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
As Mr. Kerry is in India for his mission of what he calls “realising the potentially transformational moment” between India and the United States, he may well find that and many issues do in fact need to be addressed further, before he can effect such a transformation. Perhaps the best way to avoid some of […]
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 […]
As drones become more commonplace, what’s to stop terrorists from using them? Read Here – Bloomberg
China has lots of capital, and India needs to build a huge amount of infrastructure. But, as ever, something that seems simple on the surface is made considerably murkier due to politics. Of the many contested land borders the People’s Republic of China had when established in 1949, many of the remaining ones are with […]
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 oil boom of the second half of the twentieth century brought modern technology to Saudi Arabia, but the aesthetic refinement of classical Islamic architecture began to disappear. Starting in the mid-seventies, the old houses were replaced with drab towers. Modern Mecca feels as if it were built by a people without history or tradition—a […]
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 […]
looking beyond borders 