US President Barack Obama’s formal declaration of the end of US combat operations in Iraq on August 31 is a good a moment as any to reflect on the war, the United States’ global position, and Obama himself.

Iraq War: Have The Goals Been Achieved?

First, let me address the Iraq War itself. There were several publicly [Read more...]

There’s been quite a lot of commentary in the media of late about Turkey emerging as a global power. This seems to have been prompted by the increasingly assertive positions on a variety of issues (eg standing up to Israel over the Gaza blockade, and vetoing new UN sanctions on Iran) adopted by Prime Minister [Read more...]

One of the most oft-repeated axioms of Asian geopolitics is that there won’t be a new war on the Korean Peninsula because neither North and South Korea nor their principal backers (China and the US) want it to happen. The South and the US will not attack the North because that would lead to a [Read more...]

Political risk is a perennial concern for foreign investors in Turkey, and a frequent cause of volatility on the Istanbul markets. Yet despite threats of military coups, an on-again off-again EU accession process, deep social tensions between secularist and moderate Islamist institutions, and a protracted ethnic Kurdish insurgency, the Turkish economy and financial markets have [Read more...]

 

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Personally I thought it would be some time before President Obama was next forced to put his diplomacy skills to the test, but just a few days after condemning the Iranian authorities’ crackdown on protestors, another political crisis is dumped on his doorstep. At first glance, Honduran politics seems like a relative backwater when compared [Read more...]