U.S. exports to Iran rose by nearly a third this year, chiefly because of grain sales, according to U.S. data released last week, despite the tightening of U.S. financial sanctions. The jump to $199.5 million in the first eight months of 2012 from $150.8 million a year earlier, according to Census Bureau data, is surprising given Western […]
SINCE the days of Park Chung-hee’s often brutal dictatorship (he seized power in 1961 and was assassinated in 1979), South Korea has transformed itself as a democratic nation. Its politics, enlivened by occasional fisticuffs in the National Assembly, are among the most vibrant in Asia. The bid by the late strongman’s daughter, Park Geun-hye, to […]
Horrible history can make for poor diplomatic and political tiesdoesn’t always make for bad business. India and China are as good an example of this adage, as China and Japan are too. Henry Kissinger’s book On China begins with a fascinating snippet of what is being discussed fiercely in India these days – a border war 50 years […]
The global economy is facing its third major brake on expansion in five years as emerging markets slow from China to Brazil, provoking debate about how much policy makers should respond. Three years after industrializing nations led the world out of the U.S. mortgage meltdown-induced recession, the reliability of the power source is waning as […]
Preparing for a recent trip to Indonesia last week, I came across an article by Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, the editor of the feisty Indonesian daily Jakarta Post, protesting that the Obama administration’s “pivot” to Asia seemed too much like an attempt to start a cold war against China, with the help of its neighbors. America’s “economic intentions and wherewithal” in […]
Until just over a week ago, President Obama’s campaign was on the cusp of doing something unprecedented in modern presidential politics: turning the election into a referendum on the challenger, Mitt Romney. Why is that so special? Because every prior example of an incumbent running for reelection in recent times has wound up being a […]
To call yourself a state, a government, you must have people you can deploy to carry out the functions of government. In an earlier column, i shared with readers the abysmal figures in India. The Indian problem is not too many officials; it is, instead, that we have too few to deal with the millions […]
Signs of potential private sector participation in cyber security has opened new and unchartered territory in India’s national security regime. The first hint of such collaboration came from Deputy National Security Adviser Vijay Latha Reddy, who, in her opening remarks at an Internet governance conference last week, spoke of a deeper engagement with the private […]
Two new books — one condemning the culture of liberal piety embraced by the Nobel Peace Prize, the other detailing the global influence of conservative civil society — underscore the dangers of using Big Ideas to try to save the world. Last week’s decision to award the Nobel peace prize to the European Union only […]
Chen Shin-chi smiles through his dentures and drops down to the dusty floor of a jail cell to do a push up. He looks up at the crowd watching him, smiles again, and flips on his back to perform sit-ups, his body stretching almost the entire length of the three-by-two-meter cell. In 1968, he lived […]
