It reads like a scene from Henry Kissinger’s worst nightmare. China, Russia, and four Central Asian states gather today in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, to welcome India and Pakistan into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a security and economic club that excludes the United States. But what might have alarmed U.S. strategists during the Cold War could be cause for relief. The expansion signals a potential shift away from military coordination and toward economic cooperation.
Jun 8, 2017
Welcome to the world’s newest blue water ocean: the Arctic Ocean. You are forgiven if you think the Arctic is a mostly frozen and forbidding place covered in darkness for most of the year. It still is. But this ocean is rapidly changing: since 1979 Arctic sea ice maximum extent has dropped by an average of 2.8 percent per decade; in the summertime, the ice cap declined at 13.5 percent per decade; and the Greenland Ice Sheet lost an estimated 9,103 gigatons or over 9 trillion tons of ice since 1900 and between 25 to 35 gigatons annually. On land, the near-surface permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere is projected to decline by 20 percent relative to today’s area by 2040, and it could be reduced by as much as two-thirds by 2080 under a scenario of high greenhouse-gas emissions. We may be at the dawn of a new Arctic Age.
Jun 1, 2017
Quotes and Quotas is a weekly digest of phrases and facts that help explain Asia’s infrastructure push.
Jun 1, 2017
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is knocking on Europe’s door with a seductive message and a bold sales pitch. The message is one of economic cooperation, and coming in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial visit to Europe, his participation in the EU-China summit on June 1-2 in Brussels could not be better timed.
Jun 1, 2017
Quotes and Quotas is a weekly digest of phrases and facts that help explain Asia’s infrastructure push.
May 25, 2017