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 […]

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 […]

“Welcome to the world’s next failed state,” writes Ned Parker, the former Baghdad bureau chief for the LA Times. He’s talking about Iraq, a country the US military and countless diplomats tried very hard to mould into a representative, safe, friendly democracy. Though much of the blame rests with Iraqi officials, America’s democratic Iraq project […]

I’ve been attending a State Department lunch for British prime minister David Cameron today and found myself thinking about some recent points Joel Kotkin and Shashi Parulekar have made about the prospects for the English speaking world.China’s rapid growth over the last decade, coupled with the world financial crisis that has left Western states struggling […]

Following the Solyndra debacle, the Energy Department’s “green technology” loan program has hit a familiar new snag—massive slowdowns and bureaucratic red tape have brought the program to a standstill. The New York Times reports that a wave of companies have had their loan applications withdrawn or rejected, and many green energy companies are complaining that […]

It has not been a good month for America in Afghanistan. Three weeks after U.S. soldiers sparked nationwide riots by burning copies of the Koran, a lone American opened fire on civilians inside their own homes, killing at least 16 villagers, many of whom were children.President Obama entered office pledging to end the war in […]

While Obama’s “pivot” to Asia has gathered most of the headlines in the past few months, he isn’t the only world leader looking East. In an intriguing piece in The Diplomat, Richard Weitz claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin may be planning an Asian pivot of his own, looking to boost his country’s profile in […]