The future is no longer in plastics, as the businessman in the 1967 film The Graduate insisted. Rather, the future is in China.
Stealth Superpower
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China
Can Beijing and Moscow Help with Tehran?
The real test of President Barack Obama’s dealing with China and Russia will be whether he can persuade them to support U.S. pressure on Iran to give up its nuclear weapons aspirations. Obama is reported to have lobbied China on that issue during his recent visit. He also broached the topic with Russia in the recent past for the same purpose, but with little success. Iran denies wanting to join the nuclear club, but Washington has no faith in those denials.
Geneva Conventions Still Hold Up
What needs rewriting is not the Geneva Conventions but Israel’s abusive and illegal war strategy.
Clinton Tone-Deaf During Africa Trip
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 11-day trip to Africa, which came less than a month after President Barack Obama’s visit to Egypt and Ghana in July, was an attempt to emphasize Africa’s importance to the United States. Clinton was supposed to reassure African leaders that the Obama administration intends to engage with the continent, despite wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and perennial problems in Israel and the Korean peninsula.
Postcard From…Dharamsala
Tibetan monks at the main temple on the 50th anniversary of their exile. Photo by Saransh Sehgal.
Outsourcing North Korea Policy
The United States has basically thrown up its hands in the current crisis with North Korea. Washington has mounted an aggressive campaign at the UN to further isolate the world’s noisiest nuclear aspirant. But no one thinks that UN actions will have much effort.
The G-2 Paradox
Future historians will view the Bush administration’s assertion of unilateral U.S. power and authority as the last gasp of the American empire. The imperial overstretch that historian Paul Kennedy diagnosed near the end of the Cold War is finally hitting us: the banking crisis, the recession, the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the ever-increasing Pentagon budget.
A More Expensive Bill for North Korea
This essay is part of a strategic dialogue on North Korea that includes this article by John Feffer. The authors respond to each other here.
Will China Save the World from Depression?
Will China be the "growth pole" that will snatch the world from the jaws of depression?
Obama and Africa: Much Room For Improvement
The Bush administration transformed the way the United States dealt with the world.