In The News

Water Challenges Asia’s Rising Powers – Part I

Keith Schneider July 12, 2011
Scarcity of water increasingly challenges economic growth of India and China. Water’s role in economic development is taken for granted, yet for running the growth engine it’s as precious a commodity as fossil fuels. This YaleGlobal series examines strategies for negotiating demands among competing industries. Conflicts over water could disrupt China’s steady economic progress, argues journalist...

Endgame

Dexter Filkins June 27, 2011
US President Barack Obama approved the beginning of troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, starting with 10,000 by the end of 2011. Over the course of a decade, the US has “oscillated between building and destroying,” suggests Dexter Filkins in an opinion essay for the New Yorker. The essay lists Afghanistan’s challenges and reasons why a majority of Americans support ending US involvement in the...

Eurasian Geopolitics Face Astana Earthquake

Pepe Escobar June 16, 2011
While the Middle East captures the most focus, Central Asia also offers strategic energy supplies. The South Yolotan gas field in Turkmenistan, for example, is the world’s second largest, reports Pepe Escobar in an opinion essay for Al Jazeera. Russia and China could be gambling that cooperation could be better than conflict at securing those supplies, and envision Central Asia re-emerging as a...

Groomed for Suicide: How Taliban Recruits Children for Mass Murder

Jon Boone May 23, 2011
Severe poverty, shortcomings in education, restraints on women appearing in public, religious extremism and ongoing war all combine to limit opportunities for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan – and all pose new dangers. Struggling to recruit adults as suicide bombers, the Taliban increasingly turn to desperate teenagers and younger children, reports Jon Boone for the Guardian. Taliban...

Sweet as Can Be?

May 16, 2011
The purpose of some alliances is to counter a rival’s power. Both China and Pakistani have long aimed to contain India’s power. Now “Pakistan seems keen to foster the impression that new tensions with America might nudge it even closer towards China,” suggests an essay in the Economist. Yet a downturn in the US-Pakistani relationship after the US secretly sent a team in to kill terror mastermind...

A Future Scenario for Asia

Philip Bowring May 12, 2011
Asia accounts for 27 percent of the global economy and nearly 60 percent of the world’s population. Analysts anticipate growth and influence, but labels of an Asian Century could be premature, warns an Asian Development Bank report, analyzed by Philip Bowring for the Asia Sentinel. Asia has capacity for economic supremacy, the report maintains, but not certainty. Countries tend to fall into a “...

How the US Intends to End War with Taliban

Ahmed Rashid April 21, 2011
A spring offensive from the Taliban has flared up in Afghanistan. More than 40 nations have troops there at a cost of $2 billon per week, reports Ahmed Rashid for the Financial Times. The US and NATO are intent on withdrawing by 2014, but a clean end requires more diplomacy than military force. “[T]he US now accepts – and is working on – a Taliban request to open a Taliban political office, most...