The fall of the Assad's regime only a matter of time

Marwan Muasher 

Interviewed by Natalia Bubnov

The situation in Syria and around is rapidly intensifying. Events there are the topic of conversation with Marwan Muasher, vice-president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in charge of the study of the Middle East at the Washington headquarters of the Foundation and the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. He also was the first ambassador of his country to Israel, the head of the Ministry of Information, the spokesperson of the Government of Jordan, the director of Jordan Information Bureau in Washington.

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Bear in a China Shop

It's not the booming economy that's about to burst -- it's bigger than that. Social discontent and, yes, income inequality could rip China apart at the seams.

BY ARTHUR KROEBER

Time and again, China has defied the skeptics who claimed its unique mixed model -- an ever-more market-driven economy dominated by an authoritarian Communist Party and behemoth state-owned enterprises -- could not possibly endure. Today, those voices are louder than ever. Michael Pettis, a professor at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management and one of the most persistent and well-regarded skeptics, predicted in March that China's economic growth rate "will average not much more than 3% annually over the rest of the decade." Barry Eichengreen, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, warned last year that China is nearing a wall hit by many high-speed economies when growth slows or stops altogether -- the so-called "middle-income trap."

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Year 2011: Crises, Revolutions, Threats, Leaders and Outsiders

What are the events that occurred in the past year? Will those crucially affect the situation on the planet?

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Japan ready to shoot down North Korea Rocket; AFP on alert

The Philippine military on Friday said it had “intensified” its monitoring of North Korea’s plan to launch a long-range rocket next month, as Japan readied its missile defense systems to shoot down the rocket if it threatens Japanese territory.

MISSILE THREAT (Far left) Two Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force’s Aegis guided-missile destroyers, Kongo (front) and Chokai (rear) head out to sea from their base in Sasebo in this photo taken on March 28, 2009. Japan is readying its missile defense systems to shoot down a North Korean rocket if it threatens the country. Inset, a rocket lifts off from its launch pad in Musudan-ri, North Korea, in this April 5, 2009 image from KRT video.

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China, Russia and the US - a shifting geopolitical balance

Russia and China has been aligning ever more closely on a number of international issues, from Syria to Iran to North Korea. Some observers call this a "marriage of convenience". Others refer to it as "an awkward partnership", and some go as far as to suggest China's hegemony over Russia. What is true is that this is an intriguing relationship, which is evolving in a direction where the two countries have never been before. While any return to a Moscow-Beijing axis of the 1950s or the intense Sino-Soviet enmity of the 1960s may not be on the cards, the future of the relationship can definitely affect the geopolitical balance in Asia and beyond.

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From the Atlantic to Afghanistan - pending and future wars

Speculating on the outcome of the past and prospects for the coming year in the Middle East, 'Arab spring' can be taken as the triumph of democracy, which, according to most Western experts, should lead the region in a state close to the European standards. Judgments of this kind are not based on an objective assessment of the situation, but rather on faith and like any faith this doesn't need any proof.

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Islamabad-Beijing: unabated brotherly ties

China pushes America ultimatums, defiantly defending its ally in the rivalry with India, and is also preparing to build up its military and provided technical assistance. From the military-political situation in South Asia in recent days, suddenly smelled of the characteristic chill of the classical ultimata of the Great Powers of the model of the 19th Century.

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Russian & China: partnership or donation? Part II

Continued from Part I

Resumed in the 90s military-technical cooperation (MTC) between Moscow and Beijing quickly ceased to be simply "arms trade", after becoming a certain strategic tool. With its aid Russia ensured the realization of the concept of multipolar peace. Today it is clear that further rapprochement with the Celestial Empire would only return to a bipolar situation on the planet, but our country is not prepared for the role of one of the poles.

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Russian & China: partnership or donation? Part I

Military-technical cooperation of Russia and China, even 10 years ago, yielded major bulk of Russian arms exports, today this boosts to even larger supplies. Nevertheless, this partnership has given China a great technical breakthrough. What are the real results and future prospects of cooperation between Russia and China?

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Chinese “Badger” with the Soviet Genealogical

Air China adopted a new heavy bomber H-6K. This news may seem sensational and Russians enthusiastically followed the development of modern military aviation. After all, they know very well the origin of the aircraft.

H-6K is the latest in the series today, a modification of H-6 bomber - a licensed copy of our famous former Tu-16, created by Tupolev Design Bureau in the late 40s - early 50s.

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PAK-FA/T-50 & South Korea

by Konstantin Bogdanov

What's behind the attempt to include Seoul in the number of applicants for a place in Russian Air Force fighter jet T-50? What are the chances of our fifth-generation machines, and in what form it could get to the South Korean armed squadrons?

