The fall of Afrin city to the Turkish army and Syrian rebel forces was inevitable, but the situation remains full of dangers. A central question now is whether or not the takeover of this Kurdish enclave will lead to the ethnic cleansing of the Kurdish majority there. By Patrick Cockburn.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Wednesday called on Kosovo to ratify a border demarcation deal with Montenegro and improve ties with Serbia.

The fossil fuel era won't last forever. And a new set of countries will find their reserves of lithium, copper and rare earth metals are in high demand. By Andrew Barron.

The European Union has warned Albania against "interference" in neighboring countries and Serbian officials accused Tirana of wanting to build a "Greater Albania," after the Albanian prime minister said his country and Kosovo could one day have a single president.

By invading Afrin, one of the last unscathed regions in Syria, Turkey is trying to prevent the creation of a Kurdish state. The U.S. is looking on powerlessly while Russia is rubbing its hands in glee. Ultimately, the true winner might be Bashar Assad. By Christian Esch, Maximilian Popp, Christoph Reuter, Christoph Scheuermann.

Saddam Hussein and his senior lieutenants were rightly executed for their crimes, but the foreign politicians and officials who were responsible for the sanctions regime that killed so many deserved to stand beside them in the dock. By Patrick Cockburn.

How America’s failure to honor a 1990 commitment led to many of today’s global crises. By Andrew J. Bacevich.

In a well choreographed Sochi summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin defines a peaceful future for Syria after the liberation of the country from militants. By Pepe Escobar.

British historian Peter Frankopan, author of the bestseller "The Silk Roads: A New History of the World" paints an unexpected portrait of our Western civilization and the way we perceive our position in the world: old Europe is convinced to be the best, most prosperous and safest region. Europeans think that they have a good position in the actual world, absolutely denying the new world order that is currently happening.

Serbia's president is promising to lead the Balkan nation into the European Union and says the fact that Russia is arming the Serbian military doesn't threaten that goal.

For more than two years, some 300 American soldiers have been quietly helping train an enormous partner military in western Ukraine.

Yuan-denominated contract will let exporters circumvent US dollar

The two nuclear powers are fighting over a border, but their battle is really over the shape of Asia’s future. By Steven Lee Myers, Ellen Barry and Max Fisher.

The G20 summit showed that the new Trump administration’s “America First” foreign policy actually means “America Alone”

Fourteen years after being told they had a future in the European Union, countries in the Western Balkans are losing hope. Meanwhile, Turkish and Russian influence in the region is on the rise. So too is the nationalist rhetoric of old. By Walter Mayr and Jan Puhl.

In the midst of Trump administration developing its policies on Afghanistan and Pakistan, the experts in Washington, are divided. The key question seems to be how to make Pakistan cease its support to the Haqqani Network and other militant groups that are destabilizing the region, especially Afghanistan… By Hussain Nadim.

I worked in Foggy Bottom for 6 years. I’ve never seen anything like this.

Teary-eyed nostalgia as cover for U.S. hegemony. By Andrew J. Bacevich.

If ever there was a man who displayed on his face the evil on his mind, it was Zbigniew Brzezinski… By John Helmer in Moscow.