Mid-East: Belligerence vs. evolution
As the young protesters in Libya struggle to rewrite the contract between the people and their rulers to make them more accountable, the world is reacting in predictable ways.
As the young protesters in Libya struggle to rewrite the contract between the people and their rulers to make them more accountable, the world is reacting in predictable ways.
With India planning to buy $100 billion worth of new weapons over the next ten years, arms sales may be the best way to revive Washington's relationship with New Delhi, its most important strategic partner in the region.
As the Arab world reinvents itself in real time, the rest of the world must begin to understand the region as something more than a source for oil and a market for armaments and consumer goods.
In the last few months, South Asia has gone from being just a global security headache, to a region with new possibilities. Teresita C. Schaffer, former US ambassador to Sri Lanka, and Howard Schaffer, former US ambassador to Pakistan and Bangladesh, discuss the major challenges that confront the US in South Asia.
There are more than Western interests at play in Egypt. The other catalysts for the unrest are a combination of Iranian adventures, hypocritical policies of West Asian regimes and resurgent commodity speculation in western markets, triggering a rise in prices of basic items in emerging markets
Indo-US business dealings and the US Federal Reserve’s money-printing initiative may have saved Chinese President Hu Jintao the headache of explaining – to his American counterpart – China’s stealth fighter shocker, undervalued currency and giant trade surplus.
Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to the US comes at a time when the geopolitical situation in Asia and the Asia-Pacific region is fluid - consequent to the US deciding to re-energise relations with countries in the region - and when Sino-US relations have been under some strain.
A week after Salman Taseer's murder, US Vice President Joseph Biden flew to Pakistan to "gauge priorities" in the Af-Pak region. India, Ambassador Neelam Deo says, must not allow itself to become a victim of American imperatives and Pakistani maneuvers.
There are no easy or cost-free ways to escape the current quagmire in Afghanistan. Although it has problems, a de facto partition of Afghanistan, in which Washington pursues nation building in the north and counter terrorism in the south, offers an acceptable fallback.
Although freeing Aung Suu Kyi may allow Burma’s military leaders to escape scrutiny for now, their budding nuclear ambitions could rejuvenate international interest in placing pressure on their regime.