U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will try to strike a delicate balance of calming military tensions with China while supporting ally Japan against Beijing on a trip to Asia this week that is being overshadowed by a territorial dispute in the East China Sea. Read Here – Reuters
No country has done more than India to stall progress on international climate negotiations during the past two months. Read Here – Slate
The past 33 months comprise the darkest chapter in Syria’s long history. Since protests in March 2010 turned into an armed conflict against the government of President Bashar Al Assad, Read Here – Gulf News
After a period of distraction, the U.S. reaffirms by word and deed its interest in Asia. Read Here – The Diplomat
The Communist Party summit that recast Xi Jinping as a reformer extraordinaire has produced its first foreign-policy initiative: poking Japan in the eye, writes William Pesak. Read Here – Bloomberg
Absent a war with Iran—which seemed increasingly likely absent a deal—the neocons will be deprived of their raison d’etre. Yes, they can rail about China, which is making dangerously provocative moves against Japan this week. But the Middle East is where the real action is for the neocons. Iran has been a crucial enemy, the […]
The Afghan president‘s push to delay a security pact with the U.S. has undermined confidence in Afghanistan’s future, testing international support for the country at a crucial moment, the U.S.-led coalition’s top commander said. Read Here – WSJ
Despite the breakthrough, John Kerry is right when he says that the “next phase … will be even more difficult”. The harder part of the P5+1-Iran talks was always going to be reaching a lasting comprehensive solution. The lopsided nature of the interim agreement may have further complicated this process. Read Here – The Nation, […]
In reality China has made plain that, while it is happy to bully lesser states such as the Philippines, it has little appetite yet for an open confrontation with the United States which can still–but for how much longer?–bring overwhelming naval and air assets to bear in the western Pacific. Read Here – Commentary
The problem for King Abdullah and the other members of the House of Saud, as well as most Saudis, is that they don’t trust Iran in the diplomatic sphere and they don’t trust Shiites religiously. Read Here – The Atlantic
looking beyond borders 