The domestic aviation industry are predicting the impending struggle in the new export tender.According to newspaper The Korea Times, a leading Russian manufacturer of combat aircraft -  "Sukhoi" expressed a desire to participate in the competition to supply fighters for the Air Forces of the Republic of Korea, suggesting T-50, developed in the framework of the PAK FA.

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All the Dear Leader's Bootleggers: North Korea's Secret Trade in Nukes -- and Whiskey

BY SIMON HENDERSON

Pakistan and North Korea have been involved for decades in a secretive trade: The Pakistani military acquired missiles from North Korea, and Pyongyang, as part of the deal, gained access to Pakistan's uranium enrichment centrifuges. Now, new details have emerged that reveal how this relationship was smoothed by money. The Washington Post published revelations today, attributed to me, that top-level North Korean officials bribed Pakistani military officials with over $3 million in exchange for the nuclear technology. This disclosure offers fresh details about how nuclear weapon secrets have proliferated across the globe -- and provides a unique insight into the dangerous consequences of the hermit kingdom's "entrepreneurial" role in world affairs.

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China's First Master Designer

After years of trying to keep it a secret, China has confirmed that one of their aircraft engineers, Yang Wei, is actually one of those extraordinary designers who produces one successful design after another. Born in 1963, he graduated from college at age 19 and finished graduate school three years later. He soon went to work at the Chengdu Aircraft Design Institute, and a decade later was appointed director. So far, he has designed a working fly-by-wire system, as well as the JF-17, J-10B and J-20. He did not design the original J-10, but did design the most successful version, the J-10B, and provided important upgrades for other J-10 models. The new J-20 (a stealth design that is still in development) is less of a surprise now that it's known the Chinese have a genuine ace designer working on it.

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Cobwebs Of Rising Red Dragon: Beijing

In Middle East key partners of China - Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan. They appreciate that China, unlike the West does not seek to change their lifestyle and political system.China in the region - a potential counterweight to U.S. and EU competitors. Beijing in Magribe and Sakhele, Mashrike Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Turkey and Israel; plays only according to its own rules, it does not enter into the alliances, it pursues pragmatic interests, conducts the open economic and concealed military-political expansion with the long-range goal.

 

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Pakistan's Black Pearl-Gwardar

By URMILA VENUGOPALAN

State visits between friendly countries seldom produce surprises or unscripted moments, but the recent trip to China by top Pakistani officials managed to do just that.

Upon returning to Islamabad, the defense minister, Ahmed Mukhtar, made two eyebrow-raising announcements: first, that Beijing had agreed to take over operation of Gwadar port in Baluchistan, and, second, that he had invited the Chinese to build a naval base there. China's leaders, seemingly caught unaware by these statements, promptly denied them.

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The Arms Race Is Slowing

World military spending in 2010 totaled 1.63 trillion dollars.

Annual growth - 1.3 per cent (20.6 billion dollars).As stated in the report of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the lowest figure over the past ten years.During 2001-2009 years the average annual growth was 5.1 percent.

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China Military Construction on US-Soviet Templates

by Alexander Khramchikhin

The Information Office of the State Council issued another - the seventh since 1998, White Paper, "China's National Defense 2010". Familiarity with it causes a lot of troubling questions.

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A World That Doesn't Have To Ask For America's Permission…

By David Rothkopf 

While NATO bickers over strategy in Libya, BRIC leaders have gathered in Sanya, China, to demonstrate the growing strength of an alternative grouping that has among its principle selling points the fact that it is neither Western nor U.S.-dominated. To compare the world's most potent and enduring military alliance with a loose affiliation of emerging powers that are divided by perhaps more issues than unite them is clearly comparing apples and lychee nuts or guarana seeds, but the juxtaposition of the two events does offer yet another whiff of how the institutions and ideas of the 20th century are giving way to those of the 21st.

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Russia Eyes Bigger Role on North Korea Issue

by Dmitri Trenin

Russia, up till now a more discreet player in the North Korean nuclear issue, seems to be intervening more actively in the rising tension over the Korean Peninsula recently. Does this signal a policy change by Russia toward North Korea? And what is the thinking behind Russia's increasing military presence in Northeast Asia? Global Times reporter Liu Linlin talked to Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, on these issues.

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Tales Of The Gun - Japanese Guns of WWII

 

When Japan entered World War II, their soldiers were armed with pride, a sense of invincibility and an arsenal of clumsy and outdated weapons. JAPANESE GUNS OF WWII visits weapons collections and museums for an up-close look at the arsenal that contributed to the empire's ultimate defeat. Compared to those wielded by the Allies, the Japanese firearms were underpowered, unreliable and over-complicated. As experts reveal, they were just one example of Japan's arrogant belief that the tools and tactics that had taken them to victory against colonial enemies would reprise their success in this far greater conflict. They could not have been more wrong.

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