The five BRICS countries are home to 42.6 percent of the global population, 21 percent of the world’s economy and nearly half of the world’s forex reserves, but have been marginalized in the global financial landscape. For example, in the World Bank, the five have a total of only 13 percent of voting rights, while […]
The problem is that China’s recent slowdown from 10 percent annual growth to about 7 percent is only the beginning. The recent drops in housing and stock prices are harbingers of a further economic moderation. That is inevitable, since no country can grow at a breakneck pace forever. And with the slowing of China, Brazil […]
The ongoing war in Eastern Ukraine casts a long shadow over areas of shared American and Russian interest, making the Obama administration’s 2009 “reset” in relations appear a distant memory. However perceptions have shifted in the intervening six years, common concerns still exist between Washington and Moscow; chief among them: terrorism. For this reason, U.S. […]
After China initiated the “One Belt, One Road” project, a large number of countries have shown a willingness to join. However, India, which has enormous influence on whether the initiative, especially the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, can be implemented smoothly, has not officially responded. Some scholars therefore believe that the Indian government’s official attitude […]
Scattered between the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea, the Andaman and Nicobar islands are closer to Myanmar and Indonesia than the Indian mainland. More importantly, its southern isles lie near the top of the Malacca Straits, a gateway to the Indian Ocean and through which China gets three-quarters of its oil. Read Here […]
Obama on the Nuclear Deal – July 16, 2015
Iran and six major world powers reached a nuclear deal, capping more than a decade of on-off negotiations with an agreement that could potentially transform the Middle East, and which Israel called an “historic surrender”. Read Here – Reuters
Forget about all the shoes, toys and other exports. China may soon have another thing to offer the world: a recession. That is the prediction from Ruchir Sharma, head of emerging markets at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, who says a continuation of China’s slowdown in the next years may drag global economic growth below 2 percent, […]
For much of the past decade, the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka was more or less a family business — one that happened to be run on an island just 22 miles off the coast of the second-largest country in the world and astride a key shipping lane to the largest. By one estimate, former […]
On July 1, the U.S. published its new national military strategy, just a few months after China released its own. Both papers are intended for broad public consumption; neither addresses specifics about weapons and strategy. Taken together, they paint an interesting contrasting portrait of the military thinking guiding the two superpowers. Read Here – Defense One
