It was an important day for Angola, June 20th, 2006. Amid the diplomatic pomp and handshakes of an official visit, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao opened the Luanda General Hospital and had his picture taken peering into a microscope surrounded by officials in suits and medics in white smocks. The capital’s General Hospital, a sprawling eighty-thousand […]
Whether or not America‘s politicians can find a way to sidestep the brutal automatic military cuts of sequestration, the era of rising Western spending on weapons and wars is over. That reality increasingly is challenging major arms manufacturers, spurring them to look for new markets, cost cuts and mergers. It is also confronting policymakers with difficult […]
China and Japan, the world’s second- and third-biggest economies, indicated support forEurope’s new rescue fund as they pushed for quick implementation of measures to solve the region’s crisis. China will “cooperate” with the European Stability Mechanism, a permanent 500 billion-euro ($648 billion) fund that started this week, People’s Bank of China Deputy Governor Yi Gang said […]
In its annual appraisal of the Chinese military published last week, the U.S. Department of Defense seems to be describing an object it finds both familiar and mysterious. The report certainly answers many of the important issues concerning China‘s military, including its attempts to develop an anti-ship ballistic missile and its continuing fixation on Taiwan. Read […]
It’s not every day that Barack Obama and Ban Ki-moon agree with the head of the Islamist group Jamaat-e-Islami or an America-bashing Pakistani politician. But Tuesday’s Taliban attack on 14-year-old activist Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan’s Swat Valley attracted universal condemnation cutting across countries and cultures. Read Here – WSJ Opinion
A hard landing in China could expose a large number of countries to unforeseen consequences and dash hopes of a global recovery. China’s plight also drives the final nail into the coffin of the once fashionable theory of “decoupling”, which argued for an autonomous economic sphere around China that could soar even as the US […]
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the Pentagon and American intelligence agencies are seeing an increase in cyber threats that could become as devastating as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks if they aren’t stopped. “A cyber attack perpetrated by nation states or violent extremist groups could be as destructive as the terrorist attack of 9/11,” Panetta said […]
The current trade dispute between the United States and China isn’t the first and won’t be the last. This one involves auto parts. Earlier it was solar panels. Before that: rare earth minerals. Next it will be something else. All of these disputes will be resolved in due course. They are important for many reasons. […]
This summer, a group known as the “Cutting Sword of Justice” slashed its way across world headlines with bold attacks on oil and gas industry. But what makes the series attacks noteworthy is not that they were successfully planned and carried out, it’s how they happened: in cyberspace. Brazen cyber-attacks were carried out against Saudi […]
Some months after the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein, I sat at lunch with the aging Hosni Mubarak. He was then 76 years old and hard of hearing but soon to “run” for the presidency for a fifth time in 2005. The four times previous, there had been no election at […]
