In The News

Nilanthi Samaranayake February 22, 2013
Despite speculation to the contrary, India is far from losing strategic influence in the Indian Ocean region. Its security cooperation and relations with states like Sri Lanka, Maldives and Seychelles remain strong, maintains Nilanthi Samaranayake, an analyst in the Strategic Studies division at CNA, a research institute in Alexandria, Virginia. The recent cancellation of an Indian airport...
Anne Gearan February 21, 2013
Foreign policy affects everyday lives, maintained John Kerry in his first address as US secretary of state. Kerry spoke at the University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson, and praised the third US president's global curiosity, an insistence on open minds and a campus open to all. Globalization won’t just go away, Kerry warned, adding the challenge is to tame its “worst impulses.” He...
David Brown February 20, 2013
After the Vietnam War ended in 1975, the country’s Communist Party embraced a Soviet-style economic model. By the mid-1980s, the country’s elites could not help but compare results of Soviet and Chinese economic models and undertook Chinese-style reforms to enjoy globalization’s benefits. The surge of foreign investment capital since has led to reckless credit expansion and inflation. Businesses...
Graham Allison, Robert D. Blackwill February 20, 2013
Speculating on economic growth of nations has become a sporting event – with diplomats, policymakers and investors “placing their bets,” suggest Graham Allison and Robert Blackwill in a Foreign Policy essay, introducing the thesis of their book about Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore. As prime minister from 1959 to 1990, Lee monitored and advised Chinese and US leaders. Lee contends that China’s rapid...
Gideon Rachman February 19, 2013
Nationalism and tensions in the Asia Pacific over small islands echo the mood prior to World War I, argues Gideon Rachman in Financial Times. He compares China to Germany in 1914, a rising power worried about competitors blocking its ascent. A US delegation has advised Beijing and Tokyo that a Chinese attack on the islands would trigger US security guarantees to Japan. “The obvious danger is that...
David Ignatius February 19, 2013
Protests for representative government and human rights in Egypt have given way to thuggery and lawlessness, suggests David Ignatius in an opinion essay for the Washington Post. He compares “soccer thugs” roaming Egypt’s streets, defying authority, to the aggressive youth gangs in the 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. “They seem to disrespect their fathers’ generation for having...
February 18, 2013
Some officials in Asia are bristling at the label “emerging,” especially when used by western media to describe nations like India and China with their long histories. Instead, “these countries [are]in the process of restoring the historical norm in the international hierarchy and distribution of power,” notes the Hindu Times. According to the report, India’s National Security Advisor Shivshankar...