Whichever party takes power in Islamabad will almost certainly have to cobble together a coalition to rule. The new government will inherit a looming foreign-exchange crisis, hours-long blackouts that have provoked street riots, and overlapping insurgencies and sectarian wars that have claimed thousands of lives. Though army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has resisted the temptation to […]
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. During her ultimately victorious presidential campaign last year, South Korea’s new conservative president, Park Geun Hye, rarely touched on foreign policy. (Though it’s a fair question as to whether North Korea really constitutes “foreign” policy as far as Seoul is concerned.) When I traveled with Park as she campaigned across […]
South Korean President Park Geun-hye meets President Obama on Tuesday in Washington. The South Koreans created a slogan for the summit, “Bound by trust, forward together,” the first time they have adopted an English language motto for an event of this sort. During her visit, Park may talk about “the most successful alliance in history”—the mutual defense pact turns 60 […]
On March 28, Egypt’s former trade minister, Rachid Mohamed Rachid, was removed from an arrest list after he paid back a total of 15 million Egyptian pounds (approximately $2.2 million) to the state as part of a reconciliation program under President Mohamed Morsi. Rachid, who served as minister from 2004 to 2011, fled just before […]
Germans are less and less interested in Southern Europe as a market for exports. The driver of German exports abroad are emerging markets (and the United States, to a lesser degree). Italy is only the seventh-largest importer of German goods, and Greece, Spain and Portugal are even further down the list. Notwithstanding a collapse of […]
If the Chinese action on the ground on the Depsang plain, initiated on April 15, is taken in conjunction with President Xi Jinping’s March 29 statement in Durban that the border issue should be resolved “as soon as possible”, we can conclude that China is signalling a new activism in its border dispute with India. […]
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reportedly plans to visit Myanmar in late May. The last time a Japanese prime minister visited the county was in 1977 when Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda visited then Burma. Mr. Abe should consider what kinds of concrete contributions he should make to help advance democratization in Myanmar. Read Here – Japan […]
Let me posit a radical idea: The most critical threat facing the United States now and for the foreseeable future is not a rising China, a reckless North Korea, a nuclear Iran, modern terrorism, or climate change. Although all of these constitute potential or actual threats, the biggest challenges facing the US are its burgeoning […]
Australia struck a conciliatory tone toward top trading partner China as it said that Beijing‘s rising defense capabilities are a natural outcome of its growing economy, according to a new strategy outlined in Australia’s Defence White Paper 2013, released on Friday. “The government does not approach China as an adversary. Rather, its policy is aimed at encouraging China’s peaceful rise and ensuring that strategic competition in the region does not lead to conflict,” the defense strategy said. Read Here – China Daily Read The Defense Paper Here
When it comes to labor rights and working conditions, Bangladesh is the new China. And not in a good way. The South Asian nation has been the scene of two major industrial disasters in the past six months. In November, a fire in a factory left 112 garment workers dead; in April, a factory collapsed, […]
looking beyond borders 