India Defends Its Backyard In The Indian Ocean

The whole world is watching China‘s confrontations in the South China Sea and the East China Sea—but India is watching with particular concern. India has no territorial claims here per se, but one Indian official recently said that the South China Sea could be seen “as the antechamber of the Indian Ocean,” given the flow […]

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The Iraq Red Team

Seventeen months before George W. Bush announced that he was sending five additional brigades to Iraq for the 2007 “surge,” a team of officers and civilian analysts gathered in Baghdad to conduct a classified review of America‘s military strategy in Iraq. In a June 2005 speech at Fort Bragg, President Bush had told the nation that […]

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In Arab Spring, Obama Finds a Sharp Test

President Hosni Mubarak did not even wait forPresident Obama’s words to be translated before he shot back. “You don’t understand this part of the world,” the Egyptian leader broke in. “You’re young.” Mr. Obama, during a tense telephone call the evening of Feb. 1, 2011, had just told Mr. Mubarak that his speech, broadcast to hundreds of […]

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India: Locked In A Painful Clash, The Congress Government, Or Its Welcome New Economic Reforms, Could Now Fail

HER voice is high and birdlike. Tiny, she is fond of finger wagging. Her party, the Trinamool Congress, has just 19 of the national parliament’s 543 elected members. She offers little beyond vague talk of the “common man”, and after a year running West Bengal she looks ill-at-ease in office. Yet Mamata Banerjee feels she […]

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As Recriminations Over Anti-Japanese Protests Mount, Deep Divisions in China Emerge

The protest, argued all those engaged, was a spectacle of solidarity, and it appeared so at first glance: Beginning September 16, anti-Japanese grievances that had been simmering for months over the Diaoyu Islands, called the Senkaku in Japanese, overflowed into Chinese streets, engulfing more than a dozen cities in an arc along the country’s eastern seaboard. […]

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Hitler Who?

Germany shoulders much of the blame from the rest of the Eurozone. Instead of searching for fiscal solutions, many countries are retreating to stereotypes of the past. For four years, Europe has been trying to solve its financial difficulties. Those who hold political power – especially Germany and France – are attempting (with limited success) […]

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Should The U.S. And Pakistan Get ‘Divorced?’

Much has already been said about former Pakistani ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani’s return to the public sphere after being accusedof requesting an American intervention in Pakistani politics. The crux of Haqqani’s argument—to be developed in a forthcoming book on U.S.-Pakistan relations, Magnificent Delusions—is that the United States and Pakistan willfully mislead themselves about what […]

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Still Relevant After All These Years

What was most significant about the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit that was held in Tehran recently was that almost all of its 120 members gathered there in the face of U.S., allied western nations and Israeli attempts to pressure and isolate Iran to abandon parts of its nuclear programme. Great pressure was even brought on […]

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Is China Burning?

Chinese streets were quiet today after anti-Japan protests, many of them violent, rocked more than a 100 cities last week.  Large demonstrations continued through Tuesday, the 81st anniversary of Japan’s invasion of Manchuria. The disturbances, triggered by a territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, are commonly described as the worst anti-Japan riots […]

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