A dozen Pacific-rim nations agreed to an historic pact that would cut trade barriers on items ranging from cars to rice, setting up a potentially contentious ratification vote before a skeptical U.S. Congress. After a week of final talks in Atlanta, an agreement was announced on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a pact more than five years in […]
From the political point of view, strengthening contacts with Iran enables Russia to, first of all, demonstrate its well-known solidarity with countries that have found themselves out of favor with the West at one time or another; second, assert the right of peoples to choose their own special path of national development; and third, defend Syria’s “sovereignty,” thereby showing its opponents that there are forces capable […]
Judging by the content of state-controlled television, Russia is primarily focused on its foreign agenda. In fact, Russia does not appear to even have a domestic agenda — that is, other than occasional reports that Duma deputies have found something else to prohibit. Read Here – The Moscow Times
ISIS is murdering and enslaving across Syria and Iraq. Russia is deploying dozens of aircraft to support the regime in Damascus. Huddled masses have been tempest-tossed into Europe. At the eye of the storm, Bashar al-Assad is pursuing a cynical, brutal, and risky strategy to cling to power. Read Here – The Atlantic
The longest war in American history is technically over. It ended when the U.S. and its NATO allies marked the official conclusion of their combat mission in Afghanistan as 2014 came to a close. But with the goal of stabilizing the country unachieved, plans for a U.S. exit are up in the air. Read Here […]
China’s President Xi Jinping is in the U.S. on his first state visit, which within China is being widely seen as a historical event comparable to that undertaken by then vice premier Deng Xiaoping in 1979. Xi’s visit is being given an unusually high profile, which seems to signify a new chapter in the bilateral […]
We may be entering a period in which India’s tighter embrace of the United States brings Russia closer to Pakistan, and Russia’s bolstering of ties with Pakistan brings India closer to the United States. Read Here – The National Interest
If political infighting in the Communist Party were to result in political instability in China, its foreign policy would become less predictable and more governed by appeals to an aggressive nationalism that is already on the rise within the population at large. That would be a bad outcome for the United States and for China’s […]
– People’s Daily Online
The two major pillars of Xi’s assertive foreign policy—security activism predominantly in the maritime domain, and economic diplomacy by way of the so-called ‘one belt, one road’ policy—suggest that Xi isn’t content with making China a great power in the region and beyond; he also wants to make China a leading and even dominant power […]
looking beyond borders 