Before slipping across a frozen river from North Korea last year, Jin measured time in kernels of grain: the few pounds of donated United Nations rice he received each month, the small bag of ground corn he bought with earnings from factory work, and the two tiny servings of porridge he ate each day to [...]

read more....

The US is, so far, the single most important bilateral player in the LAC region. US-China relations and the growth of China as a global superpower, and maybe eventually, the global superpower, is perhaps the single most critical strategic issue facing the global community over the next two or three decades. The recent visit of [...]

read more....

China worries as Japan and Australia sign a security deal.
Australia and Japan signed a joint declaration on security co-operation on March 13th, upgrading the two countries’ security relationship to match their burgeoning economic ties. Although the pact falls well short of a military alliance, it has raised concerns in China that it is intended to [...]

read more....

“It is a profound truth,” declared the British Socialist Party in a 1911 manifesto, “that Socialism is the natural enemy of religion.” Not the least of the oddities in the subsequent history of progressive politics is that today it has become the principal vehicle in the West for Islamist goals and policies.
The European left makes [...]

read more....

The Syrian general came out of his meeting with a brilliant contract for the sale of the advanced Iskander SS-26 surface missile. The Israeli general ran into a blank wall when he tried to persuade the Russian to withhold the missile from the Assad regime. Last January, when the deal was first broached, the Bush [...]

read more....

But the evidence suggests China’s intent is to challenge the U.S. as a military superpower. Within a decade, perhaps much sooner, China will be America’s only global competitor for military and strategic influence. National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell told the Senate Feb. 27 that the Chinese are “building their military, in my view, to reach [...]

read more....

The fight over a dictator’s legacy
CHIANG KAI-SHEK may once have been revered as a near-god on Taiwan, where he led his Chinese Nationalist regime after being defeated by Mao Zedong’s Communists on the mainland in 1949. But almost a third of a century after his death, the memory of the old dictator is being effaced, [...]

read more....

MOSCOW (AP) - Russia’s foreign minister harshly criticized what he called Washington’s unilateral foreign policy on Saturday, and said Moscow intended to counterbalance it with its increasing global clout.
The comments by Sergey Lavrov were the latest expression of irritation by Moscow over U.S. foreign policing, including plans to base parts of its missile defence system [...]

read more....