As popular demonstrations swept across the Arab world in 2011, many U.S. policymakers and analysts were hopeful that the movements would usher in a new era for the region. That May, President Barack Obama described the uprisings as “a historic opportunity” for the United States “to pursue the world as it should be.” Secretary of […]
After four years of international tumult, Hillary Clinton is preparing to step down as secretary of state. In addition to carrying out her traditional role as the nation’s top diplomat, Clinton has quietly used the office to help U.S. companies close deals with foreign governments—arguing that business and trade promotion are central to American strategic interests. Bloomberg Businessweek sat […]
For five years now, the Red October computer virus has embarked on a new brand of espionage, stealing emails and other encrypted classified documents undetected from diplomats around the world. Though the virus may now be in hibernation, it’s designed so that it can strike again at any time. Read Here – Der Speigel
A serious strategic partnership between Australia and India has long been a missing link in the security architecture of Indo-Pacific Asia. Now the gap is at last being filled, if a high-level visit this week is anything to go by. Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr was in New Delhi on January 21st and 22nd, to […]
With the full support of a feckless policy elite and an uncritical media establishment, Washington is slipping, if not plunging, into a new cold war with Moscow. Relations, already deeply chilled by fundamental disputes over missile defense, the Middle East and Russia’s internal politics, have now been further poisoned by two conflicts reminiscent of tit-for-tat policy-making during the previous Cold War. Read Here – Moscow […]
All Conservative leaders since Margaret Thatcher have faced one central problem: how to prevent the party splitting wide apart over Europe. This was the difficulty that pulverised John Major, caused William Hague to go bald, propelled Iain Duncan Smith to the party leadership, and then got him sacked a short time later. Until yesterday, David […]
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 […]
JORDANIANS go to the polls on January 23rd, the day after the Israeli election, but for people of Palestinian origin, who make up a majority in Jordan and a large minority (at least a fifth) in Israel, there are disarming similarities apart from the timing. Increasing numbers of them are likely to boycott the polls […]
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 […]
On Monday, as Barack Obama is sworn in again as President, his allies in the West will ask themselves the same nervous question they posed four years ago: how much does he care about us? The British, in particular, are worried. War looms in Mali, yet Washington seems happy to let the French take charge, […]
