Nuclear Pakistan, we are often told, is the Islamic-state equivalent of a Wall Street firm: In geostrategic terms, it is too big to fail. That explains why, even as the Obama administration begins preparing for modest troop withdrawals from Afghanistan this July, it dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Islamabad last week to smooth over bilateral relations with Pakistan’s paranoid regime, which were strained even before the killing of Osama bin Laden. But Clinton’s trip and the Obama administration’s instinctive embrace of Islamabad is a fool’s errand, doomed by history, geography and globalization itself. In fact, the U.S. should […]

DENPASAR, Indonesia — Assessing the Association of South East Asian Nations is always a tricky matter. The organization, which brings together 10 Southeast Asian countries, has been criticized lately for its inability to mediate the border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia as well as for failing to put enough pressure on the Myanmar junta. These deserved criticisms also call into question a pillar of the association, namely the noninterference policy that prohibits intervention in members’ internal affairs. But “the ASEAN way” is unlikely to change anytime soon, and expecting the group to become the new European Union is unrealistic. Nevertheless, […]

BEIJING — The global financial crisis catapulted China into a position of international economic leadership a decade earlier than Beijing’s strategists had intended. That significantly increased the urgency of rebalancing the Chinese economy away from the low-quality, export model toward higher-value, domestically driven growth. One consequence has been new and accelerated patterns of Chinese trade and investment abroad. For the United States, China’s largest economic partner, the implications of this new multidirectionalism are significant. But with recent figures showing that bilateral investment between the two countries is contracting, the U.S. must adapt its approach to this issue to ensure it […]

Global Insights: China Ponders Pakistan’s Naval Base Offer

Since even before the controversy surrounding the killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. special forces in Pakistani territory, analysts have been assessing whether China would exploit the growing tensions between Islamabad and Washington to expand its own influence in Pakistan. The results of Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s four-day official visit to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) suggest that Chinese officials are pondering one potential option, a naval base in Pakistan, even if they do not seem eager to displace U.S. influence in Pakistan entirely. Upon Gilani’s return, Pakistan’s Defense Minister Chaudhary Ahmed Mukhtar told the press […]

Chinese Military Visit More Symbolic Than Significant

After the whirlwind of headlines surrounding last week’s high-level talks between China and the United States, few seemed to notice this week that senior Chinese military leaders have been touring a variety of sensitive U.S. military bases. The visits came at the invitation by the Obama administration and have prompted some to question the extent to which military relations between the two powers — which were frozen by China amid tension over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan — may finally be turning around. “I don’t think it’s a turnaround, I think it’s a continuation of where we were before China […]

China Seeks Outside Help Against Uighur Separatists

China is calling for the international community to help fight what it calls a homegrown terrorist problem in mostly Muslim Xinjiang. The Chinese government accuses the region’s Uighur minority population of seeking independence through violence, while the Uighurs blame Beijing for suppressing their culture and religion.

Global Insider: China-Afghanistan Relations

Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasoul paid a state visit to China last week, highlighting the two countries’ growing ties. In an email interview, Nicklas Norling, a research fellow at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and the Silk Road Studies Program, discussed China-Afghanistan relations. WPR: What is the history of relations between China and Afghanistan? Nicklas Norling: There have been few links between China and Afghanistan throughout the past century, with Beijing only very recently showing a real interest in engagement. Even though China and Afghanistan share a short border, China’s diplomatic, economic and other ties have hitherto been more significant with […]

BEIJING — Enhanced transnationalism in international systems is creating new sources of comparative advantage for nations, with the strategic value of connectedness being a particularly noteworthy example. But in an age where horizontal global network connections are proliferating, the world’s fastest-rising power, China, maintains a rigidly vertical, Communist Party-led hierarchy of information. This exceptionalism, increasingly apparent throughout China’s domestic and foreign policy, is emerging as one of the most fundamental obstacles to the country’s continued international rise. Chinese exceptionalism in formal foreign and economic policy is by no means a new phenomenon, but China, to a greater degree than any […]

