In an interview Tuesday with CNN, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton applauded India's efforts to reduce its imports of Iranian oil but urged it to cut them further to keep pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program.

"India has reduced its dependence on Iranian oil. I know their refineries have stopped asking for orders to purchase Iranian oil. So they certainly have taken steps," Clinton said. "India shares exactly our goal; their goal is our goal, and that is to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons nation."

What role does India play in global diplomacy, specifically with Iran? Here's a re-post from a March look at India's "friendly diplomacy" to offer some perspective:

India is America's friend, Israel's friend and Iran's friend. FULL POST

When U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decided to make Kolkata her first port of call on her visit to India this week, it took more than few people by surprise. Even in India, it wasn’t the most obvious choice for the in-demand diplomat to spend a day of her tight schedule in country’s eastern metropolis.

But in recent months, Kolkata, the capital of the state of West Bengal, led by its mercurial chief minister, has become a key battlefield on which the fight over foreign investment in India is playing out, and a high-profile visit may go a long way in advancing the U.S. position.

Read more at TIME

Editor's Note: Michael Spence, a Nobel laureate in economics, is the author of The Next Convergence. For more, visit Project Syndicate's excellent new website or follow it on Facebook and Twitter.

By Michael Spence, Project Syndicate

China and the United States are in the grip of major structural changes that both dread will end the Halcyon era when China produced low-cost goods and the US bought them. In particular, many fear that if these changes lead to direct competition between the two countries, only one side can win.

That fear is understandable, but the premise is mistaken. Both sides can and should gain from forging a new relationship that reflects evolving structural realities: China’s growth and size relative to the US; rapid technological change, which automates processes and displaces jobs; and the evolution of global supply chains, driven by developing countries’ rising incomes. But first they must acknowledge that the old pattern of mutually beneficial interdependence really has run its course, and that a new model is needed. FULL POST

Editor's Note: Neil K. Shenai is a Ph.D. Candidate at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Bernard Geoxavier is a M.A. Candidate in International Studies researching the domestic political determinants of Chinese foreign policy. He also runs the China Leadership Watch, a blog about Chinese domestic politics. This is the third installment of a three-part series on Chinese succession. The first article is available here and the second article is available here. 

Two weeks ago, Chinese President Hu Jintao published an editorial in The People's Liberation Army Daily reaffirming the PLA’s loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. His article pressed the PLA to “resolutely resist the incursion of all kinds of erroneous ideas,” and to “not be disturbed by noise or be affected by rumors.” Another PLA Daily article told the PLA to “strictly observe and maintain the Party discipline” and that the PLA must “stay resolute in resisting non-Party erroneous political perspectives.”

By making public pronouncements about the Army’s subjugate relationship to the Communist Party, Party officials have drawn a line in the sand, renouncing PLA members who are pushing for greater independence from the Party. These statements come on the heels of upheaval within the upper ranks of the Communist Party last month: the ouster of Bo Xilai and arrest of his wife, Gu Kailai, for the murder of Neil Heywood, a British businessman, led many to conclude that the Party is showing major signs of internal strife and dissension leading up to November’s much-anticipated first meeting of the Eighteenth Communist Party of China National Congress in Beijing.

Recent pronouncements by numerous PLA Political Commissars reflect the Party’s desire to shore up support for itself among the armed forces as the unquestioned leader of the Chinese state. Despite the asymmetry of power between Party and Army, China’s military is a key instrument of the Party’s hold on power. Without support of the military, the Party could not survive.    FULL POST

Editor's Note: Antonia Hernández, Chief Executive Officer of the California Community Fund (CCF) and Solomon Trujillo, Chief Executive Officer of Trujillo Group Investments, are co-chairs of the Pacific Council on International Policy’s Latino Taskforce, the first group to look at foreign relations issues through the lens of Latinos.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s visit to the U.S. this week had the potential to repair the bilateral relationship between the hemisphere’s two largest economies and refocus U.S. foreign policy in its own neighborhood. Instead, Americans and Brazilians will bemoan another missed opportunity. Contrasted against the red carpet rolled out for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh - state dinner, honor guard, Jennifer Hudson - the lack of pomp and circumstance surrounding President Rousseff’s Washington debut is downright dispiriting.

