With Vice President visiting Japan and the NATO assisted Libyan rebels consolidating (one hopes) their control of Tripoli, this is an odd and impolitic moment to say so, but the decline of the trilateral alliance is picking up speed.Trilateralism was the response of the US and its closest allies to the perceived decline in American […]

I really cannot resist commenting on two phenomena that seem quite different in nature but whose simultaneity suggests a few curmudgeonly observations. I am of course still on curmudgeon alert, but I can’t get to my real work today until I get these observations off my chest.First, about Washington’s earthquake yesterday early afternoon. There isn’t […]

As eurozone countries prepare to cough up the necessary funds for Greece’s bailout, the news that just one country — Finland — has struck a side deal with Athens to ensure Greece does not default on Finnish loans threatens to shake up the entire bailout.  The FT reports: The Greco-Finnish collateral deal, reached last week […]

Anti-government protests are springing up in yet another country. This time, Vietnam is the lucky winner. Yet in contrast to the situation in the Arab world, the Vietnamese government isn’t the object of the demonstrators’ ire — at least not to start.The protestors are angry about Chinese expansion into disputed areas of the South China […]

Thanks to this afternoon’s earthquake in northern Virginia, the palatial TAI headquarters building in Washington is being temporarily evacuated.  No one has been injured and there are no signs of structural damage; nevertheless buildings are being evacuated all across the region and we are no exception.Blogging will resume as soon as we can find a […]

Today the Telegraph reports that Chinese officials are scrambling to protect their business interests in Libya after rebel leaders suggested that they could give a cold shoulder to countries that didn’t help the revolution. The Telegraph quotes an official at the Libyan oil firm Agoco as saying “We don’t have a problem with western countries like […]

If global greens are good for one thing, it is that as long as they are around the world will never run short of the ever-renewable resource of wishful thinking. Take these words, for example, from a Chinese CEO quoted in Tom Friedman’s NYT column last year: “China was asleep during the Industrial Revolution. She […]

Brazil’s effort to escape 200 years of underachievement continues to run into trouble. Various international banks cut this and next year’s growth forecasts to as low as 3.1 percent, from a high prediction of 4.5 percent. The FT explains: Brazil’s government has continuously warned that the country is not ‘immune’ to events abroad but the […]

This past week’s protests in India instantly commanded a lot of sympathy around the world; who doesn’t want an end to the rampant corruption that pervades Indian politics and is the greatest threat to the country’s emergence as a great power?  It is not clear, however, that the anti-corruption movement can lead to constructive reform.  […]

I wrote yesterday that the Obama administration’s policies in the Middle East look more and more like President Bush’s third term.  Democracy is the goal, regime change one of the options, and military force is not off the table.This morning we see another similarity between the Obama policies and the Bush years: as celebrations in […]