Book Review: Daniel W. Drezner The Ideas Industry: How Pessimists, Partisans and Plutocrats are Transforming the Marketplace of Ideas. Oxford University Press, 2017.

This past month, Nepal marked two important occasions – one a tragedy, the other a growing friendship with China that may well bring new challenges of its own as this poor, land-locked nation finds its way forward amidst the geopolitics of the region.

The Philippine’s theme of this year's APEC Summit is “Building Inclusive Economies, Building A Better World.” Like the case for China's 2014 hosting, this 2015 agenda reflects clear Philippine domestic imperatives. As a major labor exporter, the Philippines will work well with the topic of investments in human capital development.

The SCO emerged as a convenient platform for the Central Asian leadership to preserve domestic status quo by accommodating the ambitions of both Moscow and Beijing within one framework. However, the SCO fails to project itself as an effective regional organization, and is perceived more so as a discussion forum.

Increasingly harsh rhetoric and combative trade actions between China and the US have given rise to the belief both countries are inevitably headed toward a new Cold-War style confrontation. However this outdated Cold-War framework does not take into account the full extent of China-US ties and the shared incentives both countries have in seeing the other succeed.