International organizations have long argued that poverty and unemployment in coastal communities are underlying causes of piracy. Others are skeptical that problems facing local fisheries are connected to piracy, based on reports that many pirates are actually members of inland nomadic clans or criminal gangs.
Read Here | Brookings
The reaction to China’s growing economic power reveals many of the West’s deep insecurities. Trump’s use of the term “China virus” was not just jingoism meant to reduce his responsibility for the mounting death toll. There was also a sinister undertone laced with the accusation that perhaps China had waited before alerting the world so that it would wreak maximum damage on its competitors.
Read Here | The Nation
The sense of optimism with which the West rang in the new century 20 years ago has long since been replaced by the shock of terrorist attacks, financial crashes, pandemics, and other crises. But if we broaden our perspective, we will see that none of the challenges facing us is insurmountable.
Read Here | Project Syndicate
After four years of hiding behind Donald Trump while they dismantled their countries’ democratic institutions, populist leaders in Poland and Hungary have suddenly found themselves exposed and out in the cold. Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party, in particular, should be preparing for an overdue reckoning.
Read Here | Project Syndicate
The United Nations marked its 75th anniversary on Monday, celebrating the mantra that “multilateralism is not an option but a necessity” – even as the coronavirus pandemic underscores the fragility of international cooperation. The anniversary kicked off at the global body’s annual UN General Assembly, when normally leaders and representatives of nearly 200 countries gather en masse to sound off about the world’s problems and offer myriad solutions.
Read Here | AlJazeera
CSIS’s Risk and Foresight Group created four plausible, differentiated scenarios to explore the changing geopolitical landscape of 2025-2030, including the potential lasting first- and second-order effects of Covid-19. The scenarios center on the relative power and influence of the United States and China and the interaction between them, along with detailed consideration of other major U.S. allies and adversaries within each of four worlds.
Read Here | CSIS
Increasingly, governments that are involved in military conflicts are turning not to their own countrymen, but are instead relying on foreigners who they pay as mercenaries. Countries like Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Russia and Iran are ignoring other countries’ borders and sovereignty, sending hired guns into foreign countries because they don’t like the regime in charge, because they want access to natural resources – or because mercenaries belonging to their enemies are there.
All countries end. Every society has its own rock bottom, obscured by darkness until impact is imminent. Already in the sixth century, Amalrik wrote, goats were grazing in the Roman Forum. As a theorist of his own condition, he was in many ways a fatalist. He believed that the Soviet Union lacked the nimbleness to engage in system-shaking reform and still survive, and he was correct.
One thing the Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare is an absence of global leadership. This time the G20 has done little beyond a rhetorical pledge to “do whatever it takes” and supporting debt-repayment suspension for poor countries. America, which led global campaigns to defeat HIV/AIDS and Ebola, has been absorbed in its internal arguments. And the UN Security Council has confirmed its dysfunctionality.
Total global military expenditure rose to $1917 billion in 2019, according to new data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The total for 2019 represents an increase of 3.6 per cent from 2018 and the largest annual growth in spending since 2010. The five largest spenders in 2019, which accounted for 62 per cent of expenditure, were the United States, China, India, Russia and Saudi Arabia. This is the first time that two Asian states have featured among the top three military spenders.
