An iron law of effective diplomacy is that if you make public demands, your credibility depends on sticking to them. European Union foreign ministers saw fit to ignore that lesson yesterday when they formally lifted all sanctions on Burma except an arms embargo. Last year, the same ministers said this step would only be taken […]
Once upon a time, global foreign direct investment flowed from only a few sources: the traditionally wealthy states of Europe, North America, and Japan. But cross-border investment from countries such as Brazil, India, and China is now flowing not just to other emerging and transitional economies, but also to the “old” FDI-exporting states. These changes have […]
Amid a storm of bluster and posturing in East Asia, there has been scarce analysis on recent attempts at regional integration. Despite this, the rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula have actually served to temporarily move the microscope away from maritime security issues and territorial disputes in favor of punditry over Pyongyang’s nuclear wish list. […]
Cyberspace matters. We know this because governments and militaries around the world are scrambling to control the digital space even as they slash defense spending in other areas, rapidly building up cyber forces with which to defend their own virtual territories and attack those of their rivals. Read Here – The Diplomat
Is China, under its new president, Xi Jinping, undertaking its own diplomatic pivot, parallel to the United States’ “pivot to Asia”? Xi’s first significant international initiatives – making Russia his first official visit abroad, followed immediately by his attendance at the BRICS summit in South Africa – suggest that China may be seeking to place […]
Most observers are gloomy about the prospects for serious economic reform in China. But they ignore a central lesson of recent Chinese history: reform is possible when the right mix of conditions comes together at the right time. And the very circumstances that facilitated the last major burst of economic reform in the 1990s are […]
The man at the helm in North Korea today is an accident of history, surrounded by vestigial assertions of narcissistic genius that are de rigueur for North Korea’s depiction of its own leaders. More than any time since the young Kim Il-song was surrounded by Soviet generals in the 1940s, the North Korean leader today […]
Sino-US economic and trade relations are the most powerful proof of the win-win and interdependent nature of bilateral relations. But the good momentum that has been achieved has also encountered some obstacles because some people in the US always want to politicize the relationship and Washington has been maintaining restrictions on high-tech exports to China. […]
Even so, it’s time for Australian leaders to stop complaining about the unfairness of the situation and start addressing the real weaknesses in their underlying economy. For years now, theirs has been, as the title of Donald Horne’s 1964 book had it, a “lucky country.” Arguably, no developed economy has benefited more from the reforms […]
Every third person in an Indian city today is a youth. In about seven years, the median individual in India will be 29 years, very likely a city-dweller, making it the youngest country in the world. India is set to experience a dynamic transformation as the population burden of the past turns into a demographic […]
