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Note To Our Readers: RSS Feeds | Robert Cottrell | The Browser | 28 March 2013

The Browser — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 16:06:01 +0000

As part of our move to a new platform and new hosting today, we are consolidating our RSS feeds into a one full feed, to which you can subscribe at this address (if it's not live now it will be soon): http://thebrowser.com/feed

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'Face' And Something 'Delicious' | Sergey Radchenko | Foreign Policy | 27 March 2013

The Browser — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 05:49:31 +0000

Fear of inferiority has been the thread running through Sino-Soviet relations since Mao first met Stalin. Then it was China that was the lesser partner. Now it is Russia. When Deng and Gorbachev normalised relations in 1989, Deng said the two countries had quarrelled because "the Soviet Union incorrectly perceived China's place in the world"

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Will The Chinese Be Supreme? | Ian Johnson | New York Review Of Books | 26 March 2013

The Browser — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 06:46:11 +0000

Edward Luttwak thinks not: "Only a fully democratic China could advance unimpeded to global hegemony, but then the governments of a full democratic China would undoubtedly seek to pursue quite other aims". Besides which, other countries would unite against it. Roundup of books on China's future by Luttwak, Arvind Subramanian, and Odd Arne Westad

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Boris Berezovsky, 1946-2013 | Keith Gessen | n+1 | 25 March 2013

The Browser — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 07:48:31 +0000

An appreciation — if that is the right word — of the dead Russian oligarch. Berezovsky was "a man who had been given a magnificent mind, and limitless energy, and who devoted these, primarily, to destruction, speculation, and manipulation". He was, in his way, enthralling. But he profited from, and encouraged, a lawlessness that ruined his country

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Southern Europe Lies Prostrate Before German Imperium | Charles Moore | Telegraph | 22 March 2013

The Browser — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 11:06:29 +0000

Cypriot banking crisis shows Germans as the dominant power in Europe. "As they have grown stronger, their love of rules has turned into an instrument of their power. We are good European citizens, the Germans argue, and we have done well. So the answer is for everyone in the eurozone to behave just like us and they will do well too"

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Trouble In The Eastern Mediterranean | Yuri Zhukov | Foreign Affairs | 20 March 2013

The Browser — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 07:33:21 +0000

The good news: there's huge quantities of gas under the eastern Mediterranean. The bad news: the countries with claims on it — Cyprus, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey — don't get along all that well, and the scramble for gas will only make tensions worse. By the way, if you're wondering why Russia covets Cyprus, here's part of the answer

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Walking Back From Cyprus | Mitu Gulati and Lee Buchheit | Vox | 20 March 2013

The Browser — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:10:44 +0000

How the bank bailout was botched, and how it might have been done much more elegantly—by leaving smaller deposits untouched, and converting larger deposits into five- and ten-year certificates of deposit. The banks woulds still need to be recapitalised. But, with half their funding locked in, this would be relatively cheap and easy

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Alex Tabarrok, on Australia

The Browser — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 07:55:54 +0000

Alex Tabarrok, on Australia

"Australia has great natural beauty. The British should have left the convicts behind and moved everyone else"

Monarch In The Middle | Jeffrey Goldberg | Atlantic | 18 March 2013

The Browser — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 05:04:04 +0000

Profile of, and interview with, King Abdullah of Jordan, relatively pro-American ruler, seeking to maintain power by offering modest social and political reforms. "The gulf Arabs see him as a bellwether; no monarch has yet fallen in the Arab Spring. If King Abdullah can manage a way through, there is hope for the regimes of the Persian Gulf"

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A Letter To Paul Wolfowitz | Andrew Bacevich | Harper's | 01 March 2013

The Browser — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 04:44:55 +0000

"Whatever you might choose to say, you’ll be vilified as Robert McNamara was vilified when he admitted he'd been 'wrong, terribly wrong', about Vietnam. But help us learn the lessons of Iraq so that we might extract from it something of value in return for all the sacrifices made there. Forgive me for saying so, but you owe it to your country"

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