In the Indian capital New Delhi there is widespread belief among the conservative right wing that, with the impending U.S.-India nuclear cooperation agreement, India has sold its soul to the United States by giving up “sovereign” rights over its civilian nuclear reactors. In Washington, D.C., meanwhile, American critics say the world’s most powerful nation has given unwarranted and dangerous concessions to India, a country that exploded a nuclear bomb in 1998 and has not even signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Agreeing to sell nuclear technology to a country surrounded by the likes of Pakistan and China will lead to an unprecedented [...]
Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, is a city that brings to mind three images: hospitality, khachapuri (a delicious cheese-filled heart attack encased in dough), and George W. Bush, whose larger-than-life visage graced the surface of numerous billboards on the stretch of road that linked the airport to the city in August 2005. The billboards went up after Bush visited Georgia in May 2005, and not long after that, this main drag officially became “George W. Bush Street.” Cab drivers got a kick out of pointing to the billboards and giving Americans smiles — the type people give each other to [...]
The good news is that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rica turned up at the regional security forum in Malaysia. The bad news is that she broke with a 12-year tradition and didn’t give an amusing after-dinner performance. Her State Department predecessors were much more entertaining at the annual networking event of the Association of South East Nations (ASEAN). Madeleine Albright did an Eva Peron impersonation, and Colin Powell is remembered for singing the disco music hit YMCA. But Rice played a somber Brahms sonata on the piano in Kuala Lumpur to reflect, she said, the grim situation in the [...]
