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 […]
As the football commentators might put it, it was a week of two speeches. I’m not generally one of those people who believe that a political speech is an actual event in the world: it’s only somebody talking, after all. A political leader can say pretty much anything, and however moving or courageous it sounds, […]
After four years of international tumult, Hillary Clinton is preparing to step down as secretary of state. In addition to carrying out her traditional role as the nation’s top diplomat, Clinton has quietly used the office to help U.S. companies close deals with foreign governments—arguing that business and trade promotion are central to American strategic interests. Bloomberg Businessweek sat […]
This week the world’s wealthiest and the best-connected have gathered in Switzerland for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting. An exceedingly diverse group of business and policy titans are schmoozing, paneling, and work-shopping their way through the world’s top intractables: climate change; a tattered euro zone; and who could forget the eternally vexing problem of “Catalysing Multistakeholder Value”? […]
Sen. John Kerry used his confirmation hearing Thursday to paint an expansive picture of the foreign policy he would promote as the next secretary of State – saying economic development, climate change, and human rights must be as much a part of America’s role in the world as “drones and deployment.” Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations […]
With the full support of a feckless policy elite and an uncritical media establishment, Washington is slipping, if not plunging, into a new cold war with Moscow. Relations, already deeply chilled by fundamental disputes over missile defense, the Middle East and Russia’s internal politics, have now been further poisoned by two conflicts reminiscent of tit-for-tat policy-making during the previous Cold War. Read Here – Moscow […]
All Conservative leaders since Margaret Thatcher have faced one central problem: how to prevent the party splitting wide apart over Europe. This was the difficulty that pulverised John Major, caused William Hague to go bald, propelled Iain Duncan Smith to the party leadership, and then got him sacked a short time later. Until yesterday, David […]
From previously challenging the “tyranny of oil,” newly inaugurated U.S. President Barack Obama enters his second term in office as leader of a potential oil and gas superpower. According to BP’s Energy Outlook 2030, unconventional sources will make the United States virtually energy self-sufficient by 2030, largely thanks to the shale gas revolution. “The U.S. will likely surpass Russia […]
DIPLOMACY is dead. Effective diplomacy — the kind that produced Nixon’s breakthrough with China, an end to the Cold War on American terms, or the Dayton peace accord in Bosnia — requires patience, persistence, empathy, discretion, boldness and a willingness to talk to the enemy. This is an age of impatience, changeableness, palaver, small-mindedness and an unwillingness […]
Killing Osama bin Laden (or rather, signing off on the ongoing military operation that killed him) might have given Barack Obama a great electoral pitch, but what exactly did it accomplish for the security of the United States and its interests? Al-Qaeda is back – big time. As a man who knew something about indefatigable […]
looking beyond borders 