Has Obama Blown His Credibility — And Syria?

The debate about what to do in Syria has been sidetracked by discussions of credibility and reputation. But both logic and evidence prove that reputations are mostly imaginary. Obama should not let fears that others might think him irresolute drive him to disaster. Instead, he should refocus on what U.S. interests really are in Syria, […]

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Russia And The Next 10 Years

Analysts have been releasing various scenarios of how Russia might develop over the next 10 years. Although each scenario is different, they all have some features in common. Below is a list of the commonalities that form a picture of what awaits Russia over the next decade. The first in a series of possible junctures emerged with the presidential election last year. Following his successful bid for the presidency, Vladimir […]

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Will Chinese Have Space To Live In Urban China?

China is in the midst of an urban revolution, with hundreds of millions of migrants moving into cities every year.  Since 2011, for the first time in history, more than half of China’s 1.3 billion citizens (690 million people) are living in cities.  Another 300-400 million are expected to be added to China’s cities in […]

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Nawaz Sharif And His Love For India

The message to my friends in India that we have a lot of love and affection for you all. We must become good friends and hold each other’s hands … let us make a new beginning, let us sit down together and let us resolve that we will from now onwards resolve all our outstanding […]

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The Road Ahead For Pakistan

The rise of Sharif’s Muslim League is a golden opportunity for a civilian government to build consensus with other political parties and wrest control of domestic, foreign and security policy from the military. Read Here – Gulf News

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So, Whatever Happened To Vietnam?

It has been 27 years since Hanoi launched the “Doi Moi” reforms that allowed privately owned companies to participate in the economy and opened key sectors, such as agriculture. The rapid growth that followed propelled Vietnam toward the realm of middle-income nations, transforming the onetime war zone into a case study for development and poverty reduction. […]

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Can We Do Without Economists?

When the stakes are high, it is no surprise that battling political opponents use whatever support they can garner from economists and other researchers. That is what happened when conservative American politicians and European Union officials latched on to the work of two Harvard professors – Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff – to justify their support of […]

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Iran’s Presidential Hopefuls

After the huge protests that followed the 2009 election, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may have hoped June polls would quietly install a loyal conservative president, but the surprise candidacies of two major independents may scupper that. Both Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, the nationalist protégé of rabble-rousing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former […]

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Asia’s New Prize

Every few decades a new energy source comes online and promises to revolutionize the way the world fuels its economies. This was true of the shift from coal and whale oil to conventional oil in the 19th and early 20th century. Then, in the 1960s and 70s came the nuclear power revolution soon followed by […]

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Chinese Lessons In Diplomacy

India cannot afford to be complacent in spite the fact that the issue has been resolved in a win-win manner, as the Chinese media claims. In fact, the Ladakh border episode will be regarded as a watershed in the bilateral relations. India is faced with a new reality of having to deal with an assertive […]

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