West Asia

In grand debates about foreign policy, we concentrate on leaders but often lose sight of the people and of what constitutes the \'national psyche\'. Yet understanding the national psyche tells us a lot about the formulation of a state\'s policy and what impact certain actions may have. 

Two responses to Raoul Heinrichs\' post on the language of defeat in Afghanistan. Geoff Randal writes: UNSW historian Ian Bickerton grappled with the question of how to measure success in his book The Illusion of Victory: The True Costs of War. For starters, you might look at the war

Gregory Collins, a PhD candidate at the Australian National University, writes: Raoul Heinrichs\' piece on Afghanistan poses some interesting questions about the very nature of success. I accept most of his argument that Western states are not being realistic with themselves and their publics

Winston Churchill once described \'success\' as the ability to \'go from failure to failure without the loss of enthusiasm\'. By that standard, the Afghanistan war might have been considered a pretty successful venture, at least until recently, when everyone lost enthusiasm. By any other measure, it

Yang Razali Kassim, currently a Visiting Fellow at the Lowy Institute, is a Senior Fellow with Singapore\'s S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University. Frustrated. That\'s the word Kofi Annan used last week to express anguish over his

Matthew Moran is a Research Associate at the Centre for Science and Security Studies, King\'s College London. Last week, Iran\'s nuclear negotiators met representatives of the P5-1 (France, UK, US, Russia, China and Germany) for the latest round of talks aimed at resolving the long-standing

Sarah Phillips is a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney Centre for International Security Studies. The images of the suicide bombing that killed nearly 100 people in Yemen last week were a gruesome indication of just how badly reality is diverging from the political transition in

While the West congratulates itself on two Yemen-related counter-terrorism successes — the alleged foiling of a sophisticated bomb plot against an airliner and the killing by drone strike of Fahd al-Quso, one of the architects of the 2000 USS Cole bombing — the security

A belated tribute to Lyn Lusi, co-founder with her husband and orthopaedic surgeon, Dr Jo Lusi,  of \'Heal Africa\' in Goma. Lyn succumbed to cancer on 17 March this year. \'Heal Africa\' is a health service which provides fistula surgery and care for women with fistula

Anton Kuruc writes: As Australia prepares to exit its main combat forces from Afghanistan there will inevitably be a lot of retrospective analysis about our experience in the Hindu Kush.   On Four Corners on 16 April I was surprised that Minister Smith said: \'...any political

If, as the cliché has it, truth is the first casualty of war, then nuanced commentary often follows close behind. Sometimes it comes in the form of inappropriate historical analogies – when US troops are involved, the tendency is to mine the Vietnam war and to talk modern-day quagmires

Two points I take away from this interesting interview with Afghanistan\'s Ambassador to Australia Nasir Andisha, who was our guest speaker at the Lowy Institute on Wednesday (full audio of the speech here). The first is a rather stark warning of a flood of Afghan refugees to Australia should

David Brewster is a Visiting Fellow at the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre, ANU. Intriguing details are beginning to emerge about some events involving the Indian Army and the Indian Government last January. Some have claimed that unusual troop movements near New Delhi amounted to

What with the hoopla surrounding the elections in Uttar Pradesh, this year\'s second-biggest exercise in democracy, and Sachin Tendulkar reaching his one-hundredth hundred, it has been easier than it should have been to overlook the tenth anniversary of the Gujarat riots. In 2002, the state

Occasionally, the production of this documentary verges on the melodramatic, but that\'s the price you pay for trying to tell a complex story on television, which needs a lot of movement and music to keep the viewer\'s attention. That said, this film tells the story of Iran\'s nuclear

India has been searching for a strategy since the end of the Cold War. The three big changes in its foreign and security policy after 1991 – the partial opening up of the economy in the early 1990s, the nuclear tests in 1998, and establishment of better relations with the US in the 2000s

The problem with the Middle East is not a lack of voting; even Saudi Arabia had a vote for (some) municipal council seats in 2005. The problem is that the votes rarely mean anything.  Amid the fighting in Syria, voters are going to the polls to vote in a referendum that President

While no economic sanctions regime can ever be watertight, the ones enacted against Iran have been well targeted and undoubtedly have caused pain. But the problem with unilateral action, or multilateral action without UN agreement, is that the impact of sanctions dissipates as states assert

Alicia Mollaun, a PhD candidate at the Crawford School at ANU, is based in Islamabad. When one talks about India and Pakistan, comparisons are inevitable: of nuclear arsenals, development indicators, political systems, cricket teams. But what about the arts?  In January I hopped across

With the headlines out of Afghanistan dominated by America\'s revised exit strategy, it has been easy to miss the news of China\'s enhanced engagement, both commercially and diplomatically. On 27 December, a date in the calendar when Western journalists are hardly at their most vigilant, the China

As Egyptians observe the first anniversary of their uprising, spare a thought for Tunisia. It was the uprising there which sparked off a year of political turmoil in much of the Arab world, yet Tunisia hardly seems to rate a mention anymore. It\'s a shame, not least since Tunisia\'s transition to

India Today recently reported that a high-level Indian delegation quietly signed a series of new infrastructure deals in Tehran in late November 2011. The big ticket item was a new railway from Iran's Chah Bahar port, which India also promised to help upgrade, to the Hajigak region of eastern

Danielle Rajendram is an intern with the international security program at the Lowy Institute. As Australia and many other nations face a greying demographic profile, the youth segment of India\'s population is increasing rapidly and is projected to do so for the next 30 years. As a result, India\'

Even by Pakistan\'s chaotic standards, it has been a ridiculously frenetic few weeks. The tumble of events has included a NATO air-strike killing 24 Pakistani soldiers on the porous border with Afghanistan; rumours that President Asif Ali Zardari was about to resign, after heading to Dubai to