One topic that greatly interests Nye is the rise of China. With a fundamental reassessment of American foreign policy and military spending as it moves out of a period of intense engagement in the Middle East, the threat of China as a peer competitor has loomed large in the thoughts of American policymakers. John Mearshimer, Nye’s intellectual sparring partner, claims that this geopolitical shift eastward, and an increasingly assertive China, is bound to lead to greater tension, and an “inevitable US-Chinese conflict”.

In a "symbolic blow to U.S. global financial hegemony," China and Russia have agreed to a 30-year, $400 billion gas deal that will provide China with the energy it needs to keep its economy growing and Russia with much-needed capital. And it's all in domestic currencies, bypassing the dollar entirely. Ten years in the making, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the deal an "epochal event" and proclaimed that both countries were very satisfied with the terms.Thirty-eight billion cubic meters of gas will flow from Russia to China.

Other countries are distorted by their failure to come to terms with brutal realities of their history. So are we.Listen to the next discussion you hear of tensions between Japan and two of its neighbors, South Korea and China. You'll hear again and again that an important root problem is Japan's difficulty in coming to terms with its history of wartime aggression in China and use of Korean "comfort women" as sex slaves for its troops.

According to The Japan Times, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters on Monday that Japanese and North Korean diplomats will meet in Stockholm on May 26-28 to discuss a wide range of issues, including North Korea’s past abductions of Japanese citizens and its nuclear and ballistic missile program.The meeting is noteworthy, Clint rightly noted, mainly in that it is being held in Europe instead of Asia. The two sides usually hold their bilateral meetings in Asia, particularly China.

Early on Wednesday morning, Malaysian officials were on hand to welcome two important new arrivals to Kuala Lumpur International Airport. The pair, Ms. Feng Yi and Mr. Fu Wa, are on a diplomatic mission from China, hoping to cement the relationship between the two states and help them get past the considerable trauma caused to that relationship by the missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370.

The upcoming summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia ( CICA ) will promote preventive action , UN Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday .As far as CICA is concerned , UN is an observer , Ban said , stressing the principles enshrined in the UN charter , such as peaceful resolution of crisis , promoting dialogue and trust , promoting development and upholding human rights , which are fully respected by CICA .

Chinese web users scoffed and Beijing expressed outrage at the May 19 announcement of a U.S. indictment of five Shanghai-based army officers on charges of hacking and economic espionage. In an uncharacteristically speedy response posted to the Foreign Ministry website within 90 minutes of the US announcement, spokesman Qin Gang called the accusations "absurd" and "purely ungrounded." Qin demanded that U.S. authorities drop the case immediately and added that Beijing would be suspending its participation in Sino-U.S.

A specter is haunting Washington, an unnerving vision of a Sino-Russian alliance wedded to an expansive symbiosis of trade and commerce across much of the Eurasian land mass — at the expense of the United States. And no wonder Washington is anxious. That alliance is already a done deal in a variety of ways: through the BRICS group of emerging powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa); at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Asian counterweight to NATO; inside the G20; and via the 120-member-nationNon-Aligned Movement (NAM).