Two new books — one condemning the culture of liberal piety embraced by the Nobel Peace Prize, the other detailing the global influence of conservative civil society — underscore the dangers of using Big Ideas to try to save the world. Last week’s decision to award the Nobel peace prize to the European Union only […]
The latest cover of the Economist, the weekly news magazine that likes to call itself a newspaper, featured inequality, which it believes is the new big problem facing the world at large. Belatedly, the world is finally beginning to acknowledge an endemic problem, which is so anecdotally visible in the new India defined by glitzy malls […]
After more than a decade of having American blood spilled in Afghanistan, with nearly six years lost to President George W. Bush’s disastrous indifference, it is time for United States forces to leave Afghanistan on a schedule dictated only by the security of the troops. It should not take more than a year. The United […]
PARISIANS are in a tizz about capitalism. New Yorkers get stressed about sex. In Seoul and San Antonio, Texas, 11,000km apart, citizens fret about the relationship between humans and apes. What goes into school textbooks—and, even more, what is left out—spurs concern and controversy all over the world. And so it should. Few, if any, […]
It was an important day for Angola, June 20th, 2006. Amid the diplomatic pomp and handshakes of an official visit, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao opened the Luanda General Hospital and had his picture taken peering into a microscope surrounded by officials in suits and medics in white smocks. The capital’s General Hospital, a sprawling eighty-thousand […]
Whether or not America‘s politicians can find a way to sidestep the brutal automatic military cuts of sequestration, the era of rising Western spending on weapons and wars is over. That reality increasingly is challenging major arms manufacturers, spurring them to look for new markets, cost cuts and mergers. It is also confronting policymakers with difficult […]
China and Japan, the world’s second- and third-biggest economies, indicated support forEurope’s new rescue fund as they pushed for quick implementation of measures to solve the region’s crisis. China will “cooperate” with the European Stability Mechanism, a permanent 500 billion-euro ($648 billion) fund that started this week, People’s Bank of China Deputy Governor Yi Gang said […]
In its annual appraisal of the Chinese military published last week, the U.S. Department of Defense seems to be describing an object it finds both familiar and mysterious. The report certainly answers many of the important issues concerning China‘s military, including its attempts to develop an anti-ship ballistic missile and its continuing fixation on Taiwan. Read […]
It’s not every day that Barack Obama and Ban Ki-moon agree with the head of the Islamist group Jamaat-e-Islami or an America-bashing Pakistani politician. But Tuesday’s Taliban attack on 14-year-old activist Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan’s Swat Valley attracted universal condemnation cutting across countries and cultures. Read Here – WSJ Opinion
A hard landing in China could expose a large number of countries to unforeseen consequences and dash hopes of a global recovery. China’s plight also drives the final nail into the coffin of the once fashionable theory of “decoupling”, which argued for an autonomous economic sphere around China that could soar even as the US […]
looking beyond borders 