President Barack Obama devoted just one sentence in last week’s State of the Union address to call for a new transatlantic trade and investment deal. However, if negotiated with sufficient ambition and presidential engagement, it is Obama’s best chance yet at leaving a positive foreign policy legacy. The other global issues Obama catalogued in his speech were […]
CHINA is known for its industrial might. Manufacturers, miners, utilities and builders accounted for over 45% of China‘s GDP in 2012. In America, by contrast, they contributed less than 20%. China, according to caricature, makes things—things you can drop on your foot. Soft-toed America merely designs, brands and peddles them. Read Here – The Economist
The old saying that a developing country is at a crossroads, whether it’s India or Indonesia, is especially tempting when it comes to India’s armed forces. Decades of underinvestment, corruption, bureaucratic ineptitude and hazy strategic thinking have left the country with a decidedly mixed bag of military capabilities. Read Here – The Diplomat
Trade numbers for 2012 show that China has become the world’s biggest trader, unseating the United States that has ruled the global trading charts for several decades. It is a momentous shift that is bound to have far-reaching impact on the way Beijing sees itself and the manner it influences geopolitics. As it becomes the […]
Singapore has often been cited as a success story, the envy of governments around the world. But simmering underneath the gloss and the shine lies a much more complex story of a nation slowly outgrowing a patriarchal government and restrictive system. Not long after losing a by-election, the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) launched a White […]
Despite a decade of costly and indecisive warfare and mounting fiscal pressures, the long-standing consensus among American policymakers about U.S. grand strategy has remained remarkably intact. As the presidential campaign made clear, Republicans and Democrats may quibble over foreign policy at the margins, but they agree on the big picture: that the United States should […]
Few news items over the past year had more entertainment value than one concerning the Onion and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. It was funny enough that the faux-news website named the double-chinned Kim the sexiest man of 2012. More entertaining still was that the People’s Daily, the stern mouthpiece of China’s Communist Party, fell for it. Read Here […]
As the slowdown in the world’s major industrial economies drags on, growth in developing Asia is being affected. A serious burden will likely be placed on the region’s major economies, particularly its two giants, India and China. Both countries’ external sectors have clearly been hit hard, while domestic consumption is stagnating. Fixed-asset investment in India […]
On India’s Navy Day in December, Indian Chief of Naval Staff D.K. Joshi declared that the Indian navy was prepared to operate in the South China Sea if called upon to do so. The government subsequently downplayed Joshi’s remarks, but the fact remains that the South China Sea has emerged as a vital sea corridor for India, […]
When China’s Lieutenant-General Ren Haiquan took the podium in front of an audience filled with representatives from various Asian militaries in Melbourne, Australia, last month, he attacked “some people” who were threatening to repeat the mistakes of WWII. ”Flames of the war ignited by fascist countries engulfed the whole region, and many places, including Darwin in Australia, were bombed,” […]
looking beyond borders 