Central Asia & Caucasus Data

Special Ambassador Steve Witkoff no doubt talked to President Trump about the US-Iran meeting in Oman. We don’t have a special wiretap on his call to Trump, but it is a sure bet Witkoff told the president things were going well and another meeting is planned. If Trump’s idea is to drag out talks with The post Iran rope-a-doping US in Oman appeared first on Asia Times.

The world we inhabit today bears little resemblance to the one imagined by the architects of the global economy at the end of the 20th century. Back then, the dismantling of trade barriers was celebrated as a gateway to shared prosperity. Today, new walls are rising, not of concrete, but of tariffs, subsidies and export The post Economic nationalism giving rise to a zero-sum world appeared first on Asia Times.

Japan’s general election campaign ended on Saturday with major party leaders holding competing rallies across Tokyo. This has by any definition been a strange campaign. It was unexpected; it was the shortest-ever general election; its coming spurred the unlikely creation of a new party from former rivals; and what looked like an extraordinary gamble by The post Last-day campaign words remarkably revealing about where Japan is appeared first on Asia Times.

When Brussels convinced itself that regulation could substitute for power and values for capacity, leverage migrated elsewhere. Europe rendered its own vulnerabilities exploitable; Washington and Beijing simply did not hesitate to use them. Sermons multiplied as factories vanished; dependence was a policy choice, defended in public, moralized at home, and institutionalized through repetition until it The post EU needs political adults, not feckless children, in Trump era appeared first on Asia Times.