After a few weeks away, I thought this story would be a good re-entry to the world of Rising Powers.
In America, a flailing economy and falling approval ratings for the President lead to an intricate campaign to reassure citizens of financial growth, long term stability and national robustness. President Obama …
Bharat Verma, Editor of the Indian Defence Review, made a controversial statement today. He predicts that China will attack India by 2012 in order to distract its massive populace from rampant internal unrest. He stated:
“China will launch an attack on India before 2012. There are multiple reasons for …
Today the American Dollar was met with both encouraging and potentially disheartening news. First, the Dollar rose against the Australian Dollar, Swiss Franc and Yen as China announced that the USD will continue to remain the world’s leading trade currency. In addition, Beijing said it will not make …
Whether or not Russia is a rising power (and it’s been suffering on the economic front lately), it certainly does have a national drinking problem. The British medical journal The Lancet produced a study on worldwide use of alcohol and its relationship to cause of death. It discovered …
It seems all the news is buzzing about it. BRIC is suddenly real. Its first-ever summit, coinciding with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in Yekaterinburg (see my last post) has launched the 4-nation bloc onto the world stage and has elevated the acronym BRIC into the realm of …
My colleague David Kampf pointed out that the BRIC leaders are meeting tomorrow in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Before the BRIC meeting, however, an equally important and significant meeting took place today in the same location. The six heads of state of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) met …
Today Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would give up all of its nuclear weapons if other nations that held them did the same thing (ie. the US and others). Putin was at a joint news conference with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier who had been …
Today US Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced in a Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee hearing that Russia has come around to share the same feelings as the US about the urgency of the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program. Gates explained that in a previous meeting with the then-president …
India’s Business Standard has an article today by Kishore Singh giving an review of Amitabh Kant’s new book entitled “Branding India: An Incredible Story“. The book analyzes India’s success in its Incredible India! campaign. Since its launch in 2002, Incredible India has …
The New York Times today provides an excellent analysis of China’s growing role as an economic powerhouse, both regionally and globally. As the first of a series dealing with China’s rise and the geostrategic implications, Michael Wines writes a compelling piece discussing the prowess of 3 Chinese companies …
Today the strategic forecasting firm Stratfor released a comparison report dealing with the “Geography of Recession“. I’ll let you subscribe to the actual post, but the main gist of it is that the US is far better off than its competitors at weathering the recession. What’s more, the …
A lot.
India has come under increased fire by international human rights groups for its lack of action during Sri Lanka’s war against the Tamil Tiger rebels (LTTE). Some have even called India complicit in the killing of 20,000 Tamil civilians in Sri Lankan due to its provision of …
North Korea performed a nuclear test this weekend which, according to various seismic tests, amounted to a blast of somewhere between 4 and 20 kilotons (possibly larger than the US’ bombing of Hiroshima in 1945). The significance of the test cannot be discounted, as Pyongyang’s 2006 blast was a mere …
Yesterday, the Czech Republic hosted a joint EU-China summit that was originally scheduled for December. The meeting was delayed then because of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s meeting with the Dalai Lama. This time, China made clear to tell the EU to stay out of its internal business. 2 …
Thanks to my colleague Roger Scher for sending me an article from today’s New York Times concerning “Love Land” (I wrote about it yesterday: here). It turns out Chinese authorities have had enough and have ordered the park to close. Read more here.