President Obama’s announcement of a U.S. “pivot” toward Asia late last year left many Latinos scratching their heads. It is hard to understand why the Obama administration - and others before it - would hesitate to give a higher priority to our own hemisphere when redeploying the nation's economic, diplomatic, and military assets. A pivot toward markets much closer to home would better serve the national interest.  Such a “Latino foreign policy” would reflects our country’s changing demographics and allow our leaders to pay closer attention to the political, economic and social development of their own hemisphere. FULL POST

Editor's Note: Robert E. Kelly is a Senior Analyst at Wikistrat and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Diplomacy at Pusan National University, South Korea. A longer version of this essay may be found at his website, Asian Security Blog.

By Robert E. Kelly - Special to CNN

For all the talk about how the US might ‘pivot’ to Asia, there is little Western discussion of how China might respond to its semi-encirclement. Here are five possibilities:

1. China might pull South Korea into its orbit

China’s regional problem is that no one really trusts it. Its allies are weak – North Korea and Myanmar. The best way to head-off encirclement is to break the ring with some decent allies. Nasty, dependent dictatorships are not enough. South Korea is a central link in any semi-containment ring around China, but one where China has a lot of leverage. FULL POST

As Star Trek reminds us, space is the final frontier.  But is it the "final frontier"' of earthbound conflict - perhaps a power struggle between the United States and China?

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson spends a lot of time looking and thinking about space. He is the author of Space Chronicles and director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York. Neil and I spoke about geopolitics and space.

Here's the transcript:

FULL POST

Editor's Note: Tune in this Sunday at 10am or 1pm EST for Fareed Zakaria GPS. There'll be more discussion of China's role in the world.

By Fareed Zakaria, CNN

In the playground of foreign affairs, you would think that size matters. The biggest bully always wins. This is often true, but I found it interesting to track the story of one relationship where size and clout simply didn't matter.

The big country in question is China. But I'm going to keep the little country a secret for now. Because first, look at how China typically dominates smaller countries. Take the example of tiny Nepal. It lies sandwiched between two bigger powers - India and China. While China is the world's second  largest economy and India ranks 10th, Nepal is not even in the top 100. So it often has to bow to the demands of its bigger, more powerful friends. While India has traditionally had more influence, that power is now switching to China. Beijing has doubled aid to Nepal. It's building roads there and a railway linking the two countries. FULL POST

Editor’s Note: Robert E. Kelly, Senior Analyst at Wikistrat, is a professor of political science at Pusan National University, South Korea. A longer version of this essay may be found at his website, Asian Security Blog.

By Robert E. Kelly – Special to CNN

A U.S. ‘pivot’ to Asia is the foreign policy talk of the moment, but I think Americans are unlikely to embrace it.

True, Asia outweighs other global regions as a U.S. interest. Europe and Latin America are mostly democratic, fairly prosperous and at peace. Africa, sadly, remains a U.S. backwater. The Middle East is overrated. Israel and oil are important but hardly justify the vast U.S. presence. The terrorist threat is ‘overblown.’

By contrast, Asia’s economies are growing fast. Asian savers and banks fund the U.S. deficit. Asia’s addition of two billion people to the global labor pool kept world inflation down for a generation. Asian markets are now major export destinations for American industries. Five hundred million people live in the Middle East but three times that just in India. Half the world’s population lives in South, Southeast, and Northeast Asia. FULL POST

Editor's Note: Richard Fontaine is a senior advisor at the Center for a New American Security and teaches the politics of national security in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.

By Richard Fontaine - Special to CNN

It's that time of the election again. As the primaries wind down and the general election looms, foreign policy becomes ever more politicized, and particular events - such as President Obama speaking to Russia's Dmitry Medvedev over an open microphone - generate debate and partisan tussles.

Is that bad?

After all, the only thing more predictable than partisan sniping over foreign policy in the midst of an election year is the weary reaction of foreign policy leaders and experts that we should somehow be above all this. In an interview with Fareed Zakaria earlier this year, President Obama himself remarked that, "In foreign policy, the traditional saying is, 'partisan differences end at the water's edge.'"

The problem is that partisan differences in the United States do not end at the water's edge, and never have. As the 2012 election sharpens the political contest over American foreign policy, we might do well not only to lament the paralysis and bitterness our politics engenders, but also reflect for a moment on the advantages it conveys. FULL POST