Almost all ethnic armed groups have successfully signed ceasefire agreements with the Burmese government. The Kachin Independence Organization, with its armed wing, the Kachin Independence Army (KIO/KIA), is the only major armed group still battling the Burmese army. Along with the Chins, the Shans and the Burmans, the Kachins signed the historic Panglong agreement to […]
We are now set for a third term for Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu. And, although Netanyahu’s Likud–Yisrael Beiteinu coalition seems to have underperformed expectations, a plurality of the vote will allow him to once again lead Israel’s government. But even a somewhat moderated Netanyahu government will continue to advance radical positions that put regional and […]
In the spring of 1945, Harald Quandt, a 23-year-old officer in the German Luftwaffe, was being held as a prisoner of war by Allied forces in the Libyan port city of Benghazi when he received a farewell letter from his mother, Magda Goebbels — the wife of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. The hand-written note […]
A recent research report on the growing economic integration between China and North Korea by the minority staff on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has attracted a bit of media attention. Like most other government documents,this report—titled, “China’s Impact on Korean Peninsula Unification and Questions for the Senate”— languished in obscurity until The Washington Post wrote a […]
Imagine a future meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, where the agenda is set not by Iran or Saudi Arabia, but by the United States. Oh, and the meeting takes place in Tel Aviv — because the other big power in OPEC is Israel. That’s where the world is headed, thanks to the […]
Millions of people in Arab Spring nations are painfully realising that the fruits of revolution are not all they were cracked up to be. January 25 was meant to be a joyous occasion in Egypt, but instead of fireworks, there were Molotov cocktails and smoke from burning tyres and torched buildings. No major Egyptian city […]
Last week campaign disclosure reports revealed that Hillary Clinton had finally retired the debt from her 2008 presidential campaign—with a little help from the guy who beat her, Barack Obama. Clinton’s debt once totaled more than $20 million, although it had dwindled to about $250,000 by last year. That’s when a team of top Obama donors decided […]
Britain’s economy is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, but this much is clear: it’s a disaster. After its Olympics-fueled growth, such as it was, lifted it out of recession in the third quarter of 2012, Britain might be headed back after its economy fell 0.3 percent at the end of the year — the […]
Two fundamental beliefs have driven economic policy around the world in recent years. The first is that the world suffers from a shortage of aggregate demand relative to supply; the second is that monetary and fiscal stimulus will close the gap. Is it possible that the diagnosis is right, but that the remedy is wrong? […]
Since World War II’s end, the dollar has been used to invoice most global trade, serving as the intermediary currency for clearing international payments among banks and dominating official foreign-exchange reserves. This arrangement has often been criticized, but is there any viable alternative? The problem for postwar Europe, mired in depression and inflation, was that […]
