Asia & the Pacific

"...[T]he region offers Iran great potential to enhance rail and land transport for the exchange of local goods to form new markets. The region can also serve as a major energy hub, specifically with natural gas for Iran, China and Russia. By developing an integrative transportation system inclusive of land, air and sea, Iran could help the region connect with the Indian Ocean, the Sea of Oman and the Caspian Sea. Iran already possesses a large road and rail system that connects Khorasan with its ports in the Persian Gulf, including in Chabahar and Bandar Abbas, which it can lease to its neighbors and derive transit and customs revenues."

"...[W]hile the BRICS may be helpful in coordinating certain diplomatic tactics, the term lumps together highly disparate countries. Not only is South Africa miniscule compared with the others, but China's economy is larger than those of all of the other members combined. Likewise, India, Brazil and South Africa are democracies, and occasionally meet in an alternative forum that they call IBSA (the India, Brazil, South Africa Dialogue Forum)."

"Blocking a company owned by foreign nationals from working on a domestic construction project is a striking move. It's been 22 years since any president has required a foreign company to divest all interests in an American project. These cases involve neither war nor diplomacy, but rather the other tools available to a president to protect American interests. We don't hear much about the lawyers these days, but legal and regulatory decisions are an essential aspect of national security strategy."

The following report presents a consensus view of the members of a bipartisan study group on the U.S.-Japan alliance. The report specifically addresses energy, economics and global trade, relations with neighbors, and security-related issues. Within these areas, the study group offers policy recommendations for Japan and the United States, which span near- and long-term time frames. These recommendations are intended to bolster the alliance as a force for peace, stability, and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.

"...[T]he biggest challenge the United States faces today is not a looming great-power rival; it is the triple whammy of accumulated debt, eroding infrastructure and a sluggish economy. The only way to have the world's most capable military forces both now and into the future is to have the world's most advanced economy, and that means having better schools, the best universities, a scientific establishment that is second to none, and a national infrastructure that enhances productivity and dazzles those who visit from abroad. These things all cost money, of course, but they would do far more to safeguard our long-term security than spending a lot of blood and treasure determining who should run Afghanistan, Kosovo, South Sudan, Libya, Yemen or any number of other strategic backwaters."

"At the height of the cold war, President Dwight D. Eisenhower decided against direct military intervention on the side of the French in Vietnam in 1954 because he was convinced that it was more important to preserve the strength of the American economy. Today, such a strategy would avoid involvement of ground forces in major wars in Asia or in other poor countries."

"In political terms, China, India and Russia are competitors for power in Asia. Russia worries about China's proximity and influence in Siberia, and India is worried about Chinese encroachment into the Indian Ocean as well as their Himalayan border disputes. As a challenge to the United States, BRICS is unlikely to become a serious alliance or even a political organization of like-minded states."

"...[I]t is hard not to see echoes of Nixon's decision to invade Cambodia in 1970, in a failed attempt to eradicate Viet Cong bases there. The two situations are hardly identical, but both illustrate the tendency for wars to expand in both the scope and extent of violence, especially when they aren't going well. You send more troops, but that doesn't turn things around. So you send a few more, and you widen the war to new areas. But that doesn't work either, so you decide you have to alter the rules of engagement, use more missiles, bombs, or drones, or whatever."