WORLD ROUNDUPWhy This India-Pakistan Conflict Is Different | What Putin Wants—and How Europe Should Thwart Him | What Trump’s New Budget Says About U.S. Foreign Policy, and more

Why This India-Pakistan Conflict Is Different  (Vaibhav Vats, The Atlantic)
India and Pakistan are fueling each other’s extremism without an off-ramp in sight.

The Threat of Inaction in Response to Violations of International Law: A Syrian Case Study  (Elisabeth Baer, Small Wars Journal)
Since its beginning in 2011, the Syrian civil war has led to approximately half a million deaths and left an estimated 16.7 million people, 70 percent of Syria’s population, in need of humanitarian aid. It is one of the largest displacement crises in the world, with over 14 million people affected. What had started in 2011 as a peaceful protest against the government of President Bashar al-Assad quickly escalated into armed clashes and, within a couple of months, grew into a large-scale militarized rebellion. In the years that followed, allegations and evidence of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and violations of international law perpetrated by the government of Syria began to amass. Perhaps most atrocious among these are the claims of Syria’s repeated use of chemical weapons (CW) against its own citizens. Now, with the recent fall of Assad’s administration on 8 December 2024 and his subsequent escape to Russia, questions remain about the future of Syria and whether the perpetrators of the Assad government’s actions will be brought to justice.
The continued failure to prosecute Assad and his senior officials threatens to undermine international law and the Western-led rules-based order. The situation in Syria, therefore, serves as an excellent case study of the international community’s ineffective response to war crimes and violations of international law. It demonstrates a fundamental weakness in the enforceability of international statutes, highlights the dangers of the lack of substantive action, and threatens to cause irreparable damage to the standing of the US and its allies on the world stage. To address this dangerous precedent, it is crucial to understand the structural and geopolitical factors limiting both past and potential actions and responses from the international system and consider recommendations for possible solutions to this dangerous precedent.

What Putin Wants—and How Europe Should Thwart Him  (Economist)
Many Europeans are complacent about the threat Russia poses—and misunderstand how to deter its president.

Nigeria Has More People without Electricity Than Any Other Country  (Economist)
Fixing that will be fiendishly difficult.

A Tale of Four Fighter Jets  (Rishi Iyengar, Foreign Policy)
The aircraft India and Pakistan use to strike each other tell a story of key geopolitical shifts.

What Trump’s New Budget Says About U.S. Foreign Policy  (Lili Pike and Rishi Iyengar, Foreign Policy)
The president wants to significantly pull back on many of America’s traditional global engagements while spending more on the border and defense.