According to the US Government Accountability Office, China surpassed America as Africa’s largest trading partner in 2009. Three years later, Chinese two-way trade with African nations amounted to $198 billion, about double ours. And the future looks bright for the Chinese. Projections put China’s African trade at $325 billion just two years from now. It was only […]
America’s chief intelligence officers have a longstanding history of untruthiness — testifying falsely and fearlessly. They are caught in a dilemma — sworn to secrecy yet sworn to tell the truth. Sometimes they get their facts wrong; that’s human error. But sometimes their untruths are conscious. Soldiers can die as a consequence. Read Here – Bloomberg
For an illustration of Secretary of State John Kerry‘s commitment to Asia — or lack thereof — look no further than his travel schedule. On July 1, he arrived in the tiny nation of Brunei for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum, an annual multilateral dialogue. In the weeks prior, Kerry canceled inaugural stops in Indonesia […]
On Sunday the New York Times ran a front-page article previewing what appears to be the emerging consensus in GOP circles on how to stop Hillary Clinton from winning the White House in 2016: by portraying her as too old for the job…This is a terrible political strategy, argues Joshua Green. Read Here – Businessweek
Africa‘s thriving democracies and economies, and its alarming transnational security threats, make it more important than ever to the United States. Obama, however, has largely ignored the continent. Regardless of who wins in November, Washington cannot afford to continue on the president’s current path. Read Here – Foreign Affairs
After Obama was elected, Der Spiegel, the magazine that serves as the German political barometer, called him the “World President.” But the German disappointment with Obama has been evident in its pages since. The magazine said that he did not deserve to win the 2012 election, and recently ran a cover with Obama’s picture below Kennedy’s, […]
If the case of Edward Snowden — the former contractor for the National Security Agency who smuggled classified information out of his workplace and provided it to news organizations — has revealed anything, it is that the U.S. intelligence services made mistakes as they reformed after 9/11 and the Iraq war. Here is how to […]
On June 8, Juan Cole, one of the few true Middle East experts in the US, posted a short entry on hisInformed Comment blog. The title said it all: “We misunderstood Barack: He only wanted the domestic surveillance to be made legal, not to end it”. But domestic surveillance was far from the only Bush policy that Obama has […]
China will almost certainly pass the United States in the total size of its economy within a decade or so. But if one looks also at military and “soft power” resources, the U.S. is likely to remain more powerful than China for at least the next few decades. Does it matter, asks Joseph S. Nye Jr? […]
Some of America‘s biggest social media and tech companies have been denying in recent days that they were aware of the National Security Agency’s recently-exposed “PRISM” and telephone monitoring programs. But these denials obscure a larger truth: The government’s massive data collection and surveillance system was largely built not by professional spies or Washington bureaucrats […]
