In The News

Obama’s First Trip Abroad Should Be to China

Jeffrey E. Garten December 12, 2008
President-elect Barack Obama confronts a daunting array of immediate economic and security challenges. But that does not mean the Obama administration should neglect building stronger ties with China, urges Jeffrey Garten, international trade and finance professor at Yale and a former US undersecretary of commerce for international trade. China and the US need each other to boost a weakened...

Iraq Needs US Shield for Democracy to Work

Humphrey Hawksley December 10, 2008
Iraq has stood strong against three outside ideological forces that attempt to sway its future: the brutal violence of Al Qaeda, the rigid inflexibility Iran-inspired and aided Shia conservatives, as well as the US neoconservative vision that anticipated an instant switch to democracy and privatization, explains BBC correspondent Humphrey Hawksley. With the approval of a US-Iraq bilateral...

Terrorists Attacking Mumbai Have Global Agenda

Ashley J. Tellis December 8, 2008
The British ended colonial rule in the subcontinent in 1947 by partitioning Pakistan and India, and the two have been antagonists ever since. Despite the tangled history of the two nations, the latest episode of a seaborne assault on 10 targets in Mumbai requires the world to take a fresh look at the nature of the terrorist threat, notes Carnegie Endowment scholar Ashley Tellis, who once served...

India’s Global Challenge

Nayan Chanda December 5, 2008
Though perpetrated by people linked with Pakistani groups, the nature of the Mumbai attacks show that India is not just connected with Pakistan; according to YaleGlobal Editor Nayan Chanda, “India’s fate is bound together with the rest of the world.” These attacks have for the first time brought India face to face with terrorists with a global agenda and a global impact. With these attacks, India...

Japan's Doing Better Than You Think

Philip Bowring December 5, 2008
Financial analysts in the West often point to Japan as an example of what not to do during an economic downturn. “[A]voidance of the Japan experience with deflation is often given as a reason for the United States, the United Kingdom and the Eurozone as a whole (trying to drag Germany with it) to justify almost any level of bailout-outs and fiscal stimulus to revive their economies,” explains...

From Great Game to Grand Bargain

Barnett R. Rubin December 4, 2008
Afghanistan and Pakistan are major trouble spots and a key source of terrorism, largely because of poverty, minimal education and economic opportunities, and training camps that blame the US, Israel and India for local problems. Yet sending more combat troops to the region won’t improve security, argue authors Barnett Rubin and Ahmed Rashid in an essay for Foreign Affairs. “U.S. diplomacy has...

Burma’s Nuclear Temptation

Bertil Lintner December 3, 2008
The landmark Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, put in force in 1970, has three goals: preventing spread of nuclear weapons or technology, promoting cooperation in peaceful uses of nuclear energy and encouraging nuclear disarmament. Because disarmament has not been a priority, the technology has slowly spread, as individuals or nations sell expertise for money or influence....