BANGLADESH suffered a violent birth. In the last days of 1971 the country then called East Pakistan was engulfed by torture, rape, mass-killing and other acts of genocide. The main perpetrators were Pakistani troops bent on preventing secession from “West Pakistan”. But the army had the support of many of East Pakistan’s fundamentalist groups, including […]
Despite the visible role played by some Arab countries — particularly Qatar and Saudi Arabia — in the Syrian crisis, the key players in Syria’s ongoing conflict, one must admit, are not Arabs. Even when the Arab countries try to expand their role, and by extension their sway on the course of events in Syria, […]
North Korea’s improving missile capability cast a shadow on political campaigns in two of its neighbors, heightening focus on a potential threat that may prompt Japan to stiffen its defense posture and provide a bump to South Korea’s conservative candidate. North Korea yesterday deployed a communications satellite from a rocket eight months after a previous attempt failed, […]
As a general proposition, it is refreshing to hear an American talk about “soft power.” Especially outside U.S. borders, in “old” Europe and the “new” emerging markets, hope inevitably rises that the United States is finally wising up. People there have long been befuddled by the United States’ penchant over the past decade to focus […]
China and the United States are on a collision course — over accounting. Last week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged the Chinese affiliates of the world’s top five accounting firms with violating securities laws for refusing to hand over information on suspect Chinese companies to investigators. The move is the latest, most dramatic step […]
From the moment when Hosni Mubarak fell from power in February 2011, few issues have proved more divisive in Egyptian politics than the writing of a new constitution. Now, even though the formal process is theoretically coming to an end, the battle over the constitution is drawing the country dangerously close to an all-out civil […]
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was supposed to mark both the “end of history” and the birth of an international community founded on the universal acceptance of Western values — a world in which “market democracy” was the norm. Instead, the West has suffered a litany of disappointments — from costly wars […]
New dynamics are emerging in the crucial Sino-Indian relationship. The two Asian giants are developing deeper global cooperation, while at the same time remaining stuck in a pattern of regional rivalry. Their disputed border, India‘s involvement in the growing confrontation in the South China Sea, and the US “pivot” towards Asia steer the Sino-Indian dynamic […]
The Internet has sustained some pretty intense assaults in the past couple of years. There was the heavy-handed attempt to stamp out content piracy with SOPA/PIPA, the Federal Communications Commission’s Net neutrality ruling, which many saw assplitting the baby, and that whack job who claimed to own a patent on the World Wide Web. It is again open season […]
On the eve of India’s founding, no one could have imagined how successfully it would come to navigate the international system. At that time, there were legions of skeptics who believed that the half-life of this new country would be measured in years, perhaps decades at most. The question of when India would split apart […]
