Doubts persist both in India and the United States on the substance of their strategic partnership. High-sounding declarations about the partnership being one of the defining ones of the 21st century, or one between “natural allies,” have not erased uncertainties in the two countries about the capacity and willingness of each side to meet the […]
In 1996, Vladimir Putin and a group of friends and acquaintances from St. Petersburg would gather in an idyllic lakeside setting — barely an hour and a half north of the city. The location, on the Karelian Isthmus between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga, was only an hour and 20 minute’s drive to […]
An inconvenient fact is that Indonesia’s economic growth is mainly driven by a commodity boom fuelled by China’s appetite for raw materials and global demand for biofuels. China’s enterprises are building bullet trains while Indian car– and IT-companies compete around the world. Indonesia, all the while, manufactures…essentially nothing. Most international manufacturing companies have moved on to greener […]
Goopy smog may have smothered Beijing this week, but optimism among foreigners is shining a bright light across China. A temperature inversion resulted in, literally, off-the-charts pollution in the Chinese capital, and the country’s leaders quickly reacted to universal criticism of their decades-old environment-be-damned policies. “Chinese media is all over the story in a remarkably […]
On this, the 100th birthday of Richard Nixon, the slogan from his first campaign for Congress is the salient fact: “One of us.” His dreams were ours — and so, in the end, were his sins. The life of no president says more about this country. Nixon’s accomplishments sing of the finest American attributes — […]
Trying to wrap one’s arms around China today is a significant challenge. It is a global power with a growing economy, rising military, and expanding diplomatic reach. Yet there continues to be a gnawing sense in and outside China that all is not quite right. Whether it is the 180,000 protests annually, the growing flight […]
This month, the United States National Intelligence Council released a sobering report entitled Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds. Most important, according to the authors, if current trends continue, Asia could soon surpass North America and Europe in global power. It will have a higher GDP, larger population, higher military spending, and more technological investment. In this […]
In the United States, the world’s largest economy, President Obama has secured a second term as leader of the country. In China, the second largest economy, by this time next week new leaders will likely have been confirmed as well. In both cases, the new leaders will officially begin their terms in 2013, even if Obama has […]
The rise of information and communication technologies has not only revolutionized how people interact with each other but also forced many governments to operate in significantly altered political landscapes. In some cases governments can help unleash the full potential of an open and free internet; for instance, by ensuring that the web is accessible and affordable […]
looking beyond borders 