Trade disputes with the US, concerns about Chinese interference in Hong Kong, and ethnic tensions in Xinjiang all preceded Xi Jinping’s rise to power in late 2012. Their escalation in the last year is a direct result of China’s shift to authoritarianism under Xi. Read Here – Project Syndicate
Just who speaks for Iran? When engaging with the Islamic Republic, the international community has tended to treat the country as a monolith, a consolidated political and ideological entity presided over by an entrenched clerical elite. That, however, is hardly the case. In truth, Iran is a complex and cosmopolitan melting pot made up of […]
For Trump the most significant lesson may have been that Johnson was able, not to crack, but to smash the Labour Party’s so-called “Red Wall” in northern England. Just as Trump won in the Rust Belt states in 2016, so Johnson cruised to victory in working-class areas that supported Brexit and want to see a […]
On December 1, Saudi Arabia officially assumed the presidency of the G-20. The task of leading the high-profile economic forum, which rotates annually among member countries, is usually more a matter of form than of substance. But for Saudi Arabia—the group’s only Arab member—the stakes are high. Read Here – Foreign Affairs
Stalinism. The word conjures dozens of associations, and ‘funny’ isn’t usually one of them. The ‘S-word’ is now synonymous with brutal and all-encompassing state control that left no room for laughter or any form of dissent. And yet, countless diaries, memoirs and even the state’s own archives reveal that people continued to crack jokes about […]
That viral video of the leaders of Canada, France and the U.K. laughing about their U.S. counterpart at last week’s NATO summit was vivid yet anecdotal evidence of what the rest of the world thinks of President Donald Trump. Now comes some hard data showing America’s declining global reputation. Read Here – Bloomberg
Stupidity, especially in the political sphere, often comes with a side of brutality, and keeping track of it, rather than allowing it to pile on, might help us to hold fast to our higher selves. Also, there is something innately comical about stupidity; if we are forced to suffer fools, we can at least have […]
There is a specter haunting not just Europe but the whole globe, quaking the boots of established political parties, legacy media outlets, and transnational institutions of government and civil society. This creeping dread is gathered under the catch-all label of “populism.” Cosmopolitan elites are on alert for its “dangerous rise.” Unelected bureaucracies are being hollowed […]
Prime Minister Boris Johnson won a resounding election victory on Friday that will allow him to end three years of political paralysis and take Britain out of the European Union by Jan. 31. Brexit represents the country’s biggest political and economic gamble since World War Two, cutting the world’s fifth largest economy adrift from the […]
China’s diplomats are waging an increasingly assertive public relations campaign to counter growing international criticism over its handling of the unrest in Hong Kong, now in its seventh month. Diplomatic and political pundits believe the heightened activism among Chinese envoys underlines an overriding priority to prevent further internationalisation of what Beijing insists is an internal […]
