WASHINGTON — World and Afghan leaders convened in Bonn earlier this week, a decade after that city hosted the first major conference to chart Afghanistan’s future following the ousting of the Taliban. Key priorities on the Bonn 2011 agenda naturally included the ongoing security transition to Afghan forces, reconciliation with the Taliban and armed insurgent [...]

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AUSTIN, Texas — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s landmark visit to Burma this week heralds the potential for breakthroughs on two fronts — accelerating democratic reforms in one of the world’s worst tyrannies and realigning the strategic order of Asia.  Accomplishing both of these objectives is possible and represents a best-case scenario.  Yet optimism should [...]

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WASHINGTON—The Greek bombshell decision to hold a referendum on the last week’s celebrated eurozone bailout package will ensure that the G20 Summit starting on Thursday in Cannes will be hijacked by Europe’s troubles. A source of turbulence in the world economy, Europe’s problems are the world’s problems and should be on the G20 agenda. But [...]

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BRUSSELS—Yes, “Europe will be the focus of the Cannes Summit.” Although anticipated, the blunt statement from European Commission President Barroso and European Council President Van Rompuy seemed both redundant and inspiring. Redundant, because a €1 trillion commitment needs implementation and global coordination that only the G20 can offer. Inspiring, because this crisis serves as the [...]

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WASHINGTON—The past three years have been very good for China. No country has emerged from the ashes of the 2008 U.S.-led financial crisis stronger and more influential than China. Beijing’s international reserves are now more than seven times larger than the deployable funds held by the International Monetary Fund. With such a huge cash stockpile, [...]

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ROME — According to the newly-released Transatlantic Trends survey, Italy is the European country with the strongest perception of a deterioration of the transatlantic relationship over the last year.  Nevertheless, Italians still largely approve (79%) of U.S. President Barack Obama’s handling of international affairs and believe in greater numbers than in past years that NATO [...]

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WASHINGTON—Despite economic worries and domestic political preoccupations, perceptions in the United States and Europe of each other appear to be in better shape now than they were during the presidency of George W. Bush. Americans and Europeans have generally favorable opinions of one another and majorities on both continents believe they share enough common values [...]

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WASHINGTON — America’s top military official, Admiral Mike Mullen, returns from China this week after a series of intensive talks. The visit—the first by a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in four years—ought to signify a continued warming in the on-again, off-again military relationship between the world’s sole superpower and Asia’s largest rising [...]

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ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan— For at least a handful of Chinese soldiers, the television footage of Abbottabad around the Osama bin Laden raid was familiar. In December 2006, the city was the site of an extensive set of joint Sino-Pakistani counterterrorism exercises. The “large-scale intelligence gathering,” “ambushes,” and “search and destroy missions” unfortunately failed to get anywhere [...]

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WASHINGTON — As the world’s finance and development ministers gather in Washington this weekend, one behind-the-scene issue worth watching is whether the World Bank should phase-out lending for new coal-fired power plants in middle-income countries.  The Bank’s staff has proposed this to ensure that the global poor gain access to affordable electricity and that multilateral [...]

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