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Last summer, as Americans focused on the surge in Iraq, most ignored a military exercise with a potentially more far-reaching impact. In a remote location in the Ural Mountains, Russia, China, and several Central Asian nations gathered for a massive war game, ironically dubbed "Peace Mission 2007."
The resounding victory of Taiwan’s opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), in last Saturday’s presidential election has raised hopes for a new era of stability across the Taiwan Strait.
China can go for great stretches these days looking like the model of a postmodern, 21st-century power. But occasionally the mask slips, and the other side of China is revealed. The question for observers of Chinese foreign policy is whether the regime's behavior at home has any relevance to the way it conducts itself in the world.
When the U.S. launched a missile to destroy a dead satellite that would have otherwise re-entered the atmosphere and possibly threatened populated areas with a toxic load of hydrazine fuel, it resurrected fears about the so-called weaponization of space. Carnegie Associate Ashley J. Tellis comments in the Wall Street Journal on the ongoing “space weapon” debate and praises the Bush administration for rejecting a joint Russian-Chinese arms treaty aimed at banning such weapons.
Carnegie Endowment visiting scholar Josh Kurlantzick published an article in Time Magazine, where he discussed new sanction measures against Burma.
In the autumn 2007 issue of Survival, Ashley J. Tellis argues that China’s recent anti-satellite weapons test was part of a considered strategy designed to counter the overall military capability of the United States, and that "the United States has no choice but to run an offense–defense arms race, and win."
Since communism failed as an economic system, Russia and China have had to embrace free markets. But hopes that reform of communist economies would produce western-style democracies have been shaken.
America’s relationship with the world is in disrepair. Anger, resentment, and fear have replaced the respect the United States once enjoyed. The next U.S. president should improve relations with Syria, and the mullahs in Tehran may be willing to shelve their nuclear plans permanently in exchange for a little face time with the United States.
The release last week of the unclassified summary of the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran provoked a wide range of reactions -- relief that it seemed to dispel the option of a military strike, anger that intelligence seems to be politicized once again, and dismay over how this would affect U.S. policy options.
Regardless of what one thinks about the National Intelligence Estimate's conclusion that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003 -- and there is much to question in the report -- its practical effects are indisputable. The Bush administration cannot take military action against Iran during its remaining time in office, or credibly threaten to do so, unless it is in response to an extremely provocative Iranian action.
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