Pepe Escobar is a journalist, independent geopolitical analyst and author. Born in Brazil, he started in the daily newspaper business in 1982 as a music, cinema, literature and cultural critic and became a foreign correspondent in 1985, first in London and then Milan, Los Angeles and Paris. In 1994 he decided to move from the West to Asia, first to Singapore and then Bangkok and Hong Kong. He has been living between Europe and Asia ever since-with bases alternating between London/Paris and Bangkok/Hong Kong, as well as stints in Washington and New York. He has covered virtually everything important that happened across Asia in the past 25 years, including the geopolitics and geoeconomics of Southeast Asia, China, Russia, and progressively, the arc from Afghanistan/Pakistan to Central Asia, Iran, Iraq, Turkey and the Persian Gulf. Switching from the "Asian miracle" to the "war on terror", after 9/11 he covered the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq (before, during and after), energy wars and, in the Obama years, the American "pivot" to Asia. For the past few years, his focus is the Chinese-driven New Silk Roads, all aspects of Eurasia integration, and the geopolitical clash between the US and the Russia/China strategic partnership. He has written columns and Op-Eds for dozens of online publications-including Al Jazeera, RT and Sputnik-and has been a frequent guest of TV and radio shows from North America to Asia. His articles/columns are regularly translated in several languages. He currently lives between Paris and Bangkok.