Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is slated to visit Sri Lanka soon. Abe will undoubtedly express his appreciation for Sri Lanka’s past assistance to Japan, but a more important task will be to convey Japan’s strong concern over China’s strategic muscle-flexing. He will be trying to pour a bit of cold water on the island-nation’s […]
India offers America nothing of concrete strategic value that Washington cannot, currently, live without. Not only does it balk at an alliance of any kind, its political and intellectual elites are wedded still to nonalignment, that antediluvian credo from the years of the Cold War. Read Here – Daily Beast
Economic interdependence was supposed to defuse geopolitical tensions over time – or at least allow the two to be compartmentalized. But today the West is using Russia’s participation in the global economy to punish it for its actions in eastern Ukraine. The EU has announced sanctions that will hit Russia in the banking, oil and […]
China has launched a formal investigation against Zhou Yongkang, a former member of the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s top decision-making body. Widespread corruption inside the Chinese Communist Party has raised serious questions about the efficacy of its self-regulation. While persistent housecleaning is conducive to the CPC’s image and legitimacy, well-thought-out mechanisms are a more reliable […]
Ecuador, inspired by a vision of a pre-modern world with more freedom to wander, has been experimenting in recent years with making political boundaries more flexible. It’s one of the world’s boldest contemporary efforts to reinvent human migration. Is it working? Read Here – The Atlantic
The map of the modern Middle East, a political and economic pivot in the international order, is in tatters. Syria’s ruinous war is the turning point. But the centrifugal forces of rival beliefs, tribes and ethnicities — empowered by unintended consequences of the Arab Spring — are also pulling apart a region defined by European […]
Germany’s triumphant World Cup team included players of Polish, Turkish, African, and Arab descent, showcasing the country’s increasingly multi-ethnic complexion. What’s less well-known is that a record flood of immigrants is also giving a big boost to the German economy. Over the past five years, Germany has surpassed Britain to become Europe’s No. 1 immigration […]
Why would China fear a nation it could traumatize tomorrow by dumping its debt or shifting its iron ore, coal and copper orders elsewhere? That’s a good question for the United States to ask itself. Read Here – Bloomberg
the majority of Pakistanis were convinced that the eight years Mr Sharif had spent in forced exile had matured and mellowed the man. They believed he had returned home determined to create a legacy of betterment for his deeply conflicted country, and looked forward to five years of his governance with a sense of optimism. […]
Irrespective of its rhetoric to the contrary, throughout the last four decades, the Egyptian government’s policies towards the Palestinians have signalled a marked departure from its historic reputation as a regional leader determined to challenge Israeli hegemony. Read Here – AlJazeera
looking beyond borders 