Opinion

  Much to Islamabad’s chagrin, the message coming out from Washington is loud and clear. Pakistan is now being asked to pay for F-16 jets out of its own pocket. The message that the U.S. Congress is sending to Pakistan after it threatened to yank financing for F-16 jets ordered by the country cannot be more categorical. Pakistan can still …

  Michael Reilly On May 6, representatives of Taiwan’s Alishan Forestry Railway and Switzerland’s Matterhorn Gotthard Railway signed a “sister-railway” agreement in Taipei. Aimed at boosting technical cooperation and sharing marketing expertise between the two mountain railways, such an agreement would normally pass by unremarked outside railway circles and the local tourism industry. Indeed, the Alishan railway already has two …

It’s the bread and butter of pundits to speculate what the world might look like after a relatively improbable but potentially disruptive event, like the U.K.’s exit from the European Union or a Donald Trump victory in the U.S. presidential election. The perceived probability of these “black swan” events is pretty high, after all, and contingency plans may be in …

  American consumers aren’t what they used to be — and that helps explain the plodding economic recovery. It gets no respect despite creating 14 million jobs and lasting almost seven years. The great gripe is that economic growth has been held to about 2 percent a year, well below historical standards. This sluggishness reflects a profound psychological transformation of …

  Countdown for the historic June 23 UK vote on whether to stay or leave the EU is causing regional and international anxiety. Half of Europeans feel Brexit could spark a domino effect, as other states would follow suit. Britain first joined the then European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973, and in a referendum two years later, the public backed …

  Christopher Balding Chinese markets have rarely looked more like Vegas casinos. In recent weeks, investors have driven up trading volumes in China to astronomical levels, betting on everything from rebar to eggs. China traded enough steel in one day last month to build 178,082 Eiffel Towers and enough cotton to make at least one pair of jeans for every …

  Donald Trump became last week the presumptive Republican nominee in the U.S. presidential elections. But those condemned to agonizing suspense and anxiety until November should note that Trumpism, or the politics of hate and fear, also suffered a major defeat last week. I refer to the election of former human rights lawyer Sadiq Khan as London’s mayor. That the …

  On April 25 2016, the very day that Australia commemorated its war dead who fell in Europe a century earlier, Australia sent a private note to France, its former ally, that it had won the bidding process to be preferred designer of 12 new submarines. In announcing the decision, the Australian government made some understandable historical allusions to past …

  Marvin Ott / Mick Zloof SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS The Indonesian military (TNI) and the strategic perspectives of the Indonesian political leadership have been shaped by a tumultuous history of domestic security challenges. Indonesia is a sprawling archipelago of thousands of islands and hundreds of more or less distinct ethnic communities. That geography and ethnography virtually guarantee that national …

Donald Trump: “We’ve got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt.” Washington Post: “How long would that take?” Trump: “I would say over a period of eight years.” – March 31 Fortune: “You’ve said you plan to pay off the country’s debt in 10 years. How’s that possible?” Trump: “No, I didn’t say 10 years.” – April 19 …