Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
We think the president has an instinctive sense that U.S. policy toward China should be a good deal tougher than it has been the last 12 years. Surely it's time for him to shape a coherent policy, bring his advisers into line, and not allow staffers to be hung out to dry. This would be the adult thing to do.
The "One China" policy has been slowly but steadily collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions for more than a decade. And how could it not collapse? America's very arcane, very nuanced policy was created in 1979. The world then was so different from today's that it might as well have been 1879.
Scholars looked at the surveillance plane crisis and talked about the implications and next steps for US-China relations.
The challenges of consolidating statehood which lie before the states of Central Asia and the Caucasus in the immediate future,are likely to be shaped by the peculiarities of the relationships of these states to Russia, and what strategic consequence this might have from the US.
Whatever risks may accompany a policy of containment, the risks of weakness are infinitely greater. China hands both inside and outside the administration will argue that this crisis needs to be put behind us so that the U.S.-China relationship can return to normal. It is past time for everyone to wake up to the fact that the Chinese behavior we have seen this past week is normal.
The disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War have fundamentally changed the strategic balance in the Middle East and have had a profound impact on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Carnegie's Shlomo Avineri argues that four facets can be discerned from current Russian attitudes toward the Arab-Israeli conflict that inform Russian policy.
The Global Control System (GSK, from the Russian translation) demonstrated itself as a useful mechanism permitting involvement of Missile Technology Control Regime non member states in international discussions on missile proliferation and how to better resist it. Need for such a forum will continue in the future, and Moscow conferences have a reasonable chance of being supported to continue.
Russia's legal right to prosecute the war in Chechnya is incontestable. But legality and morality are not the same. And morally, the issue of Russia's latest intervention in Chechnya is not so clear.
In the coming weeks, an army of China experts is going to tell us that selling advanced arms to Taiwan is too risky. If history is any guide, however, it will be even riskier if Beijing thinks it is dealing with another "young and weak" American president.
"Armed incursions into Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan by radical Islamists whose declared aim is to establish a religious state in Central Asia have sent shock waves through Central Asia and have drawn as much international attention to the region as any issue since independence."