Regions

Amnesty International has put up a petition addressed to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, appealing for the release of Jabbar Savalan, the young pro-democracy activist who was charged with drug possession and convicted in May. As noted on this blog earlier, Savalan was arrested “after calling for protest actions on Facebook and attending a youth conference in […]

This week the Syrian Uprising has taken on a newly sectarian character, a disturbing development, and one that could spell a much more violent and unpredictable future for the unstable nation. On Sunday, Homs, Syria’s third largest city, saw the first openly sectarian violence of the now almost five month old unrest. It appears that […]

“The United States has always been a Pacific power because of our very great blessing of geography. And India straddling the waters from the Indian to the Pacific Ocean is, with us, a steward of these waterways. We are both deeply invested in shaping the future of the region that they connect. And there are […]

All is not as friendly as it appears Just as U.S.-India ties were at a nadir following New Delhi’s nuclear tests in 1998 – and just as the United States and China were declaring their own strategic partnership – Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee famously characterized Washington and New Delhi as “natural allies” who would […]

In case you missed it posted elsewhere, here is my brief, audio synopsis on the Thai elections. This is part of the “Expert Minute,” a new feature at the Foreign Policy Association in which bloggers such as myself have an opportunity to orally explain a relevant event in our region or area of focus over […]

At least 13 people have been killed and 86 injured in a 6.2-magnitude earthquake in the Fergana Valley region on the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the quake struck at 1:35 am (1935 GMT Tuesday) with the epicenter just inside Kyrgyzstan, but 42 km (25 miles) southwest of Fergana, Uzbekistan. The quake […]

By way of wiping off the dust that has collected on this blog I would like to draw attention to a thoughtful piece of analysis by APARC’s Daniel Sneider, published recently by the National Bureau of Asian Research. The thrust of his argument: “In 2009 the DPJ came to power in Japan, ending a half-century […]

South Korean Prime Minister Kim Hwang-Sik criticized the Japanese government’s boycott of Korean Air Tuesday, calling it a breach of international rules. Tokyo ordered civil servants not to fly on Korean Air after the private company held a demonstration flight of its new Airbus A380 over the disputed Liancourt Rocks. Kim was quoted by a […]

“Every day along the world’s busiest border, an expensive and time-consuming pantomime is acted out.” So begins the Economist’s coverage of the trucking agreement recently announced between Mexico and the United States. From that smart opening line the paper slips into an uncharacteristic fit of naïveté, arguing that Mexico stands to chalk major gains from […]

Though the Arctic may be rich in natural resources, that doesn’t mean it’s easy for corporations to make money there. BP’s attempt to join up with Rosneft in Russia’s Arctic was officially denied by the Russian courts, as they found that TNK had an exclusive right to work with BP in Russia as part of […]

The crisis in Syria is deepening and the Assad regime is fighting for its life. The rhythm of the revolution is familiar: the state cracks down on demonstrators throughout the week, inevitably committing some new outrage on its citizens; rage builds and explodes on Friday after prayers; repeat as necessary. The state’s crackdown seems more […]

More and more, Brazil seems to be caught between–and battling against–the greenback and the yuan. One result: the real is now among the “most overvalued” currencies in the world. Part of the problem is the whop-jawed global economy. The world’s largest economy has been slow to recover from the 2008 global financial crisis, causing the […]