"The pen is mightier than the sword." For nearly a decade, Brahm has used newspaper articles, magazines and authored over 20 books to explain current affairs, reshape stalled negotiations, and provide a communication platform to Asian leaders and policymakers. His writings reveal underlying central challenges facing Asia over the past decades.

PacNet

  • Finding Commonality

    Apr 26, 2009

    On April 1, Chinese President Hu Jintao invited President Barack Obama to visit China later this year.  It is unprecedented for a U.S. president to visit China so early in a new term; the trip symbolizes the beginning of a new epoch in U.S.-China relations. To ensure this new beginning does not fail, U.S.-China dialogue should be constructed around three principle issues: the financial crisis, security, and climate change. Cooperation on these three principle points appears imperative, obvious, and to be in the two countries’ mutual interest. The dialogue should be set along a Chinese psychological framework that seeks guiding principles rather than tailored to the Beltway paradigm. In short, in a Chinese political context, form is more important that substance.

  • Red Guards Carrying Credit Cards: U.S.-China Relations and The Future

    Oct 7, 2009

    Against the backdrop of increased foreign investment, globalization of management and education, the 2001 entry into the WTO, and hosting of the 2008 Olympics, many speculate that China would rise peacefully as a global power and share with its weight equal responsibility. However, in the context of China’s sustained hyper-economic growth model, Beijing feels certain of its economic assumptions that people care only about getting rich. Contaminated environment and lost ethnic identity are dismissed as selfish concerns abandoned for the greater benefit of everyone getting rich. As the goose-stepping parade saunters by Tiananmen, the message ten years on will be clearer than it was a decade ago. China is ready to take on the world, but is the world ready to take on China?

  • Enter Himalayan Consensus

    Mar 22, 2009

    Since the global financial crisis began, “Washington Consensus” models of development have been discredited. Developing nations seek alternatives to the Washington Consensus. Nowhere is this feeling stronger than Asia. Enter the Himalayan Consensus. Finding acceptance from Dhaka to Islamabad, from Kathmandu to Lhasa, it is now being discussed in Beijing.  Nepal’s Prime Minister Prachanda says, “This Himalayan Consensus is special given the unique physical and spiritual dimension of this region, and the political and economic institutions developing here should encompass these ideas.”

  • Himalayan Joint Security Concerns

    Mar 19, 2009

    The Himalayan region is a tinderbox. The Obama administration will increase the U.S. presence in Afghanistan by committing an additional 17,000 troops which will escalate the conflict there. China’s police-military lockdown on Tibet and Xinjiang continues into a second year. Kashmir lacks a mutually acceptable solution between India and Pakistan. The Maoist government recently elected to power in Nepal after a decade of civil war offers hopes for stability. Both sides of the Himalayan range should be viewed as a string of interconnected political electrons that could be sparked at any time. Regions of Tibet and Xinjiang are ethnically, culturally, and spiritually connected with the other side of the mountains. The Himalayas traditionally served more as bridge than a barrier. We should try to think this way in our own policy, particularly as we learn that terrorism needs to be addressed at its root cause, rather than end effect.