One year on, some things in Afghanistan have improved. Corruption, a bane of the former Afghan republic, is apparently on the wane. Large-scale fighting has largely stopped, and people in rural areas are rebuilding. At the same time, almost every Afghan is now, according to the United Nations, living below the poverty line. Read More Here
Singapore’s prime minister-in-waiting Lawrence Wong warned that the US and China may “sleepwalk into conflict” if they don’t engage with each other and deescalate rising tensions over Taiwan. Read More Here
Given its favourable demography, democratic polity, and large and diversified economy, India can in principle grow at 7% or higher for years to come. But the only route to such growth that remains open runs through structural reforms that the government has taken off the table. Read More Here
China’s President Xi Jinping has made his first public appearance in two weeks, in a sign that the Communist Party’s annual secretive summer retreat on the Yellow Sea has ended. Read More Here
China laid the first brick in this foundation in 2004, when then-President Hu Jintao unveiled the “New Historic Mission” concept, calling for a more global role for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to enable it to execute “diversified military tasks.” Read More Here
The diplomatic challenge is not finding an appropriate intermediary but rather whether the warring parties are open to genuine intermediation and whether the “dispute is ripe,” to use the terminology of mediation. Read More Here
In a world of multipolarity and growing complexity President Xi can paradoxically show more flexibility, and to emphasise China’s (and his) role as “a reasonable stakeholder” in a multipolar, rules-based order, but one in which China’s role is both ascendant and recognized. Read More Here
The West boasts substantial material advantages over malefactors like China and Russia. But it has squandered its advantages by failing to take the challenge from its antagonists seriously. Read More Here
Whatever their electoral implications, recent US legislative achievements – from the CHIPS and Science Act to the Inflation Reduction Act – portend a massive increase in long-term investment in America’s growth potential, and in balancing out the various dimensions of its growth pattern. It’s a change that couldn’t come too soon. Read More Here
As the Russia-Ukraine conflict heads for the six-month mark, Turkey has emerged as a major swing player in the protracted war. Read More Here
looking beyond borders 