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The Nobel Committee’s decision to award jailed Chinese democracy activist Liu Xiaobo the 2010 Peace Prize came just days before China’s Communist Party elite anointed political princeling Xi Jinping as President Hu Jintao’s clear successor, highlighting the two Chinas that now seem to be passing one another like ships in the night. One China is propelled from below by a coastal workforce that is increasingly self-confident in its skills and accomplishments and growing income. The other, larger China is managed from above by political leaders who increasingly worry over the nation’s social stability as they grow more self-defensive in their […]

Space-based solar power (SBSP) may soon emerge as one of the leading sectors of strategic cooperation between India and the U.S., with a recently released report (.pdf) authored by U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Peter A. Garretson making the case for it being the next focus of the growing partnership. There are a number of reasons why SBSP may emerge as the hub for strategic industrial coordination between the two countries. First, neither country can meet its energy needs through existing clean-energy technologies, including nuclear power, and various technological advances over the past few decades have made space-based solar power […]

The news that Turkey and China had organized a joint military exercise at the huge Konya airbase in Turkey’s central Anatolian region last month came as a surprise to many. After all, just a year ago, when clashes between Uighur and Han Chinese broke out in China’s Xinjiang province in July 2009, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Chinese authorities of mishandling a situation that he compared to “genocide.” What explains such a dramatic improvement in relations between Turkey and China? And how should this military exercise be understood in the context of the current shifts taking place in […]

Are the Palestinians preparing their own version of the “Kosovo gambit” through a unilateral declaration of independence in the event that U.S.-sponsored peace talks falter? While the United States has insisted for years that the Kosovo case was sui generis — a unique situation that set no precedent for resolving frozen conflicts anywhere else in the world — the Palestinian leadership appears to be ignoring that memo. Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, last week bluntly stated that it is time to “declare the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, […]

When the Nobel committee selected Liu Xiaobo as the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, the distinction brought unwanted attention to China. For obvious reasons, Beijing did not want the world honoring a man who has dedicated decades to challenging the country’s political system. But Beijing, in fact, seems uncomfortable with any kind of attention. Earlier this year, when the Chinese economy overtook Japan’s to become the second-largest in the world, Chinese officials seemed determined to downplay what is by any measure an impressive achievement, declaring that the rising Chinese powerhouse remains “a developing country.” To be sure, China […]

The U.K. defense review is now available (.pdf), and to make a long story short, London — with a great deal of help from Washington — broke its military and is now looking at about a decade of shore leave. There are some parallels with France’s Defense White Paper from two years ago, with the major differences being that the French review took place before the pain of the financial crisis took hold, and without needing to absorb the toll of the Iraq War. But this is clearly a cautionary tale. The U.K. cuts now bring the British military’s force-projection […]

With nations scouring the globe in pursuit of dwindling mineral supplies, the world’s attention has shifted to Mongolia, a country some are heralding as the next resource success story. Among the last places on earth with rich, untapped mineral deposits, this landlocked, underdeveloped country is expected to become one of the world’s fastest-growing economies over the next decade — if, that is, it can address a set of daunting challenges and bring these resources to the market. According to some estimates, there is about $1.3 trillion worth of untapped coal, gold, silver, copper, uranium and zinc deposits in what is […]

Although Dilma Rousseff failed to secure an absolute majority in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election, she seems certain to beat her rival Jose Serra in the run-off voting on Oct. 31 to become Brazil’s first female president. As current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s hand-picked successor, Rousseff represents policy continuity, and her likely victory shows the degree to which Brazilians are happy with the track their country is on. Yet one disturbing issue has been largely overlooked by both domestic and international commentators during the election campaign: Since 2004, Brazil has refused to grant inspectors from the […]

In June, Rolling Stone helped bring down Gen. Stanley McChrystal by publishing “The Runaway General,” a Michael Hastings article depicting McChrystal’s staff as contemptuous of civilian authority. Last month, Bob Woodward’s “Obama’s Wars” suggested that the uniformed military had boxed President Barack Obama into an escalation of the Afghanistan War. In tandem, the publications re-awakened concerns about the health of civil-military relations in the United States. Although the military has not directly challenged civilian authority, some observers worried that contempt in the ranks and the effort to control policy in Afghanistan could spell trouble for civilian supremacy. The Winter 2010 […]

