Taiwan's presidential election saw the incumbent Ma Ying-jeou win another four-year term in office over his opponent Tsai Ing-wen. But the interpretation of this outcome by Washington and Beijing misses an important dimension of Taiwan's political reality. Their flawed understanding could have dam
Join the author for a toddy in a place where politeness has not gone out of style
A range of military and political developments, from the very rare planned deployment of three huge United States armadas in the Persian Gulf to Israeli fears of Barack Obama’s re-election, is evidence of rising danger around Iran.
In New Orleans in the summer of 2005 you needed transport and fuel in order to eat. In this landscape of dead refrigerators and flooded stores, abandoned by government, the author describes how individual improvisation woven into collective action fed empty stomachs
The cost of the United States's trillion-dollar pension system is high on the presidential-election agenda. But turning problems into workable proposals is hard, reports Matt Kennard.
The daring designer plunge, the sledgehammer swing and a crawfish culinary classic are all ways to get noticed, swamplands-style
The prognosis of a thirty-year war looked outlandish as Saddam's regime toppled, persuasive as Iraq's insurgency erupted - and now less plausible amid American forces' retreat. But two core issues continue to give it life.
As the first anniversary of the February 14 uprising approaches, the regime and the country at large find themselves at a crossroads in which there is dangerously little space for a strong middle ground.
With increasing geopolitical instability in oil producing states and the barriers that stand in the way of reaching a multilateral policy, the threat of sanctions in Iran only serves to intensify uncertainty surrounding oil price forecasts for 2012
The Afghan Taliban and the United States have begun talks, advancing prospects that coalition forces can withdraw from Afghanistan. But there are many potential pitfalls on the road to peace: a real risk of a political and military stalemate in Afghanistan, forcing the United States to leave the r
The real Iranian threat is not its nuclear capacity but its independence. If Iran continues to stand as a model of defiance for increasingly poverty-stricken and restless populations of family fiefdoms in the Gulf, the current US-backed setups will either fall or be forced to democratise. These po
