By Habib-Al Badawi Introduction: The End of an Era The November 2025 National Security Strategy represents the first comprehensive articulation since the Cold War’s end of an American vision that explicitly abandons ideological frameworks shaping global posture for three decades. The document positions the United States not as the architect of “liberal order” but as …
By ISSF Admin @mujifren PROLOGUE: THE SILENCE OF GRAVITY Karachi, December 2016. Physics is impartial. When a body falls from the 8th floor of a building, the result is inevitable. But the death of Javed Khanani was not a matter of physics; it was a matter of geopolitics. On a dusty afternoon in the upscale …
THE BANKER, THE GENERAL, THE GANGSTER: The Trinity That Bled India Read More »
By Professor Habib Al Badawi Introduction The rupture between Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene marks one of the most revealing confrontations inside the Republican Party since the rise of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement. What began as an alliance fueled by grievance politics and populist energy has evolved into a public collision …
When MAGA Collides: Trump vs. Greene in a Battle for the GOP’s Soul Read More »
By Habib Al Badawi When Killing Becomes Commerce: The Milan Investigation as Moral Reckoning The Siege of Sarajevo remains one of the starkest illustrations of systematic violence against civilians in late twentieth-century Europe. Beneath the familiar narrative of snipers and shelling lies a more disturbing layer: the Milan investigation reveals that killing civilians in Sarajevo …
Hunting Humans: The Paid Killers of Sarajevo and the Milan Investigation Read More »
Prof. Habib BadawiDepartment of History, Lebanese University, Beirut, LebanonEmail: [email protected] | [email protected]: 0000-0002-6452-8379 | Scopus Author ID: 58675152100 Mr. Daniel AyoubDepartment of History, Lebanese University, Beirut, LebanonEmail: [email protected] The Horn of Africa occupies a unique strategic position at the intersection of Africa, the Middle East, and critical maritime trade routes connecting Europe and Asia. Comprising …
A Case Study in Values-Based Leadership and Democratic Renewal By Professor Habib Al-Badawi In October 2025, Kimi Onoda walked into Tokyo’s Imperial Palace for her cabinet inauguration wearing a gleaming silver dress that immediately sparked social media speculation (Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, 2025). Was it borrowed? A fashion misstep? Within hours, she responded on …
Kimi Onoda: Authenticity as Authority in Contemporary Japanese Politics Read More »
By Professor Habib Al Badawi The dissolution of the twenty-six-year alliance between the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito on October 10, 2025, marks a defining moment in contemporary Japanese politics. For over two decades, this partnership anchored Japan’s post-Cold War governance, ensuring policy continuity, maintaining legislative stability, and fusing conservative statecraft with Buddhist-backed social moderation …
By: Prof. Habib Badawi & Dr. Nicholas Howard Introduction: The Paradox of Hegemonic Strength The transformation of American global leadership presents a fundamental paradox that challenges conventional wisdom about hegemonic power and its exercise. While the United States retains overwhelming material capabilities, its capacity to build and maintain international coalitions has demonstrably diminished. This study …
By: Prof. Habib Badawi and Dr. Ali Darbaj Introduction The contemporary discourse surrounding US-China relations has been dominated by historical analogies, particularly Graham Allison’s application of the “Thucydides Trap” framework, which suggests that rising powers inevitably challenge established hegemons, often leading to conflict (Allison, 2017). However, such binary frameworks struggle to capture the unprecedented complexity …
Prof. Habib Al Badawi The Architecture of Misunderstanding The “Partner City” initiative, conceived as a cornerstone of Japan’s soft diplomatic engagement with Africa through the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD), represented an ambitious yet fundamentally modest vision of international cooperation. By establishing formal partnerships between four Japanese municipalities—Nagai, Kisarazu, Sanjo, and Imabari—and the …
