constitution and disregard for due process, are just symptoms of the Democrat party’s abandonment of both democracy and sanity in its ruthless pursuit of permanent political power at any cost. Although it may appear inexplicable, the behavior of the…
Since independence, there has been no more accurate barometer of the malfeasance of Pakistan’s government or the volatility of its political system than the frequent fate of the country’s leaders – assassination, execution, prison or disgrace. Such is the fate of Pakistan’s former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf, who was…
December 2015 was a pivotal month in many respects. During the first week of December 2015, Donald Trump began to establish a substantial lead over his Republican primary opponents. Vice President Joseph Biden traveled to Ukraine to announce, on December 7th, a $190 million program to “fight corruption in law enforcement and reform the…
Without appropriate planning,the departure of US troops from Syria and Afghanistan could, warns Lawrence Sellin, have unintended and disturbing geopolitical consequences. Any major geopolitical withdrawal has the potential to produce a power vacuum. A successful outcome achieves burden shifting while securing US national interests and ensuring that America’s adversaries do not…
Few now doubt that the major U.S. media outlets, under the guise of journalism, function as political activists, saturating the airwaves and the internet with the talking points of the Democrat Party. There has long been liberal bias in the media, but deliberate efforts to undermine the traditional nonpartisan ideal…