Countries with serious disagreements often have their diplomats maintain a friendly facade, but China and India have raised this practice to a new level. Dai Bingguo, the Chinese state councillor, is currently in India for diplomatic talks with Shivshankar Menon, the country’s national security adviser. According to The Hindu, everything is fine, just fine between the two countries: […]

Polls are predicting that former Prime Minister Shinzio Abe’s Liberal Democratic party will take the most seats in the parliament’s lower house in Japan’s December 16 elections. Über-nationalist Grandpa Ishihara is also making strides; some recent polls have his Japan Restoration Party coming in second place. Both Ishihara and Abe advocate revising Japan’s war history, taking a […]

The U.S. is already reaping the benefits of new energy extraction techniques, but other gas-rich nations are having trouble achieving similar results. The basic obstacles are the same everywhere: environmental worries, government hangups, and a lack of technical expertise and infrastructure related to fuel extraction. The Wall Street Journal details their problems: Poland was once regarded as one […]

Developing countries are threatening to kill climate talks in Doha, the FT reports: The talks in the Qatari capital of Doha are entering their final five days. But they risk collapse, according to some negotiators, unless developed countries formally agree to pledge as much as $60bn in fresh funding by 2015.If the negotiators fail to […]

It’s beginning to look that way. Recent remarks from the governor of the Bank of France will stoke the fires of Euroskeptics in the UK who want out: “Most of the euro business should be done inside the euro area. It’s linked to the capacity of the central bank to provide liquidity and ensure oversight […]

Climate scientists have some bad news: carbon emissions were at record levels in 2011 and are set to jump to even higher levels in 2012. Emissions continue to grow so rapidly that an international goal of limiting the ultimate warming of the planet to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, established three years ago, is on the verge […]

Israel’s announcement of plans to build 3,000 new homes in the sensitive “E1” zone that would cut off Palestinian areas of Jerusalem from the West Bank is meeting the usual global denunciations. Israel is also cutting off $120 million in tax revenue that under normal circumstances it collects for the Palestinian Authority and has said […]

Syria “will never, under any circumstances, use chemical weapons against its own people,” according to a spokesman for the Assad regime. But signs of activity near Syria’s chemical weapons facilities have the world worried that Assad is lying.As the NYT reports: One American official provided the most specific description yet of what has been detected […]

Today is the first of the four Sundays in Advent, the beginning of the Christian year and the start also of a season in which many Christians will try to prepare themselves for the great feast to come.For many of us, that sense of preparation has dwindled down into buying presents, planning meals, making travel […]

The main arguments in Paul Bracken’s new op-ed in the Diplomat largely restate points he made in his recent (and excellent) book, The Second Nuclear Age: Strategy, Danger and the New Power Politics. But while the entire book is certainly worth a read (see our review in the Wall Street Journal), this bite-sized nugget is a good way […]