The green shoots of recovery are growing a little taller. Newly released gross domestic product estimates measuring consumer and government spending, investments and net exports show the economy growing at 2 percent in the third quarter, up from 1.3 percent in the second. In normal times, this would be nothing to get excited about; average GDP growth between […]
In the post-bipolar era, the security architecture of Europe had to be adapted and the main European security actors undertook internal and external changes. The principal challenge has been the re-approximation of former enemies, namely the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Russia. The main remaining institution available to assume security and defense responsibilities was […]
It’s been 20 years since I’ve been in Mongolia, the large country of high desert plains sandwiched between China and Russia, and much has changed. Some, education and food supply, is for the better, and a lot – including urban sprawl and rising inequality – is for the worse. Much of the change has to […]
Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City, the word jihad dominated Western media outlets and characterised Islam as an inherently violent religion. Figures and groups such as Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda were presented to Westerners as opponents to Western civilisation who made it their duty to carry out terrorist attacks all over […]
While energy is not a top-tier issue for the American public, Obama and Romney present very different visions for how the United States will generate and consume energy over the next four years – and perhaps set the stage for the next twenty. They provide a clear choice for American voters and explicit differences for […]
Two years after China limited its exports of “rare earth minerals,” unnerving developed countries that depended on them for industrial uses, production is expanding at sites outside China. And as new sources of rare earth minerals have appeared, that has meant new jobs — including in the tiny town of China Grove, N.C., where Japan’s […]
The morning was cold and the sky was bright. Aretha Franklin wore a large and interesting hat. Yo-Yo Ma urged his frozen fingers to play the cello, and the Reverend Joseph E. Lowery, a civil-rights comrade of Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s, read a benediction that began with “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the segregation-era lamentation […]
Some months after the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein, I sat at lunch with the aging Hosni Mubarak. He was then 76 years old and hard of hearing but soon to “run” for the presidency for a fifth time in 2005. The four times previous, there had been no election at […]
Four years after the start of the Great Recession, the global economy has not recovered, voters are losing patience and governments around the world are falling like ninepins. This is a situation conducive to revolutionary thinking, if not yet in politics, then maybe in economics. In the past few months the International Monetary Fund, previously […]
Never mind the troubles of the West; the rest have problems too. Look at Turkey. A couple of years ago, this was a nation with an Ottoman spring in its step. Tired of rejection by Europe, it decided to seize new opportunities in the East. The economy was booming and Ankara had made friends of […]
looking beyond borders 