In The News

Ayatollahs in the Backyard

December 1, 2009
At a time when he is under pressure domestically and around the world, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent visit to Latin America – highlighted by a stop in Brazil – provided him an important boost. Iran has been involved with some ideologically-sympathetic countries in the region like Ecuador, providing loans for infrastructure. On the other hand, other countries, such as Mexico or...

China Helps the Powerful in Namibia

Sharon LaFraniere November 30, 2009
The daughter of Namibia’s president, Hifikepunye Pohamba is studying at the Beijing Culture and Language University under a scholarship provided by the Chinese government. Several other scholarships have also been awarded this year, and only to the children of top Namibian officials. With national elections drawing near Namibia’s anticorruption commission has begun an inquiry into how the...

A Natural Alliance

Nayan Chanda November 30, 2009
Though India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to the US was being viewed as all form and no substance in the lead up to the trip, the result was the complete opposite. This conclusion is inescapable when one observes the stark contrast between the joint US-China statement – issued a week earlier – and the US-India statement. The former is a study in an uneasy business partnership made...

Mr. Singh Goes to Washington – Part I

Ashley J. Tellis November 23, 2009
India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is being honored as the first state visitor to the Obama White House, but he will not be in the same place since his last visit to Washington. President Obama’s recent trip to China shows how the US policy focus has shifted from the Bush years. Perhaps the biggest challenge, as Ashley Tellis, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace...

Obama in Asia – Part III

Shen Dingli November 20, 2009
US President Obama’s recent trip to China reveals the ways in which US-China relations might be changing. According to Shen Dingli, Director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University Shanghai, the tenor of the trip showed that China’s status has risen as the US appears to be accepting China’s terms of the relationship. Obama’s exposure to the Chinese people was also limited as his...

Obama in Asia – Part I

François Godement November 16, 2009
President Obama continues his first trip to Asia this week provoking diverse responses from different parts of the world. The talk of a “strategic partnership” between China and the US making a G2 has Europe scared. But, according to China specialist François Godement, there are too many differences between China and the US to warrant the type of political convergence necessary for a G2 to work....

The Post-Berlin Aftermath

Jean-Pierre Lehmann November 9, 2009
While the world celebrates the anniversary of the destruction of the Berlin wall, there are still numerous walls all over the world that need to be torn down. Professor Jean-Pierre Lehmann argues that the world is divided between a rich class of global elites scattered around the world’s major urban centers, and a class of the “globally disenfranchised.” The divide between the two is...