Finally, we have some (arguably) good economic news: Americans’ credit levels have returned to their pre-recession peak of $2.58 trillion. This is usually a good sign for the economy. Higher credit means more consumers are shopping, more banks are lending, and confidence in general is up.But as the Wall Street Journal points out, this news comes […]

The pace of defections from the Assad regime is picking up, with Prime Minister Riad Hijab being the latest high-level civilian official to skip town. A Sunni Muslim from the eastern part of Syria, he announced from Jordan that he has cast his lot with the resistance. The regime claimed that he had been fired, but […]

The gridlock in Washington and the prospect of the “fiscal cliff” has already started to hurt the real economy. Companies are holding back on investments and hiring because of uncertainty, reports the NYT: A rising number of manufacturers are canceling new investments and putting off new hires because they fear paralysis in Washington will force […]

Things are getting dicey in the Asian Game of Thrones. Over the weekend, China summoned and dressed down a U.S. diplomat in an escalating war of words over the South China Sea: The Foreign Ministry said on its website late Saturday that it summoned the U.S. deputy chief of mission in Beijing, Robert Wang, to […]

I woke up on my first morning in Hyderabad to the horrible news from Wisconsin: a lone gunman walked into a Sikh temple during worship services and began firing at the worshipers. The news is still coming in, but the NYT reports that six people plus the gunman are dead and many others are wounded.The […]

The rapid changes underway in Asia presents the U.S. with a far more complex geostrategic challenge than that posed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. America’s new Asia policy will require the deployment of the full arsenal of American power—not just economic and strategic but cultural and diplomatic as well.To this end, the […]

Our essay this week dealt with the ongoing crisis in Syria, and specifically about how this tragic conflict could easily spill beyond Syria’s borders and become internationalized. Pivoting off of a pair of reports—that the Turks were massing forces on the Syrian border in order to suppress a Kurdish insurgency, and that the Iranians had […]

WRM: Flexibility may be the most important characteristic of any Asian international structures that do get built. China doesn’t want a war over the South China Sea, especially not a war with the U.S., but the government also doesn’t want to risk its power domestically by being perceived as weak and unreliable. Vietnam, the Philippines […]

A trio of articles this week piece together a gloomy triptych of Asia, proving that the region is far from immune to the twists and turns of Europe’s ailing economy. Reuters reports major slowdowns in manufacturing not only in China and India but also South Korea, Australia, and Taiwan. Next, the NYT spotlights China, where deflation […]

The mostly Muslim Uighur population of China’s far-western province of Xinjiang has never had it particularly easy when it comes to practicing its faith. Under Mao Zedong, when religion was essentially forbidden throughout China, the state would go to extremes to suppress Islam—like force-feeding candy to Muslim school children to make them break their Ramadan fasts.The […]