Tag Archives: emerging

Clinton: U.S. must put economics at center of foreign policy

By CNN Foreign Affairs Correspondent Jill Dougherty

(CNN) — The United States must position itself to lead in a world “where security is shaped in boardrooms and on trading floors — as well as on battlefields,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will say Friday in a major economics and foreign policy speech in New York.

Economic forces, Clinton will say, are transforming foreign policy realities around the globe.

“We have seen governments toppled by economic crisis,” a text of the Secretary’s remarks released by the State Department on the eve of the speech reads. “Revolutions born in a Tunisian marketplace have swept across an entire region. Europe faces its strongest test in a generation, thanks to recession and debt. And everywhere I travel, I see countries gaining influence not because of the size of their armies, but because of the growth of their economies.”

Clinton will say she is updating U.S. foreign policy priorities to include economics “every step of the way,” suggesting the United States should take a cue from the leaders of emerging powers like India and Brazil who put economics at the center of their foreign policies.

“When their leaders approach a foreign policy challenge — just as when they approach a domestic challenge — one of the first questions they ask is, ‘how will this affect our economic growth?'” the text of the speech says. “We need to be asking the same question — not because the answer will dictate our foreign policy choices, but because it must be a significant part of the equation.”

In the address before the Economic Club of New York, the fourth in a series of speeches Secretary Clinton is giving on economics and foreign policy, she will say the world’s “strategic and economic center of gravity is shifting east” and the United States is focusing more on the Asia-Pacific region.

“One of America’s great successes of the past century was to build a strong network of relationships and institutions across the Atlantic,” she says. “One of our great projects in this century will be to do the same across the Pacific.”

The United States should help other countries find economic solutions to strategic challenges, especially in the Middle East and North Africa, she says. “We need a sophisticated effort to integrate the region’s economies, promote investment and assist in economic modernization. The Arab political Awakening must also be an economic awakening.”

Clinton takes aim at Americans who would turn inward, arguing “you can’t call ‘time out’ in the global economy. Our competitors aren’t taking a time out, and neither can we.”

Increasingly, the United States is focusing on “tracking and thwarting” the financiers of terrorism, using sanctions and other economic tools to cut repressive regimes off from insurance, banking and shipping, Clinton says.

Finally, Clinton says, the United States is “modernizing (its) agenda on trade, investment and commercial diplomacy to deliver jobs and growth for the American people.”

But the United States cannot compete, she says, if it is frozen in domestic political fights.

“Washington has to end the culture of political brinksmanship — which, I can tell you, is raising questions around the world about our leadership.”

Courtesy: CNN

Sindh is a CAUSE not a CARD – New Sindh is emerging led by the people

– Congratulations! to Saaieen Zardari …. he has united virtually whole Sindh, nationalist parties, ANP, PPP dissidents on one platform to observe complete shutter down strike in Sindh against unending black mailing of MQM-A on gunpoint & betrayal of PPP in Sindh. No body should take Sindh for granted!  New Sindh is emerging led by the people.

Salute to the people of Sindh for complete strike on 13th August 2011. The short sighted & self centered PPP leadership, living in the palaces of Islamabad that ruined its won core constituency should learn lesson that Sindh is not political CARD to use for personal interests but a CAUSE. The people of Sindh never let any one to play this card any more against the wishes of the people of Sindh.

Courtesy: → Above text is adopted from different Sindhi Walls of Facebook.

‘China ready to go to war to safeguard national interests’

Beijing: Terming US attempts to woo India and other neighbours of China as “unbearable”, an article in a Communist party magazine has said that Beijing must send a “clear signal” to these countries that it is ready to go to war to safeguard its national interests.

The article published in the Qiushi Journal, the official publication of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) said China must adhere to a basic strategic principle of not initiating war but being ready to counterattack.

“We must send a clear signal to our neighbouring countries that we don’t fear war, and we are prepared at any time to go to war to safeguard our national interests,” the article said, suggesting an aggressive strategy to counter emerging US alliances in the region.

“Throughout the history of the new China (since 1949), peace in China has never been gained by giving in, only through war. Safeguarding national interests is never achieved by mere negotiations, but by war,” it said.

The piece said countries like Japan, India, Vietnam, Australia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Korea are trying to join the anti-China group because they either had a war or a conflict of interest with China. …

Read more : ZeeNews

The Spy Who Knew Everything

by Louise Roug

Former CIA officer and advisor to President Obama Bruce Riedel talks about his new book, what the protests in Egypt mean, and the lessons of Pakistan.

The most important skill that a CIA officer can have is the ability to be at the right place at the right time—and to recognize the moment. By that taxing measure, Bruce Riedel has been extraordinarily successful.

His first country assignment for the agency was the Iran desk, where he arrived in 1978 during the twilight of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s reign. The Iranian revolution the following year irrevocably changed how the United States could operate in the Middle East—a reality borne out by the 444-day hostage crisis that followed.

Riedel then became the CIA desk officer for Egypt, authoring an intelligence report in the fall of 1981 that warned of the high risk of Anwar Sadat’s assassination following the peace treaty with Israel. The briefing, in which Riedel predicted the rise of then–vice president Hosni Mubarak, proved stunningly prescient: during an Oct. 6 military parade that year, a group of soldiers, for whom peace with Israel was anathema, assassinated the Egyptian president.

“That was one hell of a day,” Riedel recalls in a NEWSWEEK interview, during a week when an uprising in Egypt has once more thrown the region into turmoil.

Serving four successive presidents, Riedel went on to work at the Pentagon, the White House, and at CIA headquarters in Langley, getting to know the most important players in Washington and the Middle East. But it is his last assignment—Pakistan—that keeps him awake at night.

In Pakistan, we now have, for the first time, the possibility of a jihadist state emerging,” Riedel tells NEWSWEEK. “And a jihadist state in Pakistan would be America’s worst nightmare in the 21st century.”

His book Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America, and the Future of Global Jihad was recently published by the Brookings Institution Press. Intended as a primer on Pakistan’s turbulent history, the book sets out to explain, as he writes, “why successive U.S. administrations have undermined civil government in Pakistan, aided military dictators, and encouraged the rise of extremist Islamic movements that now threaten the United States at home and abroad.” …

Read more : The Daily Beast