Since their inception in 2000, The Millennium Development Goals have revolutionized the global aid business, using specific targets to help mobilize and guide development efforts. They have encouraged world leaders to tackle multiple dimensions of poverty simultaneously and provided a standard for judging performance. As their 2015 expiration looms, the time has come to bank […]
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrives in Asia today for meetings seeking to reassure allies in South Korea and Japan and encourage new Chinese President Xi Jinping to increase pressure on North Korea to drop its threats and nuclear-weapons development. Kerry will ask China to abide by United Nations sanctions against North Korea and shut off the flow […]
The 193-nation U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved the first treaty on the global arms trade, which seeks to regulate the $70 billion business in conventional arms and keep weapons out of the hands of human rights abusers. The official U.N. tally showed 154 votes in favor, 3 against and 23 abstentions, though diplomats […]
The United States often uses exaggerated civilian casualty numbers to make a case for military intervention in strife-torn regions. Since the 1990s, the West has justified its military interventions on liberal grounds — to remove noxious leaders who oppress their people or who have begun to conduct policies that appear genocidal. Buoyed by the intervention […]
In its rush to fete Myanmar‘s president, Thein Sein, and capitalize on the country’s tentative opening, the international community has turned a blind eye toward the ongoing repression of minorities and the continued political dominance of the military. In doing so, it has given up much of its leverage over Sein at the very time […]
ALMOST FOUR years ago, the Sri Lankan government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa won a decisive victory in a 26-year-long civil war with rebels from the island’s minority Tamil community. The cost was horrific: A United Nations investigation subsequently found that up to 40,000 civilians may have died in the government’s final offensive. But the triumph made Mr. […]
The U.S. military was closely tracking a one-eyed bandit across the Sahara in 2003 when it confronted a hard choice that is still reverberating a decade later. Should it try to kill or capture the target, an Algerian jihadist named Mokhtar Belmokhtar, or let him go? Belmokhtar had trained at militant camps in Afghanistan in the […]
On Friday, China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced that income inequality in the country exceeds a warning level set by the United Nations. China’s publication of its Gini coefficient – a widely used measure of economic equity – drew attention for a number of reasons. For one, China has not published its Gini coefficient since 2000. More […]
The US and Russia don’t agree on much – but they are both keen to develop a good relationship with India. How do we know? Look at the arms trade. Read Here – The European
In his new book, “The Great Convergence: Asia, the West and the Logic of One World,” Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, at last rises to the challenge. In a way, it is no surprise that a former UN ambassador from one of the smallest countries in Asia has the largest vision. […]
