Throughout history, great powers have often competed by supporting proxy forces. The Cold War, for example, was hardly a “long peace” when one considers the numerous externally abetted, intrastate conflicts and shadow wars that took place. There is no reason to think that U.S. competition with China and Russia will be any different than earlier periods of […]
Globalization is helping to spread a new generation of mosquito-borne illnesses once confined to the tropics, such as dengue, perhaps a thousand years old, and chikungunya and Zika, both of which were first identified in humans only in 1952. Meanwhile, climate change is dramatically expanding the ranges in which mosquitoes and the diseases they carry can […]
It is not easy being the first black of anything let alone the first black president of a racially fraught country. Contending with deeply entrenched pessimistic views of black leadership – being the first black president leaves little margin for error; your success as the first black is bound up with the image of an […]
Such is the power of images that portraits of national leaders have assumed lives of their own in the present—to idealise, idolise, hammer, decapitate, replace, recolour and resurrect with changing socio-political proclivities, ideologies, and interests. Kings, emperors and pharaohs of ancient and medieval times have been replaced by modern-day political leaders, freedom fighters and nationalists […]
And the way Forsyth tells it, drink has caused us to say yes to an awful lot. The desire for booze, he suggests, led to — among other things — fixed agriculture, civilisation, cities, Anglo-Saxon England, America and the Russian Revolution. (In 1914, the Tsar unwisely banned vodka.) It may even be the reason that […]
On July 4 Khrushchev arrived at Spasso House, the Moscow home of the American ambassador, as if he did not have a care in the world. He had begun to make a habit of dropping in on national-day receptions, his way of telling the world that a new day was dawning in the Soviet Union. […]
An old field telephone from the 1940s, a Nazi flag and a map of Tobruk greet visitors to the newly reopened Rommel Cave Museum in Marsa Matrouh, one of Egypt’s lesser known tourist destinations. The items belonged to Erwin Rommel, one of the most celebrated generals of Nazi Germany until he was implicated in a plot […]
During key events in history, maps created by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have helped US presidents and their advisors make critical decisions. These maps, usually top secret, were produced by the CIA’s own Cartography Center, which was set up in 1941 to provide maps, geographic analysis and research to support the work of the […]
An Islamic philosopher in Karachi, an ideologue who provides violent ideas to some of Pakistan’s fiercest extremist groups, once told me that there are two kinds of history: dead and living. “Dead history is something on a shelf or in a museum,” he said. “Living history is part of your consciousness, something in your blood […]
A Dutch detective and Berlin police spent months searching for art commissioned by Hitler that went missing after German reunification. Officials finally recovered the dubious works in raids last week — here’s how they did it. Read Here – Der Spiegel
looking beyond borders 