Space activity has increased tremendously over the past decade thanks to both the growth of space applications and the entry of many new national and regional players. Space is now understood as a fully dual-use domain, with space systems not only part of the digital and cyberspace domains and as such powerful socio-economic enablers, but also at the core of all global defense policies and operations. Indeed, space is the smart-power tool par excellence, effective for applying both soft and hard power or, as is more often the case, a little bit of both. Space power is the modern-day equivalent […]

The 21st century’s great shift of power from West to East is not limited to China alone. The Asian century also belongs to India. Already the world’s fourth-largest economy, India has continued to grow swiftly even after the financial crisis, expanding at 8-9 percent annually. With more than 60 percent of its population younger than 35, it possesses the world’s most potent demographic dividend. Its recent affluence has also increased India’s appetite for military power. India’s annual defense expenditure stands at $30 billion today, or 2 percent of global defense spending, making it the world’s biggest importer of arms. From […]

There is a profound sense of completion to be found in America’s elimination of Osama bin Laden, and the circumstances surrounding his death certainly fit this frontier nation’s historical habit of mounting major military operations to capture or kill super-empowered bad actors. Operation Geronimo, like most notable U.S. overseas interventions of the past quarter-century, boiled down to eliminating the one man we absolutely felt we needed to get to declare victory. Now we have the opportunity to redefine this “long war” to America’s most immediate advantage. I spot four basic options, each with their own attractions and distractions. Declare victory […]

Much has been written about the potential impact that the demise of Osama bin Laden and the possible disintegration of al-Qaida will have on U.S. foreign policy, beginning with the question of whether this will trigger a more rapid disengagement from Afghanistan. But bin Laden’s death could also change the foreign policy calculus of other states, notably Russia, which for the past 10 years has promulgated its own version of the global war on terror as a central organizing principle for international affairs. Even before the Sept. 11 attacks, Moscow had already seen bin Laden as a threat to the […]

Driven in part by a recent article in Proceedings, the magazine of the United States Naval Institute, the debate over the nature and utility of aircraft carriers has once again erupted between naval analysts. In “Twilight of the $uperflous Carrier,” Capt. Henry J. Hendrix of the U.S. Navy and retired Lt. Col. J. Noel Williams of the U.S. Marine Corps argue that modern supercarriers are simply too expensive and too vulnerable to be usable weapons of war. They contend that the era of the supercarrier has come to an end, and that the future of naval power resides in warships […]

U.S.-China Talks Reveal Gap in Agendas

The U.S.-China relationship may have reached its strongest footing of the Obama presidency, judging from high-level talks that came to a close in Washington yesterday. But some observers noted a palpable gap in focus between the two powers, with the U.S. addressing a broad agenda — ranging from concerns over the value of the yuan to human rights — and China more narrowly concentrated on issues pertaining to its sovereignty. The core of China’s agenda going into the Strategic and Economic Dialogue was a strategy of maintaining control “over their territory and their waters, and frankly their cyberspace,” says Patrick […]

BEIJING — As policymakers from the world’s two largest economies gather in Washington for the third U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, the Chinese yuan is trading at a 30-year high against the dollar, while its convertibility has expanded significantly since this time last year, and bullish sentiment surrounds its future evolution. Although this may suggest China is finally getting serious about rationalizing the value of the yuan, recent measures are geared toward internationalization rather than genuine liberalization, and China’s economy is still decades away from being able to support a free-floating currency. It is in the U.S. interest to support […]

U.S. Commerce Secretary Blasts Chinese Regime over Trade Barriers

In the lead-up to next week’s U.S. China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke has vowed to oppose trade barriers imposed by the Chinese regime on US companies, if he is confirmed as the next ambassador to China.

The Libyan debacle has been a major wakeup call for those thinking that Europe has a grip on its neighborhood or that the European Union might one day become a serious geopolitical actor. The point is now so moot, it’s barely worth making. What’s less obvious is that the fallout from the Libyan intervention will have a serious impact on the upstream energy landscape around Europe. That’s not just because the EU has lost around 1 million barrels per day of sweet oil production and around 16 percent of its gas supplies for the “EU 15,” but also because the […]

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