In The News

The Cult of Cronyism

Siddharth Varadarajan April 2, 2014
India’s general election kicks off 7 April and by May should determine the next prime minister for the world’s largest democracy. Analysts anticipate a single-minded focus on global corporate interests and wealth creation from candidate Narendra Modi. Writing for Seminar, Siddharth Varadarajan suggests the shift in corporate allegiance from INC, the Congress party, to BJP, or Bharatiya Janata...

Shale Gas Helps Fracture US-Saudi Ties

Joergen Oerstroem Moeller April 1, 2014
President Barack Obama traveled to Saudi Arabia to meet with King Abdullah, and both men “recognize that the geopolitical ground shaped by their common interest in stable oil prices has shifted, creating a new imbalance that could spill over into Mideast security policy,” suggests researcher Joergen Oerstroem Moeller. The so-called shale-gas revolution and eventual self-sufficiency in the United...

Obama Seeks to Repair Frayed Ties With Saudi Arabia

Ellen Knickmeyer, Maria Abi-Habib and Ahmed Al Omran March 31, 2014
US President Barack Obama visited Saudi Arabia, its key Arab ally in the region, reinforcing relations, but with no policy changes announced. Saudi Arabia had hoped to convince the United States to supply Syrian rebels with more weapons and move cautiously on renewing ties or lifting sanctions for Iran, a strong ally to the Assad regime. “The Obama administration's reluctance to authorize...

Media Under Attack From Hackers: Google Researchers

Jeremy Wagstaff March 28, 2014
Some countries block the internet for news they don’t like; others actively try to disrupt the computers of news gatherers. Journalists and news organizations are a frequent target of state-sponsored hacking attacks, suggests research by two Google security engineers, presented at the Black Hat conference in Singapore. “Both researchers declined to go into detail about how Google monitors such...

So Much for “China-Malaysia Friendship Year”

Bruce Einhorn March 27, 2014
China is in the position of having to rely on an investigation and initially less than forthright communications from a smaller neighboring state after the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. Most of the passengers on the flight were Chinese, and China is frustrated. The year “2014 was supposed to be a time to celebrate the strong ties between China and Malaysia,” reports Bruce...

It’s Putin’s World

Thomas Graham March 27, 2014
Determined to restore Russia’s standing as a great power, President Vladimir Putin has his reasons for annexing Crimea and amassing troops along the border with Ukraine. “Today the former Soviet space, with the exceptions of the Baltics and Russia itself, is a region of fragile states, corrupt elites and pervasive poverty that offers little resistance to a dynamic Russia,” explains Thomas Graham...

Missing MH370: China, Malaysia Mistrust Becomes War of Words

Alastair Jamieson and Constance Cheng March 26, 2014
The disappearance of Malaysian Flight MH370 over the Indian Ocean has ignited resentment between China and Malaysia. Most passengers were Chinese. Around the globe, researchers and technicians have volunteered hours to figure out why the flight went off course, and volunteers studied satellite images for debris – so common in oceans. Shortly after the flight from Kuala Lumpur failed to arrive in...