By Tyler Hooper With U.S., NATO and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) personnel set to withdraw the bulk of their military personnel from Afghanistan in 2014, regional powers such as China, India and Pakistan will have the opportunity to play an influential role in the country’s future. Both India and Pakistan have historically been involved in […]
Just when the rhetoric on both sides seemed to be fading, last week the People’s Daily, a Chinese newspaper, ran a lengthy commentary penned by two academics challenging Japan’s sovereign rights to the Ryukyu island chain – not far from Taiwan and home to Okinawa prefecture, the administrative body of the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku islands directly […]
Asia in, EU not yet China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, India and Italy have all been admitted as permanent observer states to the Arctic Council, while the EU will have to wait. Though technically admitted, it still must work out its differences with Canada. Countries are admitted as permanent observer states by consensus between the […]
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As territorial disputes have continued to escalate between the Chinese and Japanese over the Diaoyu/Senkaku island chain, Chinese tourists are arriving at The Eighth Route Army Culture Park in Wuxiang county, a war theme park where visitors can dress up at Chinese or Japanese troops and then shoot at each other using toy weapons. The […]
“It’s all psychological. You yell barracuda, everybody says, ‘Huh? What?’ You yell shark, we’ve got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July.” In the summer of 1975, the budding auteur, Steven Spielberg, created a virtual panic at America’s beaches with ingeniously crafted screen images of a certain Great White Fish. The top […]
Yesterday, I mentioned in a blog post that Eimskip, the Icelandic shipping company, recently moved its North American hub from Norfolk, Virginia to Portland, Maine. This will be the American port’s first direct connection to Europe in 33 years, according to an excellent, fact-filled article in the Press Herald, a local newspaper. Eimskip’s decision is in line […]
On Saturday’s parliamentary elections in Iceland, two center-right parties seized power from the incumbent Social Democrats. Iceland Review states that the Independence Party won a reported 28.5 percent of the vote, while the Progressive Party won 25.2 percent. What does this mean for Iceland’s Arctic strategy and the region at large? The EU dimension First of […]
In a subtle swipe at the Arctic Council, Icelandic President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson criticized, “The Arctic has suffered from a lack of global awareness and, as a result, a lack of effective governance.” Ostensibly believing that the Arctic Council is inadequate, Grímsson launched the possibly rival Arctic Circle in Washington, D.C earlier this month. ” The formation of this […]
Years of patient diplomatic efforts by China with its belligerent neighbor North Korea seemed to be coming to an end on Saturday, following Beijing’s public announcement of an agreement with the U.S. on ridding North Korea of nuclear weapons. The action comes after last Sunday’s early warning shot by China’s President and CCP Secretary General […]
U.S. Congressman Mike Rogers chairs the House of Representatives’ panel on intelligence, which this week overwhelmingly approved a new cyber security bill designed to enhance data sharing between the government and private industry to protect computer networks and intellectual property from cyber attacks. Yet the day before it passed, Rogers had a more novel idea […]
By Sarwar Kashmeri It would be a mistake to view President Obama’s visit to Israel as just a fence-mending exercise. It is in fact part of a planned redesign of U.S. foreign policy that will change the face of American leadership around the world. The redesign began with the appointment of John Kerry as Secretary […]
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