Chinese elite politics has always been frustratingly opaque because of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) continuing addiction to secrecy and strategic concealment. All the old adages from Sun Tzu’s `Art of War’ about hiding true ability, misleading and subverting seem to have been internalized and become the life blood of the Party from its […]
Twenty-five years ago this week, on February 24, 1991, the first United States ground invasion of Iraq began. The first Bush administration had clear UN and congressional mandates to liberate Kuwait. More than thirty countries contributed ground forces, and the Soviet Union was a critical diplomatic partner. Read Here – National Interest
By winning over the black voters who rejected her in 2008, Hillary Clinton may clinch the Democratic nomination—and inherit the coalition built by the president who defeated her. Read Here – The Atlantic
The international community is watching closely as Iranians wrap up two elections today, one for the parliament, or Majlis, and the other for the Assembly of Experts. For brief profiles of the central actors in current Iranian politics, Read Here – Brookings
There is in evidence an unspoken theory of “balanced” bilateral state-operated terrorism. Why is India complaining about Mumbai, New Delhi, Pathankot, etc, when it’s doing the same all over Pakistan, from Karachi to Peshawar? Nobody outside Pakistan is willing to accept Pakistan’s binary of “we both do it to each other,” writes Khaled Ahmed. Read […]
When the Arab world was tolerant and accepting of others, it led the world: From Baghdad to Damascus to Andalusia and farther afield, we provided beacons of science, knowledge, and civilization, because humane values were the basis of our relationships with all civilizations, cultures, and religions. Even when our ancestors left Andalusia, people of other […]
Jeb Bush is a nice guy. So is his brother, George W. Bush. Their father, George Herbert Walker Bush, is a particularly nice guy. It’s a nice family. But at the presidential level, they all have been failures. Much of what’s wrong with the country today—and some of what’s wrong with the world—can be placed […]
President Barack Obama’s trip to Cuba on March 21 is not, as its critics contend, a vote of confidence in President Raul Castro’s government. It is simply an opportunity for Obama to acknowledge both the successes of his policy and its limits. Read Here – Bloomberg
In fact, Saudi Arabia is no state at all. There are two ways to describe it: as a political enterprise with a clever but ultimately unsustainable business model, or as an entity so corrupt as to resemble a vertically and horizontally integrated criminal organization. Either way, it can’t last. It’s past time U.S. decision-makers began […]
For all their strengths—all their accomplishments and good intentions—there has always been a less attractive side of the Clintons. They can’t fathom why anybody would challenge their motives, doubt their veracity, or criticize their policies. The Clintons’ self-conceptions are yoked to their sense of public service and joint commitment to making lives better—and they believe […]
looking beyond borders 