The ongoing popular challenge to the pro-Western Lebanese government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora marks yet another setback in the Bush administration’s attempt to impose a new order on the Middle East more compatible with perceived U.S. strategic interests.
The latest recruitment brochure from the Central Intelligence Agency, which beckons the uninitiated to Âbe a part of a mission that’s larger than all of us, opens to reveal an image of the red-roofed entrance to Beijing’s Forbidden City. From an oversized portrait on the ancient wall, Chairman Mao and his Mona Lisa smile behold the vast granite expanse of Tiananmen Square. The Cold War is over, and the Soviet Union is gone. The cloak-and-dagger games of Berlin and Prague have been replaced by business and tourism. But ChinaÂland of ancient secrets, autocratic leaders, and memories of suppressed uprisingsÂstill holds out the promise of world-historical struggle that can help the CIA meet its recruitment goals.
A whole generation into the AIDS pandemic, we now have significant (though still insufficient) knowledge of how to combat the disease. But while the world’s collective understanding is gradually advancing, U.S. AIDS policy remains mired in a right-wing economic and social vision that is curtailing progress and costing lives.
Great power competition in Central Asia ebbs and flows in a timeless and tireless fashion. Unlike in Europe and East Asia during the Cold War and after, the fault line for the current jockeying for position in Central Asia between Washington and Beijing is not easily discernible. Instead, fluidity, uncertainty, and even outright reversal of fortunes among the major players have been the norm.
With power comes responsibility. Once they take over both houses of Congress on January 3, the Democrats will have the responsibility to get American troops out of Iraq as soon as practicable.
As part of our China Focus, we asked two leading scholars to reflect on the tensions and possibilities in U.S.-China relations. Bonnie Glaser is a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. James Nolt is a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute. We asked them first about the potential for a strategic security partnership between the United States and China, then about their economic relationship.
While economists laud the recently deceased Milton Friedman for being Âa champion of freedom whose work transformed economics and changed the world, as a full-page advertisement in the New York Times put it, people in the South will remember the University of Chicago professor as the eye of a human hurricane that cut a swath of destruction through their economies. For them, Friedman will long be associated with two things: free-market reform in Chile and Âstructural adjustment in the developing world.
Inaugurated last July, Peruvian President Alan García Perez completed the first 100 days of his second administration in early November. Winning a run-off in the June elections with 52% of the vote, García inherited a country torn by divisive socioeconomic and political issues. His first three months in office have been marked by a combination of policy innovation and continuity as he seeks to find workable solutions to difficult problems.
The agreement reached on November 8, 2006 between the ruling seven-party alliance (SPA) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) holds the promise of ending the decade-long bloody conflict in Nepal. For years, the Maoist guerrillas have struggled to seize power by force of arms. Their decision to support a political resolution to the current conflict is comparable to the peaceful transformations of the Irish Republican Army and the African National Congress.
The global market and technological advancements have the ability to transform the world with remarkable speed. Not many would be surprised to hear that the computer I am using to write this article may be comprised of components from at least 10 different countries. The monitor may come from Singapore, the processor from Israel, the software designed in India, and all assembled in Tennessee. We are becoming so accustomed to this phenomenon, that we don’t even blink an eye.