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, […]
It’s no easy task navigating through heavy fog in the dead of night. But on one memorable occasion in New Delhi, my driver wasn’t going to be stopped. It was 3 a.m. as we careened out of Indira Gandhi International Airport and onto the highway leading to my downtown hotel. The fog was so thick […]
China’s more assertive foreign policy over the last two years has played a key role in getting two arch-conservatives — Japan’s Shinzo Abe and South Korea’s Park Geun-hye — elected to lead their respective countries. Some Chinese observers believe that Abe and Park will be forced by China‘s inexorable rise to come to terms with their giant neighbor. Don’t count on it. To […]
If you believe the rhetoric, Britain is coming back as a security player in Asia. It may not be exactly a reversal of the 1971 East (from London’s perspective) of Suez withdrawal. But on January 18th British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond and Foreign Secretary William Hague are due to visit Perth, Western Australia, to talk […]
The $10 Trillion Prize authored by consultants at the Boston Consulting Group digs deeper into the changing consumer landscape in China and India to find out the big, juicy, revenue model that should excite everybody who cares to be in these two markets. And numbers, as always, make for a fascinating reading. Here are some […]
President Barack Obama is likely to name deputy national security adviser Denis McDonough his next chief of staff, replacing Jack Lew after his nomination to be treasury secretary, according to sources familiar with the matter. McDonough, a longtime Obama foreign policy adviser who worked on the Democrat‘s 2008 presidential campaign, would bring a strong working […]
President Obama’s pick to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state is making some in New Delhi’s diplomatic, military, and intelligence communities nervous that Washington will soon tilt to Islamabad, India’s decades-old rival and tormentor. Last week in New Delhi, a former ambassador to the US complained to me about America’s support for Pakistan—on three […]
looking beyond borders 