The durian, aka the ‘stinky fruit’, is moving upmarket.  As durian season moves into high gear, Southeast Asian millionaires are sending private jets to get prime specimens fresh from the tree.  As a longtime fan of the pineapple sized, spike covered fruit that smells like a sewer and tastes like heaven, I sympathize.  Durian smoothies […]

China is spending more money and talking more trash around the neighborhood, but the American backed Asian security order is looking stronger by the day.  China’s problem in a nutshell: the more it tries to throw its weight around, the more its neighbors turn to the US, and try to bring India into the picture.Latest […]

Rarely does a piece of writing fall as flat as this travel piece that recently limped (it sure didn’t run) in the New York Times. HONOLULU has never been hotter, and not just because it’s July. The city’s “it” factor has been on the rise since President Obama announced, two years ago in Singapore, that […]

It is almost never good when the head of your central bank steps down in disgust.That seems to be happening on a regular basis in Pakistan where the second central banker in fifteen months has thrown up his hands in disgust.  Wasteful government expenditure, poor decision making and a general lack of commitment to any […]

The Quadriga prize, a coveted German honor awarded to those “whose courage tears down walls and whose commitment builds bridges” went to Mikhail Gorbachev and Vaclav Havel.  This year’s announced winner?Freedom fighter extraordinaire, Vladimir Putin.An explosion of criticism cancelled the Putin party; no prize will be given this year, and Prime Minister Putin’s dedication to […]

At last, there are signs of a working American policy toward Libya.  The embarrassing and damaging “days not weeks” war has turned into a stalemate that makes America look both violent (bombing villages in order to save them) and weak (the Loon is still spouting defiance from Tripoli).  The lesson so far to despots like […]

If there is one phrase in the global climate debate that sets my teeth on edge it is this: the claim by so many greens that the “science of global warming is settled.”Really?  “Settled?”  The essence of science is that it is never settled.  Science is a frontier, not a town.  That the science of […]

Back in March, Dan Drezner argued that my piece in Foreign Affairs marked the beginning of the end for the Tea Party as a factor in American foreign policy. Yet today, Dan observes that the Tea Party — high on the electoral and political successes of its “no retreat, no surrender” strategy — is a […]

Not everyone in the establishment is out to lunch.  The Nobel-winning Michael Spence at my old CFR stomping ground has been thinking about our failures of governance and the costs of backward looking policies.  In words that could have appeared on this blog, he’s written today that the bewildering pace of economic change taking place […]

The story that the Arab League will support the Palestinian bid for statehood at the UN next fall is not really news.  Real news would mean one of two startling developments: that the Arabs failed to give rhetorical and empty support to the Palestinians, or that they offered them real and meaningful help.Empty rhetorical gestures?  […]