Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Afghanistan this week at a crucial time for both countries and the troubled state lying between them. India and Pakistan have been engaged in a regional power struggle for influence over Afghanistan, and events of the last two days seemed to underline their differences. A day after India …
Asia
Fukushima: Er, Sorry…Worse Than We Thought.
In the two months since Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was pummeled by a quake and tsunami, no news has generally been good news.
Unfortunately, today, there’s some news.
Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) announced on Thursday that the damage to fuel rods inside Unit 1’s reactor core is worse than the …
Poor Panama. China’s Just Not That Into You.
The list of countries that have chosen diplomatic relations with Taiwan over mainland China reads like an exercise in national obscurity. The 23-nation compendium includes Burkina Faso, Tuvalu and Saint Kitts and Nevis, along with Palau, Swaziland and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Nevertheless, the People’s Republic has assiduously …
Bin Laden’s Diary: War Plans, or Musings from the Landfill of History?
“Since the end of the last civil war, the colonel had done nothing else but wait. October was one of the few things which arrived.” At least, it arrived for the aging military commander whose life is described in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s story “Nobody Writes to the Colonel Any More”. For Osama bin Laden, this year, the Navy SEALs …
A Game of Two Halves: Can Soccer’s Governing Body FIFA Finally Clean Up Its Act?
Where were we when we last discussed the soap opera that is soccer’s governing body (and veritable global behemoth), FIFA? Ah yes, President Sepp Blatter — who, given the power of his position and the popularity of the sport, is arguably as influential as the Pope — claimed he was going to clean up the sport for good if re-elected on …
Angry with the U.S., What Can Pakistan Get Out of China?
ABCNews reports that Pakistani authorities may be willing to share with their Chinese counterparts the charred wreckage of the detonated U.S. stealth helicopter used in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. Anonymous Pakistani officials claimed the Chinese, whose military harbors a not-so-secret ambition to match American capabilities …
What Bin Laden’s Death Gives Us, And What It Doesn’t
The death of bin Laden is an opportunity for many things. A chance to reassess how we continue the war in Afghanistan, as reported in the New York Times today.
It offers the possibility of peeling the Taliban away from from al Qaeda, in the hopes that the earstwhile leaders of Afghanistan might eventually reconcile with the current …
Have Foreigners Unwittingly Adopted Victims of Baby-Selling in China?
In recent years, one of China’s most beloved exports has been babies adopted by overseas individuals eager to complete their families and help needy children. Now an investigation by respected Chinese magazine Caixin has uncovered evidence of Chinese family-planning officials taking children from local couples who supposedly had …
Hillary Clinton Blasts China’s Human Rights Record
Just as it seemed that top U.S. officials were publicly sending the same signals to China on human rights, namely that China should improve its record not just because it is morally right, but because it will help the Beijing government achieve its goal of social stability, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dropped a bombshell. In a …
Afghanistan: A Taliban Offensive Hopes to Repeat Vietcong’s Tet Effect
“We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one,” former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once reflected on Vietnam. “We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion. In the process we lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla war: the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. …
In Talks With China on Human Rights, ‘Stability’ Becomes U.S. Buzzword
U.S. officials seem to have found a new buzzword when talking about human rights in China—stability. As the two countries’ Strategic and Economic Dialogue opened Monday in Washington, both Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised the prospect of greater domestic stability in China through improved human …
Osama is Dead, But ‘Bin Ladenism’ Endures in Southeast Asia
Just over a week after U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden, pundits seem keen to tout the end of “Bin Ladenism,” too. The mastermind of the 9/11 attacks “lived long enough to see so many young Arabs repudiate his ideology,” observed the Times‘ Thomas Friedman. Although he and others are right to celebrate the ‘Arab Spring,’ it seems …
On China’s Streets, Grisly Attempts to Cover-up Traffic Accidents
The lesson of Watergate—it’s not the crime that gets you, it’s the cover-up—isn’t covered on China’s driving test. But perhaps it should be. In recent months the Chinese public has been shocked by multiple cases of drivers killing accident victims in hopes of evading legal responsibilities.
The most famous incident …