India’s need for oil and gas imports from Iran provides only a partial explanation of New Delhi’s desire to preserve good relations with that country. Iran is the third largest source of oil imports for India behind Saudi Arabia and Iraq and a significant supplier of natural gas. But India’s interest in cultivating Iran goes beyond its need for imported energy.
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Despite his aspirations to play the responsible world statesman, Xi’s foreign-policy record is filled with squabbles, misfires and unfulfilled promise. If he’s going to restore China to superpower status and cement its dominance in East Asia, he should take a cue from Chinese history about how to wield power.
The United States is losing ground as the internet’s standard-bearer in the face of aggressive European privacy standards and China’s draconian vision for a tightly controlled Web. The weakening American position comes as the European Union, filling a gap left by years of lax U.S. regulations, imposes data privacy requirements that companies like Facebook and Google must follow.
How should a great power manage a rival with an authoritarian government, a state-directed capitalist economy, strong mercantilist tendencies and a “leader for life” that exploited a “cult of personality?” To make matters more difficult, this country’s government dominates society through an all-pervasive party structure that stresses nationalism and argues that only the party can reverse recent slights and return the nation to its rightful place in the sun. This might sound like modern-day China, but in fact it is 1930s Germany.
Pakistan’s upcoming general elections on July 25 may be the most tense and fraught in the country’s brief period of democracy, and there are lingering doubts about whether they will even be held on time. In Pakistan, the political establishment appears to be following the example of Turkey and Egypt, where those in power clamped down on the media and intimidated civil society just before holding a vote.
For the better part of two decades, Iran’s leadership has been hedging against international isolation by developing deeper ties with China and Russia. Today, as Washington once again seeks to tighten the screws, Tehran sees its relationship with Beijing as key to remaining afloat.
Technology is making it easier and easier to create the impression that someone said or did something that, in reality, they did not. For malicious actors armed with that impersonation software, the possibilities for havoc are endless: political sabotage, humiliating fake sex videos, or unparalleled interference in another country’s politics.
Photo by Luca Micheli on Unsplash
Were London a city-state, it would have the 20th-largest national economy in the world – larger than the national economies of Saudi Arabia, Argentina and South Africa. Were London a city-state, its national per capita gross domestic product would be greater than that of the United States. Were London a city-state, it would be the 15th most populous country in Europe, with an overall population bigger than that of Austria or Denmark and bigger than the combined populations of Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The death of Nicholas II and the Romanov family remains a controversial moment in Russia’s history. Tsarism and Bolshevism are — for the most part — not presented as conflicting forces in a battle in which one order defeated another. Rather, tsars, Bolsheviks and later communists, are seen as a succession of “greats.” In Moscow, visitors can admire the glamour and grandeur of the tsars at the Historical Museum in the Red Square before lining up for the Lenin Mausoleum only a few steps away.
Chinese tourists in South Africa. Pix/LBB
Chinese President Xi Jinping heads to Africa this week as Beijing moves to further cement its role as one of the continent’s closest economic and diplomatic allies. After a brief stop in the Persian Gulf Thursday, Xi’s itinerary — his first overseas trip since beginning his second term as leader — takes him to Senegal, Rwanda, South Africa and Mauritius, spanning almost every corner of Sub-Saharan Africa, where China’s economic clout, and strategic ambitions, are growing by the year.
