Over the decades Turkey has dictated its Middle Eastern relations based on opportunities presented by shifts in the regional balance of power. In the early 1990s up until around 2006, Turkey was finely enmeshed in Western sentiments and policies. But beginning in 2006 it recognized a leadership vacuum in the Middle East and began attempting […]
After a hard campaign against Hillary Clinton, Bobby Jindal has emerged as America’s next president in 2016. An essay from the future. The date is November 8th, 2016. Polling stations have closed and the outcome of the US presidential election is becoming increasingly clear: the first African-American president isn’t succeeded by the first female president, […]
The first sign of officialdom you see when you drive from the Kabul airport parking lot is a government billboard looming above a traffic jam. It’s the size of a highway billboard in the United States, but closer to the ground, so that you can make out every nuance of the faces on it. Those […]
The 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China has selected the country’s next leaders. The leadership transition, however, will be formalized only with the consent of the National People’s Congress (NPC)—a puppet parliament with highly predictable voting patterns. Officially the highest state body in China, the NPC is mostly a showcase of democratic mimicry. […]
Egypt’s president decreed his decisions are above review and ordered the retrial of former regime officials ahead of a planned mass protest against the Islamist-led government today in Cairo. Mohamed Mursi’s decisions, which included firing the prosecutor-general and protecting a disputed constitutional committee from legal challenges, come after four days of violent demonstrations in the […]
India is caught in an ugly societal whodunit: Although the per capita gross domestic product for the country’s 1.2 billion people has almost doubled over the past decade, to $838, malnutrition and hunger are still rampant, especially among children. A months-long series of investigative reports by Bloomberg News highlights that India’s failure to adequately feed its […]
One might be tempted to draw comparisons, but it can also become an obsession. Still, that’s exactly what Berliners tend to do, at least when it comes to their city. Whenever it happens, Berlin suddenly isn’t good enough for them, and they constantly feel compelled to draw comparisons — not with just any old cities, […]
Mediating the Gaza truce was a bravura diplomatic performance by Egypt’s new President Mohamed Mursi, jacking up his personal stature and reassuring an anxious Washington that the architecture of Middle East peace can survive the Arab Spring. For nearly two years, Washington has fretted over what would happen in a major showdown between Israel and the Palestinians […]
One day before announcing Wednesday, Nov. 21’s cease-fire agreement, at a brief news conference prior to talks between U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, late on Tuesday night, the secretary announced that her itinerary included Ramallah and Cairo in addition to Jerusalem. The visit to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was […]
IT IS hard to feel particularly sorry at the hanging of Ajmal Kasab, in Pune, India, early on November 21st. He was the sole surviving gunman from a 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack, in which Pakistani infiltrators killed at least 166 people during a prolonged and traumatising rampage in the city. The assault on ordinary residents […]
