Everything is getting harder for the U.S. in Central Asia. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is touring the region and his caravan recently rolled into Kyrgyzstan, where he received some unwelcome news. The New York Times informs us that a top Kyrgyz defense official told the Secretary that his country plans to close a crucial U.S. military […]

In a remarkable farewell speech delivered live on national television and the Bo Xi Lai controversy neared a climax, China’s outgoing Premier, Wen Jiabao, issued a call for liberal reform that will reverberate throughout the country. The Premier even went so far as to invoke the specter of Mao’s devastating Cultural Revolution, suggesting that a similar […]

While the conflict with Iran continues to gather more media attention, today’s biggest news may have come from South Korea, whose free-trade agreement with the U.S. is coming into force.  The Wall Street Journal calls it the largest free trade pact America has signed since NAFTA. The agreement will see 80 percent of existing tariffs […]

California is staging a limited retreat in the war on arithmetic—but it’s vowing to fight on.Just like in New York, where the state legislature recently vetoed a plan to put the state’s wobbly pensions on stable footing, California is facing a crisis borne out by numbers. The problem bedeviling California is the gap between the […]

One of the big news stories this morning is that the world’s leading search firm and huge corporate entity is preparing a deep overhaul of its basic search engine.It’s the essence of capitalism here. Google must perpetually reinvent itself or wither and die. Change is risky — the new tech may not work out, consumers […]

Yesterday Korea, today Mongolia: China, India, Japan, their neighbors and the United States keep making new moves in Asia’s Game of Thrones. Mongolia and Japan are moving closer this week following recent announcements from Mongolian President Sukhbaatar Batbold. According to the Wall Street Journal, Batbold’s new plans to re-energize his country’s economy focus on improving […]

‘The past is not dead’, wrote Faulkner. For the sake of the world’s half billion Latin Americans, let’s hope he was wrong.Latin America holds the world patent rights on the resource curse: ever since its gold and silver drew the Spanish conquistadors, the continent’s wealth has empowered exploitative, rent seeking governments in alliance with foreign […]

President Obama has stalled the Keystone XL pipeline; the developed world mulls over carbon treaties; and greens continue to hunt for energy unicorns. Meanwhile, dirty sources of energy like coal mines continue to pop up across the developing world, bringing growth to poverty-stricken lands.As the Financial Times‘ Andrew England reports from Mozambique, huge coal reserves […]

AI: Let’s start with your book, What to Ask the Person in the Mirror: Critical Questions for Becoming a More Effective Leader and Reaching Your Potential (Harvard Business Review Press, 2007). There are a lot of books that fall into the category of high-level self-help for businessmen. What makes this one different?RSK: This is a […]

Pakistan hasn’t been in the news much lately, and the Washington Post‘s David Ignatius thinks there is a very good reason for that: its relationship with the United States has been “reset”, with both countries relieved to take a step back from their often stressful partnership. According to Ignatius, “the two nations [will] still cooperate […]