Israel’s Prime Minister: Bad bets

ISRAEL‘S prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, suffered not one but two vicarious electoral defeats on Tuesday. Twice this week he has had to swallow hard and congratulate candidates he hoped would lose. The winners were equally cordial to him on the phone. If they enjoyed his discomfiture, they concealed it well. Politics is about interests, not […]

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China and America’s Economic Challenge

In the United States, the world’s largest economy, President Obama has secured a second term as leader of the country.  In China, the second largest economy, by this time next week new leaders will likely have been confirmed as well. In both cases, the new leaders will officially begin their terms in 2013, even if Obama has […]

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Is China Better Off Than It Was Ten Years Ago?

For the first time since 1992, the United States’ and China’s political calendars are syncing up, with presidential elections in the former and a leadership transition in the latter. But unlike in the United States, where Mitt Romney would have had to defeat President Barack Obama in a national election to win the White House, Xi […]

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Obama Asia Trip to Mark First Myanmar Stop by U.S. President

President Barack Obama will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Myanmar, one of three stops on a Southeast Asia trip this month. Obama will meet with President Thein Sein and opposition leader and former political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon, Myanmar, as part of U.S. efforts to encourage the transition to democracy in the country, […]

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Friends With Benefits

At the final presidential debate of the 2012 campaign season, President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney mentioned Israel some 30 times, more than any other country except Iran. Both candidates called the Jewish state “a true friend,” pledging to stand with it through thick and thin. Some political commentators criticized these effusive declarations of […]

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Forward!

It’s time to think legacy. For the last four years, President Obama has had plenty of reasons to pull his punches: at first, he was a new and inexperienced president, relatively unversed in how to make Congress and the executive branch work, and he mostly avoided going out on limbs. Then it was time to […]

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The Sun Sets on American Empire

Throughout the campaign season, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama alike insisted that the 21st century must be another American century—that the U.S. should continue to be the world’s predominant military, economic, and political power for generations to come. After ten years of shattered hegemonic dreams, leaders of both parties still feel compelled to declare their […]

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