Kerry Looks For New China Beginning

Sino-US economic and trade relations are the most powerful proof of the win-win and interdependent nature of bilateral relations. But the good momentum that has been achieved has also encountered some obstacles because some people in the US always want to politicize the relationship and Washington has been maintaining restrictions on high-tech exports to China. […]

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Ruhollah Khomeini And His Iranian Dream

At the end of the Second World War, an anonymous pamphlet surfaced in the seminaries of Qom, the bastion of Shia learning. The Unveiling of Secrets accused Iran’s monarchy of treason…It’s unlikely that anyone outside Qom read The Unveiling of Secrets; even inside the seminaries few would have embraced its programme. Yet just three decades later the pamphlet’s […]

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Does Obama Want War With Iran?

First, and most importantly, while Obama seems willing to go to war with Iran, if he feels he must, he appears far from eager to do so. When George W. Bush talked about finding a peaceful solution to America’s stand-off with Iraq, one that would not involve regime change or the use of force, it […]

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Saying It With Flowers, And With A Bomb…

North Korea celebrated the 101st anniversary of its founder’s birth with flowers on Monday, although there was no sign of tension easing as South Korea warned that the North’s survival could be in question without change and development. Saying it with The North has threatened for weeks to attack the United States, South Korea and Japan after new U.N. […]

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To Erase Militarist Past, Japan Must Re-Learn It

As Japan searches, still confusedly, for a new identity within Asia, it may come to appreciate, as Jeff Kingston, a close observer of contemporary Japan, writes, “the potential benefits of reassuring past enemies.” But how will the effort at reconciliation with victims of Japanese aggression shape official memories of Japan’s war in Asia? In most Asian […]

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Putin’s Leadership Trap

When elected president in 2000,Vladimir Putin‘s first order of business seemed straightforward: strengthen the Russian state and bring it back from oligarchic control and regional warlordism. Consolidation was in order. There were two ways to achieve that. Read Here – Moscow Times  

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The Missing Strategic Pivot In Japan-Saudi Relationship

In a few weeks’ time, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will visit Saudi Arabia with an avowed objective of fostering the cordial relationship between the two countries. That is exactly where the relationship has always been — cordial and businesslike without cultivating strategic opportunities. The relationship between the two countries has been dominated by trade except for […]

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Afghanistan Held Hostage By Warlords

Last week the UK’s defence select committee published a report which concluded that civil war in Afghanistan is likely when international forces leave next year. If the predictions of ‘Securing the Future of Afghanistan’ are correct, the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence share much of the blame. When I returned to Kabul in January […]

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China’s Xi And Russia’s Putin Find Common Ground

On March 22nd, shortly after assuming the post of President of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping headed off to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Observers were watching the two leaders closely, looking to divine whether or not they could overcome past divisions to achieve a new level of cooperation in bilateral ties. What […]

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Should South Koreans Worry About The Northern Bomb?

South Koreans look a little puzzled when asked whether they’re concerned about North Korea’s daily barrage of threats that, if carried out, would be the worst conflagration of modern times. What worse can a regime, governed ostensibly by a 29-year-old heir to his father and grandfather’s power, vow than a “thermonuclear war” that would annihilate […]

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