Outside the Beltway

Examining the impact of current events requires stepping back from them just a little bit.

What you think you know about the U.S.-China trade relationship may not be entirely true.

Some thoughts on the riots (especially some US partisan responses to it).

Honoring the fallen by ensuring that the didn’t die in vain is a recipe for getting more good men killed.

Joseph Nye explains why China’s “demand the United States address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China’s dollar assets” is really just talk.

Michele Bachmann’s view of history is based in a world view that would be foreign to most Americans.

Lost in the hubbub of S&P downgrading the US bond rating is news that the Italian government has the ratings agencies under criminal investigation.

International options with respect to Syria are limited and likely to have little impact on the governments treatment of civilians.

Will the trial of Hosni Mubarak actually change anything?

The world is starting to denounce the crackdown in Syria, but the reaction seems unlikely to go much beyond strongly worded statements.

A take on the conflict that’s probably different from the one you’ve been reading.

It is always useful to go inside the numbers.

The Supreme Court is being asked to decided if Congress can overrule a foreign policy position the U.S. has held since 1948.

Contrary to myth, China holds only 8 percent of US federal debt.

News that Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik was a fan of anti-Islamist sites, including Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch and Pamela Geller’s Atlas Shrugs has opened a big can of schadenfreude.

A bomb blast in Oslo’s government center has killed at least two people and a presumably related shooting spree at a nearby children’s camp are being investigated as terrorist related.

Is NATO prepared for what happens when they win?

I must confess to having only paid peripheral attention at first, but it is clear that there is a major story here that requires attention.

So the CIA organized a fake vaccination drive in Pakistan in an attempt to get bin Laden family DNA. What could possibly go wrong?

Yes, China’s GDP growth has been impressive for some time now, but it is not the sole way to understand development.

Institutions, or the lack thereof, matter.

I’m continually shocked when demonstrably bright and accomplished people fall in love with authoritarian states.

The US Supreme Court declined to stay the execution of a child raping murderer over a technical violation of a treaty.