Since the financial crisis broke in 2008, the United Nations Security Council has looked like a poor relation to the newly empowered Group of Twenty (G-20). While world leaders tackled the crisis at biannual G-20 summits, ambassadors in New York got on with the daily grind of reviewing peace operations and routinely condemning far-flung atrocities. The council has occasionally been in the limelight, not least during this summer’s tortuous negotiations over new sanctions on Iran. But a top-level meeting on the council’s role convened by Turkey this September was an illustrative bore, producing a statement calling for a “continuous process […]

With many U.S. allies bracing for imminent cuts to defense budgets, and with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates engaged in a campaign against profligate spending at the Pentagon, the military reserve components — which frequently suffer disproportionately from reductions in defense spending — might make for a tempting target. But cutting back on these crucial elements of modern Western militaries would be a mistake with significant operational consequences. As in other countries, the U.S. military reserve structure reflects the nation’s distinct historical origins, security requirements, and constitutional principles. But the U.S. Department of Defense is unique in possessing seven major […]

On Oct. 20, Iraq will embark on the next phase of development of its hydrocarbon sector by auctioning rights to three natural gas fields to private investors. For Baghdad, the success of this bid round, the third in the last two years, will go some way toward determining its ability to address Iraqi citizens’ concerns over power shortages. For outsiders, including many in European capitals and Washington, the comprehensive development of the Iraqi gas sector offers hope that in the medium term, Iraqi gas could begin to compete directly with Russian gas in the European market. The fields on offer […]

One of the pitfalls of the kind of quick analysis that goes into blog posts is that it’s possible, and sometimes even necessary, to click that “publish” button before an argument is fully formed or developed. In my case, when that happens, what’s often missing are the intermediate thought processes that lead from whatever triggers a post to its takeaway. In reading back over it, I think this post on Asian currency cooperation from yesterday is a good example of what I’m talking about. The Ulrich Volz article that triggered the post essentially argued that singling out the yuan exchange […]

The ebullient celebration in Brazil over Petrobras’ historic $70 billion share-issue last month was bitterly received in Mexico City, where the state-owned oil company Pemex is mired in debt, inefficiency and ongoing political wrangling. With little having changed since Mexican President Felipe Calderón sought to reform the country’s energy sector two years ago, the contrast between Petrobras’ successes and Pemex’s failures has reignited discussion of Pemex’s future and renewed the public’s interest in the beleaguered Mexican oil giant. Once Latin America’s largest company, Pemex has persistently lost profits and market share to other state-led oil companies, including PetroChina, Russia’s Lukoil, […]

Writing at the East Asia Forum, Ulrich Volz argues that instead of pressuring China to allow the yuan to appreciate, we should be encouraging a regional approach to East Asian currency exchange rates. The problem with leaning on any one currency with regard to the dollar, but in isolation to the others, is that it threatens the exchange-rate stability upon which the increasingly specialized intra-regional chain of production depends. A coordinated regional approach, by contrast, would stabilize intra-regional networks independently of the dollar, thereby allowing for greater flexibility of the whole vis à vis external markets. In other words, the […]

It is hard for most Americans to fathom why the U.S. military should be involved in either Afghanistan or northwest Pakistan for anything other than the targeting of terrorist networks. And since drones can do most of that dirty work, few feel it is vital to engage in the long and difficult task of nation-building in that part of the world. These are distant, backward places whose sheer disconnectedness relegates them to the dustbin of globalization, and nothing more. If only that were true. But as globetrotting journalist Robert D. Kaplan makes eminently clear in his new book, “Monsoon: The […]

TBILISI, Georgia — Turkey’s ongoing foreign-policy reorientation will not only reshape the contours of the surrounding region, but could also force the West and those hopeful of joining its orbit to consider how to position themselves in the resulting geopolitical landscape. Georgia, in particular, will be especially affected by Ankara’s emergence as a regional center of influence. In addition to proximity, Georgia shares longstanding historical ties and burgeoning trade with Turkey. Georgia’s precarious geopolitical relationship with Russia is also a significant factor driving Tbilisi’s calculations. Turkey’s rising tide has been a safe bet for Georgia so far, but future Turkish […]