The other day I was on a talk show where the host asked me, “Are we better off now than we were before the Arab Spring?” And I said, “Who is we?” The furious attacks on U.S. diplomatic outposts in the Middle East have left many Americans feeling that the neighborhood was a lot safer when […]
How should Americans, and the U.S. government, react when some statement (in a book, video, tweet, or whatever medium) is made that insults a religion–and violence follows? Even this soon after the events of the last two weeks some conclusions can be drawn. Read Here – cfr.org
THE wave of violence directed at Americans and Europeans in the Middle East and elsewhere in the Muslim world has had two particularly malign effects. First, it has made many Westerners, especially Americans, wonder why they and their governments should seek to play a constructive role in those parts of the world where people apparently […]
Iran may be on the firing line, but President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was as calmly combative as ever Sunday, dismissing Israel’s military threats and predicting that nothing will happen in the nuclear talks until after the U.S. presidential elections. In an interview on the eve of his visit to the United Nations, Ahmadinejad seemed unfazed by recent months of speculation […]
During the past four years, the U.S. saw significant declines in nearly all categories of the economic-liberty index. Most significant — and this should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention — is that the size of government grew substantially, particularly when measured by size of government subsidies and transfers and by government consumption […]
Yoshihiko Noda will doubtless win his party’s leadership race this week. There’s little certainty, though, that Japan’s prime minister is up to putting his country, the world’s No. 3 economy, on stronger footing. For starters, Noda’s victory may be Pyrrhic. He is under pressure to dissolve parliament and hold national elections, perhaps as soon as November. […]
The U.S. economy is stuck in the doldrums, but the intelligence business in America is booming. The 17 organizations that today comprise the U.S. intelligence community are all, to one degree or another, building new multimillion-dollar headquarters buildings and operational facilities all over the greater Washington metropolitan area despite recent budget cuts. Read Here – […]
When most people think of Indonesia today, they think of beaches and temples or of its famously teeming cities, but this country of 240 million and counting is a much more modern, diversified, and dynamic economy than many international investors and companies assume. To make the most of Indonesia’s vast potential, they’re going to need […]
In his new book, The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate, Robert Kaplan (Stratfor Global Intelligence) contends that current global conflicts, including wars, political instability, and clashes over religion, can be better understood and even forecasted through close examination of the maps that chart our world. Read […]
During the Cold War, two blocs of nations stood ranged against one another in an easily comprehended conflict between two economic and political systems. In our age, the fault-lines are not so easily detected. Warfare is frequently asymmetric. The proximate causes of battle are often hyper-local, tribal and sectarian. The threads that link one to […]
