With disaster looming in Afghanistan, Brookings President John R. Allen writes that the Biden administration should issue a public redline to the Taliban with a threat to intervene with military force to save Kabul, airlift eligible Afghans, and more.
In addition, Madiha Afzal warns that if Pakistan wants its relationship with the U.S. to be less dominated by Afghanistan, it is time to do all it can to force the Taliban to cease violence and come to the table for peace.
As conflict in Ethiopia spreads beyond the northern Tigray region, Vanda Felbab-Brown argues that regional ethnic-based militias encouraged by the government will pose a grave threat to the country's stability, territorial integrity, and ethnic coexistence over time.
Amidst intensifying competition, deep interdependence continues between the United States and China on economic and other fronts. The balance of interests on both sides is likely to control hostile impulses, Ryan Hass writes.
Separately in the Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, Hass examines U.S.-China competition around technological innovation.
Quote of the week
“[The situation in Afghanistan] is bleak, worse than most expected this quickly…The danger is that the momentum of the Taliban's offensive will overwhelm the Afghan government and the defense of Kabul will collapse.”
COVID-19 in Vietnam. The combination of a surge of delta variant cases and low vaccination rates in Vietnam is changing minds about Hanoi's previously effective response to the pandemic, Huong Le Thu writes for our Southeast Asia Insights series.
America and Asia. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Adam P. Liff and Zack Cooper argue the U.S. must resolve a decade of disconnect between ambitious rhetoric about its role in Asia and underwhelming action.
U.S. counterterrorism. In a piece for Foreign Affairs,Michael E. O'Hanlon and Hal Brands maintain that a "medium-footprint" counterterrorism strategy pursued by the United States in the greater Middle East since 2014 remains the best of bad options.
China 2049.David Dollar discusses the likelihood that the People's Republic of China achieves its goal of becoming a fully developed nation by its 2049 centennial.
On Netflix's 'Explained' series
Why did humanity become so dependent on fossil fuels, and how can international efforts break that dependence to counter climate change?
Samantha Gross, director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at Brookings, and other experts discuss the "The End of Oil" on a new episode of the "Explained" series.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Brookings Institution campus in Washington, D.C. is currently closed and all events are virtual only. For more information on the Institution's response, read our full guidance here.
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