The Coming African Oil Spill

Over the next decade, a massive wave of new oil and gas discoveries will transform Africa. If the resource curse plays out as it usually does, this oil boom will only serve to entrench authoritarian rule and inhibit democracy. Unless, that is, African governments embrace a radical approach: handing a large share of the new […]

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See How U.S. Diplomacy Changed…

Globalization has been changing U.S. foreign policy since the beginning of the American Republic. From our first diplomatic post in Tangier, Morocco founded in 1777, to the more than 285 diplomatic facilities around the world today operated by the U.S. Department of State, the business of diplomacy has evolved over time. The Diplomat  

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Th Elephant Needs To Dance Bold Steps

Not so long ago India was celebrated as an economic miracle. In 2008 Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, said growth of 8-9% was India’s new cruising speed. He even predicted the end of the “chronic poverty, ignorance and disease, which has been the fate of millions of our countrymen for centuries”. Today he admits the […]

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The Supreme Leader Is Indeed Supreme

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is not a crazy, irrational, or reckless zealot searching for opportunities for aggression, as this sweeping intellectual profile shows. That means there’s room for the United States and Iran to improve ties — if Washington can convince Khamenei it’s not determined to overthrow the Islamic Republic. Read Here – Foreign Affairs  

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India and Afghanistan: Tied In Knots

India’s early engagement with post-Taliban Afghanistan was considered by the United States, Pakistan and the Afghan government to be a strategy to undermine Pakistan. While this may have been true at first, in recent years India has come to accept that Pakistan has a ‘special interest’ in Afghanistan that overshadows its own. The main driver […]

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Terror Threats And People’s Rights

By the time Tony Blair left office in 2007, he had built a surveillance state unrivalled anywhere in the democratic world. Parliament passed 45 criminal justice laws – more than the total for the previous century – creating more than 3,000 new criminal offences. That corresponded to two new offences for each day parliament sat […]

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…And Whatever Happened To Emerging Markets?

When the U.S. financial system crashed in 2008, market watchers were increasingly romancing the idea of a “decoupling” that would separate emerging-market fortunes from those of the subprime-hobbled U.S. Such economies as Brazil’s and China’s, the thinking went, had the demographics and national balance sheets to keep growing and wowing as America foundered. Never happened. Read […]

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We’re Fried, And How!

Earth Overshoot Day marks the moment when, according to Global Footprint Network, an independent think tank based in the United States, Switzerland, and Belgium, humanity’s demand for natural resources exceeds the earth’s ability to renew them in a year. As of today, just 34 weeks into 2013, we are officially in ecological overdraft. Read Here – […]

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