Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has been in Beijing this week for a round of meetings with senior Chinese officials, including presumptive paramount leader Xi Jinping. One topic that will most likely not be on the Panetta-Xi agenda is nuclear weapons. Which is weird. Oh sure, every now and again the topic makes it onto the […]
Many educated and highly placed Russians tend to see sinister enemy plots behind the international financial crisis, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the growing protest movement. Wherever we turn, from informal conversations to official pronouncements and state-controlled television programs, Russians are told that the Pussy Riot performance and the international reaction to the verdict against the group were part of a coordinated campaign designed to undermine Russian values […]
For a long time, the major powers had hoped that imposing strenuous sanctions on Iran could produce an interlocutor willing to negotiate honestly and to adhere to an exacting arms control agreement. But time may no longer permit the patient exercise of coercive diplomacy. Read Here – New York Times
SO WHAT HAS GONE WRONG in Europe in recent years? I shall divide my analysis into three broad subjects: the challenge of European unity; the requirements of democracy; and the demands of sound economic policy. These are all related to each other, analytically as well as empirically. Read Here – The New Republic
With Arctic ice melting at record pace, the world’s superpowers are increasingly jockeying for political influence and economic position in outposts like this one, previously regarded as barren wastelands. At stake are the Arctic’s abundant supplies of oil, gas and minerals that are, thanks to climate change, becoming newly accessible along with increasingly navigable polar shipping shortcuts. […]
When the Muslim Brotherhood took power in Egypt, there was fear that draconian social measures would be pursued, thereby killing the country’s important tourism industry. Instead, the party has attempted to portray a moderate face, and more aggressively, tout itself as an administration willing to cut lucrative deals. While the politics of the Brotherhood remain […]
No one likes to go to the doctor. But for a political leader, even the news of such a trip can sound the death knell for his political career. It is small wonder therefore that a leader’s health is the most important state secret in many countries and why. Read Here – Foreign Policy
Russia has ordered the United States to end its financial support for a wide range of pro-democracy, public health and other civil society programs here, in an aggressive step by the Kremlin to halt what it views as American meddling in its internal affairs. The Kremlin’s provocative decision to end two decades of work in post-Soviet Russia […]
A period of intense high-level exchange is commencing this week between Russia and its Central Asian allies – and Pakistan. What characterizes the Russian strategy is a robust attempt to develop comprehensive partnerships with these countries in preparation of the post-2014 scenario in Afghanistan with the expected withdrawal of the troops of the North Atlantic […]
Shortly before the fateful US intervention in Iraq that led to the downfall and the eventual execution of the then Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein, Brent Scowcroft, who had been the National Security Advisor to the first President Bush, wrote a perceptive piece of advice that was published in the Wall Street Journal on 15 August 2002. Advising […]
