In China, the invisible hand of the market sometimes needs help from the iron fist of the state. That’s certainly true after a meltdown vaporized $3.5 trillion in the value of shares traded on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges. Read Here – Bloomberg China Tries Japan’s Approach to a Stock Bubble – Bloomberg View
A silent revolution is taking place in the Middle East. In 2000, there were about 460,000 Internet users in Egypt; by the end of 2014 there were over 46 million, more than half of the Egyptian population. The same trend is true for most countries in the Middle East and North Africa where Internet penetration […]
China’s widespread theft of information in cyberspace probably has done more to poison the well of U.S.-China relations than almost anything else. The possibility of any meaningful fallout from such operations seems remote from the concerns of Chinese leaders, even as Washington considers more aggressive responses to cyber intrusions. Read Here – The National Interest
ASEAN’s leaders are worried about what history tells them about the future of Southeast Asia. The fears about the lessons of history are a discordant note as ASEAN steps up to a great moment in its history—the creation of an economic, political-security and social Community in December 2015. Read Here – The National Interest
The appearance of Colonel Gulmurod Khalimov in an Islamic State propaganda video on May 27 sent a chill across Central Asia. The head of Tajikistan’s Special Assignment Police Unit (OMON), a key element in President Emomali Rahmon’s security apparatus, had disappeared shortly before. In the video he promised to return to wage violent jihad. Read […]
We must settle, not aggravate, our differences. Of course, there are formidable hurdles in the way. But no more formidable than between the West and the Communists in Korea or Vietnam, or Cuba or Nicaragua, or apartheid South Africa or Namibia / Angola / Mozambique, or Iran and the US, or Iran and Saudi Arabia, […]
Any political establishment is understandably tempted to take credit for a successful operation. This is particularly true for a government whose self-image is so muscular and whose core constituency gets energised by such events. But aggressive domestic political messaging runs two risks. Read Here – The Indian Express
The principal drawback of the foreign policy establishment is that it is miserably understaffed. While New Delhi does have some first-rate diplomats, what we really need are not a few overworked senior officials but more, well-trained personnel. On account of financial constraints, bureaucratic inertia and inter-ministerial disagreements, all we have are around 900-odd Indian Foreign […]
U.S. policy debates about the Middle East suffer from the fallacy that there is an American solution to every problem. Washington does not have a silver bullet for the region, but it can preserve its core interests there Read Here – cfr.org
Voters struck back at the ruling AK Party in parliamentary elections Sunday, depriving it of a majority and likely stopping the president’s latest power grab. Read Here – The Atlantic
looking beyond borders 