The recent assassination of a leading secular opposition figure in Tunisia has cast a dark cloud on what many had hoped would serve as a model for democratic transition in countries swept by the Arab Spring. The sad fact is that many revolutions lead to renewed dictatorships. But the good news is that even a […]
Major powers plan to offer to ease sanctions barring trade in gold and other precious metals with Iran in return for Iranian steps to shut down the nation’s newly expanded Fordow uranium enrichment plant, Western officials said on Friday. The officials said the offer is to be presented to Iran at February 26 talks in Almaty, Kazakhstan, […]
There is understandable anger and grief in India over the United States recently sentencing David Coleman Headley to 35 years in prison. Formerly known as Daood Sayed Giulani, the Pakistani American Headley was one of the masterminds behind the November 26, 2008 terrorist assault on Mumbai that left 166 persons dead, including six Americans, and […]
“We are finally poised to control our own energy future,” said President Barack Obama in his State of the Union message, noting the drastic increase in American energy production from unconventional oil and gas resources. Controlling our energy future means more than just producing a greater amount of our own energy. It also means harnessing this energy […]
OFFICIALS from the world’s biggest economies meet on February 15th-16th in Moscow on a mission to avert war. Not one with bombs and bullets, but a “currency war”. Finance ministers and central bankers worry that their peers in the G20 will devalue their currencies to boost exports and grow their economies at their neighbours’ expense. […]
The Ministry of Commerce has quashed recent media reports speculating that China had surpassed the United States to become the world’s biggest trading nation by volume. Recent data from the world’s two largest economies show that Chinese trade in goods and services reached $3.87 trillion in 2012, according to the General Administration of Customs, while […]
For the past few years, as China’s emergence has cast an increasing shadow over the region, Canberra’s strategic thinkers have tried to interest New Delhi in the concept of the “Indo-Pacific” as the two former colonies of Britain, now two leading democracies, find common ground. Those strategists in Australia, the shores of which are washed […]
This month marks the 70th anniversary of the Red Army‘s victory at the Battle of Stalingrad, prompting renewed debate over the legacy of Josef Stalin. Once again, many conservative Russians are hoping that the name Volgograd will one day be permanently changed back to Stalingrad. As a nod to them, local Volgograd deputies agreed to call the city Stalingrad during the six days of the battle’s anniversary every year. […]
Why do once-successful societies ossify and decline? Hundreds of reasons have been adduced for the fall of Rome and the end of the Old Regime in 18th-century France. Reasons run from inflation and excessive spending to resource depletion and enemy invasion, when historians attempt to understand the sudden collapse of the Mycenaeans, the Aztecs, and, […]
President Barack Obama in his State of the Union speech reiterated his call for a bipartisan agreement that would stabilize the debt and end a period where fiscal policy has lurched from crisis to crisis. This ambition is broadly shared, but profound disagreements remain over the composition of measures to address debt and growth. Democrats […]
looking beyond borders 