I am sharing with you my article on Chinese engagement with Chile, recently published by the e-journal "China Brief."  The article, based on research and interactions during my November 2017 engagement in Santiago is also available at the website of the Jamestown Foundation.

I am passing along the English-language version of the article on Trinidad and Tobago, just published by the Center for Doctrine of the Colombian National Army (CEDOE) in its official professional journal "Military Expertise." Click here to read the full text of the report.

The global economy ends 2017 and enters 2018 in apparent good health.  The odds are that world GDP growth, measured at market exchange rates, will continue at a year-over-year rate of nearly 3%.  The main economic risks to this scenario—primarily the deflation of asset bubbles in the US or a debt crisis in China’s corporate sector—seem unlikely.  More worrisome are geopolitical trends.  

I am sharing my article on Brazil’s security challenges, and the case for strengthened U.S.-Brazil cooperation, based on my recent trip to the Brazilian Army's Strategic Studies Center (CEEEx) in Brasilia.  The article is originally published at the Global Americans.

Note: The title was inspired by the PhD thesis of LTC Oscar Medeiros Filho of the Brazilian Army Strategic Studies Center, and used with his permission.

We conclude 2017, clinging tightly to a still uncertain confidence that job expansion and strong consumer spending can somehow continue, that advancing gains in the capital markets will persist and the promise of global growth engines in China and India, the world’s two most populous countries, is realistic. Growth projections are now pushing north of three percent – and yet there is an uneasy undertow to such an outlook for investors. 

Last week, Venezuela’s government threatened that if the U.S. did not withdraw its economic sanctions, it might call off the 2018 presidential election. Although such a grossly unconstitutional act would prolong the suffering of the Venezuelan people, it could ironically help limit a turn to the left in Latin America as the region faces one the largest and most significant series of electoral events in recent years.

This article was originally appeared in the Hindu Business Line and co-authored with Faisal Ahmed, a geopolitical expert and associate professor of international business at FORE School of Management, New Delhi.

As President Xi Jinping emerges stronger, his foreign policy pursuits are now likely to be assertive, not merely persuasive. He joins the league of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping with the inclusion of his thoughts on socialism in the party constitution.