soft power

On his China Beat blog this week, Chinese culture scholar and my friend Jeffrey Wasserstrom strongly condemns California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's plans to host a World Expo in San Francisco's Bay Area in 2020. I agree with Jeff's particular gripes about Schwarzenegger's motives and his (lack of) experience necessary for hosting the 2020 World Expo.

Before the 2008 election, two former national security advisers recommended that the next president should craft a foreign-policy strategy to align the United States with a "global political awakening" that was transforming the world.

Joy erupted within the establishment in New Delhi late on Tuesday evening as news arrived from New York regarding India's election to a non-permanent two-year Asian seat in the United Nations Security Council. A dutiful media ecstatically tagged along. The infectious excitement was not without good reason.

Days after big names launched the Tijuana Innovadora, grisly slayings provided a reminder of Mexico's drug war. Still, the city is determined to shrug off the violence and enjoy its moment in the sun.

To discuss the development of financial derivative products and structured products in China, over 300 regulators and market players from Hong Kong and mainland gathered in Beijing for the Treasury Markets Summit 2010 on Friday.

Some Baku residents probably did a double-take when the news broke recently: two members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaktsutiun, a nationalist Armenian party fervently opposed to Azerbaijan’s claims to Nagorno-Karabakh, had arrived in the Azerbaijani capital on a surprise visit.

October 15, 2010

PDiN Monitor Editorial Staff
Sherine B. Walton, Editor-in-Chief
Naomi Leight, Managing Editor
Marissa Cruz-Enriquez, Associate Editor

U.S. military bases continue to be a point of contact between American culture and that of the host country. That's not necessarily an argument for maintaining a global basing structure, but it is an underappreciated side-effect of having one.

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