DIPLOMACY is dead. Effective diplomacy — the kind that produced Nixon’s breakthrough with China, an end to the Cold War on American terms, or the Dayton peace accord in Bosnia — requires patience, persistence, empathy, discretion, boldness and a willingness to talk to the enemy. This is an age of impatience, changeableness, palaver, small-mindedness and an unwillingness […]
CHINA and Japan are sliding towards war. In the waters and skies around disputed islands, China is escalating actions designed to challenge decades of Japanese control. It is accompanying its campaign with increasingly blood-curdling rhetoric. Japan, says the ChinaDaily, is the “real danger and threat to the world”. A military clash, says Global Times, is now “more […]
It’s no easy task navigating through heavy fog in the dead of night. But on one memorable occasion in New Delhi, my driver wasn’t going to be stopped. It was 3 a.m. as we careened out of Indira Gandhi International Airport and onto the highway leading to my downtown hotel. The fog was so thick […]
China’s more assertive foreign policy over the last two years has played a key role in getting two arch-conservatives — Japan’s Shinzo Abe and South Korea’s Park Geun-hye — elected to lead their respective countries. Some Chinese observers believe that Abe and Park will be forced by China‘s inexorable rise to come to terms with their giant neighbor. Don’t count on it. To […]
The US and Russia don’t agree on much – but they are both keen to develop a good relationship with India. How do we know? Look at the arms trade. Read Here – The European
South Korea’s tycoons were relieved when the pro-business Park Geun Hye was elected last month as the nation’s 11th president. The main criticism against her predecessor and party mate, Lee Myung Bak, was that he was as beholden to corporations as leaders get. Park’s win was seen as a victory for the economic system that raised Korea […]
If you believe the rhetoric, Britain is coming back as a security player in Asia. It may not be exactly a reversal of the 1971 East (from London’s perspective) of Suez withdrawal. But on January 18th British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond and Foreign Secretary William Hague are due to visit Perth, Western Australia, to talk […]
For many decades now, civilian politicians have been little more than pawns on the chessboard of Pakistan’s politics. Their purpose has been to take the fall for the massive failures brought on by the misguided strategies of the ‘king’ calling the shots. Their manoeuvrability in the game has been the most constrained out of all […]
Goopy smog may have smothered Beijing this week, but optimism among foreigners is shining a bright light across China. A temperature inversion resulted in, literally, off-the-charts pollution in the Chinese capital, and the country’s leaders quickly reacted to universal criticism of their decades-old environment-be-damned policies. “Chinese media is all over the story in a remarkably […]
A slight acceleration in Chinese economic growth at the end of last year is reinforcing the common narrative that China’s expansion is a threat to other nations, including the U.S. The bigger danger over the medium term, however, may be a slowdown in Chinese growth — which appears to be more likely than most U.S.-based commentators […]
looking beyond borders 