Quotes from Gordon Chang

Commercial and infrastructure investment by Chinese firms, meanwhile, has increased the visibility of the People's Republic throughout the Levant and North Africa.

We have to remember that Xi, head of a divided Communist Party, has no faction he can call his own. People often say he heads the "Princelings," but that term merely describes the "second Red generation" or "Red Nobility": the sons and daughters of either former leaders or current serving high officials.

there needs to be greater economic and social development in the north. Without positive change and growth, it is likely that another Tuareg rebellion will occur. And next time, the Islamists will likely be more prepared.

Tunisia's Educational Reform Law, passed in 1991, decreed education to be compulsory for both sexes up until the age of 16.5 Mohamed Charfi, who served as Minister of Education from 1989 to 1994, sought to establish a clear distinction between the study of religion on the one hand and the study of the rights and duties of citizenship—civics—on the other.

tribal leaders were crucial in destroying a significant proportion of the human trafficking networks operating in the North Sinai, the profits of which help to fund terrorist activity in the region.

Cyberwarfare is a strategic issue that the U.S. and Chinese defense establishment must address in some form of confidence-building and threat-reduction measures, along with nuclear doctrine and space warfare doctrine.

If Xi personally accepts Maoism, we should not be surprised he believes his Maoist campaign is popular across Chinese society. "Today's Chinese leadership—under pressure from rising expectations, social dislocation, and popular discontent—again finds itself trying to bridge a credibility gap with the Chinese public," write Evan Feigenbaum and Damien Ma in Foreign Affairs.

Two departments of the PLA—the General Staff Department's Third and Fourth Departments, respectively—are organized to systematically penetrate communications and computer systems, extract information, and exploit that information.15 It is far faster, cheaper, and more efficient for the PLA to steal new technology than to devote vast amounts of time and money to develop it.

Some believe his political vulnerabilities have not only driven him into the arms of Mao but also the clutches of the country's generals and admirals, who run what may effectively be the Party's largest and most powerful faction, the People's Liberation Army. Indeed, some, like veteran China watcher Willy Lam, believe the military is now Xi Jinping's faction.

battle-hardened jihadists from Syria and Afghanistan, have crossed the border into the North Sinai looking for a safe haven to consolidate their forces. Their sights are set on the lawless Sinai and potentially beyond, to Sub-Saharan Africa.

It is beyond doubt that Xi and Li understand, and even acknowledge, that reform is no longer a choice but a necessity,

As Maynard Keynes famously observed: "If I owe you a pound, I have a problem, but if I owe you a million, the problem is yours.

But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

In a relatively short time, perhaps a decade, the PLA Navy has made a transition from operating only around China's coast to a force that can conduct blue-water operations. China's navy is still no peer of the U.S. Navy, and it is probably inferior to Japan's. However, no other nation in Southeast Asia is able to challenge the PLA Navy currently.

Morocco looks not to its immediate neighbors but just across the Mediterranean, to Europe, as its major foreign economic lifeline. In part because of Europe's own economic stagnation over the past several years, Morocco's economy has grown only slowly—and there are few signs of any immediate improvement on the horizon.

From a financial security perspective, the danger is that China might disrupt U.S. financial markets by engaging in strategic selling of its holdings, which in turn could injure the U.S. economy. This renders the U.S. economy potentially hostage to Chinese policymakers and for that reason constitutes a national security risk.

Unlike the traditional paradigm of warfare, in which the military object is the destruction of enemy battalions, divisions, and corps, in the paradigm of irregular warfare the security objective is the population itself.

In 1956 the Eisenhower administration used its creditor powers to pressure Britain to withdraw from the Suez Canal and hand it over to Egypt. The U.S. is in danger of giving similar power to China.8

China-centric globalization is characterized by three features: (1) The emergence of China as the global center of manufacturing—the so-called "factory for the world"; (2) The creation of a new dollar zone shared by the U.S. and China, and supported by China's adoption of a pegged dollar exchange rate; and (3) The emergence of a massive U.S. trade deficit with China, combined with the transfer of a significant chunk of U.S. manufacturing capacity there.

In essence, America's land forces should look to develop a "global landpower network." This network consists of allies, expeditionary global and regional partners, and host nation forces.

if there is one lesson the Army has learned (or re-learned) in the past twelve years of war, it is this: the application of military force in its current form has limited utility when fighting modern wars among the people. "Combat power" in the form of superior weapons systems, cutting-edge technology, and disproportionate force ratios may enable tactical success on the ground, but does not guarantee strategic victory.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union never could accomplish that because it was a resource exporter and was in competition with these countries. Consequently, it had little to offer economically and, instead, offered guns and ideology. The U.S. used to be the supplier of goods and buyer of resources but, as its manufacturing base has shrunk, it has been increasingly displaced by China. That places the U.S. in a weaker position versus China than it was versus the Soviet Union.