According to theannual Global Peace Index report, released on Wednesday, there are more than 50 million refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) around the globe right now. Put another way, that’s one in every 133 people worldwide and 0.75 percent of the world population. Put yet another way, that’s roughly the equivalent of the entire […]
When it comes to Asian companies investing abroad, Italy has traditionally been a rather neglected destination. Asian companies remained spooked by the weakness of the Italian investment climate after decades of red tape and political interference. As a result there are no large Japanese or South Korean plants in car-making and consumer electronics. These companies […]
Why is China announcing joint naval exercises with Russia in the Mediterranean, so far from home? There’s a global answer connected to the new cool war and China’s interest in responding to U.S. initiatives in the Pacific. But there’s also a more revealing local answer arriving from the nature of China’s growing involvement in the […]
Historians have long battled to get into Hitler’s mind to figure out why he did what he did, but there are no answers. Perhaps, there never will either. Read Here – Financial Times
In the 1930s travellers returned from Mussolini’s Italy, Stalin’s Russia, and Hitler’s Germany praising the hearty sense of common purpose they saw there, compared to which their own democracies seemed weak, inefficient, and pusillanimous. Democracies today are in the middle of a similar period of envy and despondency. Authoritarian competitors are aglow with arrogant confidence. […]
The European elections have shown how big a problem populism really is. But Cameron, Hollande and other leaders can keep the populists at bay if they start to look south. Read Here – The European
As realpolitik undergoes a renaissance in the English-speaking world, it is surely worth investigating what the word, coined in 1853, was originally supposed to entail. The answer to that question might surprise but will also enlighten. Read Here – The National Interest
One of Pope Benedict XVI’s big concerns as pontiff was the decline of Christianity in Europe as secularization has spread. For instance, he regretted that, despite strong Vatican pressure, the drafters of the EU Constitution had not seen fit to include anywhere a reference to Europe’s Christian roots. Read Here – WorldAffairsJournal
The good news for Americans in a new international study of adult skills is that the U.S. ranks near the top in gross domestic product per capita, behind only Norway. The bad news is that Americans are so far behind in their skills that it’s hard to see how they can stay at the top for […]
Italy is in the middle of another existential political crisis — and somehow, against all expectations, Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister, is at the center of it yet again. Read Here – Foreign Affairs
looking beyond borders 