he number of Hong Kong residents seeking emigration to Taiwan has reached new highs since China passed its national security law this summer, a new report said today. Applicants include professionals in industry and academia, but civil servants currently serving in the Hong Kong government have also joined the waiting list, according to World Journal, the largest Chinese-language newspaper in the United States. Citing the latest figures from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Hong Kong, as well as local immigration service providers, the report said there had been a marked increase in immigration paper submissions since the anti‑extradition bill protests in June 2019, despite Taiwan's…

Nearly all lawmakers present during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Friday expressed opposition to President Trump’s troop drawdown in Afghanistan from 4,500 troops to 2,500 troops by January 15, despite little public appetite for keeping U.S. military involvement going. Both Republicans and Democrats at the hearing expressed reservations about the decision, which was announced last week at the Pentagon by Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, in accordance with Trump’s goal to end the war in Afghanistan. Republicans and Democrats on the committee expressed concern about whether 2,500 troops were too few to stave off a takeover of the…

America’s longest war has just entered its 20th year. The US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 to overthrow the Taliban and destroy al-Qaeda. Now, nearly a decade after the death of Osama bin Laden, the Afghan war continues. And everyone expects that if the Americans ever leave, the Taliban will return to power. Yet the Taliban who take charge will not be the same as those who harbored bin Laden. The median age in Afghanistan is around 19 years old: half the country’s population was born after the war began. The US is not fighting a limited reservoir of Taliban militants; it…

1. One day near the end of 2014, a nineteen-year-old white University of Michigan student named Andrew Jacob was sitting in his dorm, thinking about the police. All he seemed to hear that fall were complaints: about the cop who strangled unarmed Eric Garner, the cop who shot unarmed Michael Brown, the cop who killed twelve-year-old Tamir Rice. Black lives matter, sure, Jacob thought, but what about blue lives? Jacob, who grew up in an affluent Detroit suburb, was not from a police family and had no interest in going into law enforcement, but his father had recently started a…

The recent announcement that Washington would be lifting U.S. sanctions on Sudan in return for Sudan’s normalization with Israel is a case study of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.  Sudan, like Somalia, has long been a battleground for Cold War intrigues by the U.S., which is responsible for the massive export of arms to both countries.  Like the longtime Somali dictator, Muhammad Siad Barre, Sudan’s Jaafar Nimeiry (1969-1985) switched sides during the Cold War, and the U.S. was more than willing to reward him. In my childhood in the 1960s, Sudan had one of the most vibrant political…