Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday reiterated his desire to engage in direct talks with the United States, on the condition that the West stop pressuring his country. “Take your guns out of the face of the Iranian nation and I myself will negotiate with you,” he said at an event attended by tens of […]
There is a saying, “Once bitten, twice shy“. Russia and China claim to have been bitten once: when the West turned the United Nation’s Security Council resolution 1973 on its head and proceeded to invade Libya. Moscow and Beijing became shy when the West tried to do another Libya, over Syria. When the West mooted […]
The Arab Spring is not an outcome, it is a process. For those countries at the forefront of regional transformation, the fundamental question is can democracy become institutionalised? Though progress has been uneven and the outcomes of many state-society struggles have yet to be resolved, the answer is a cautious yes. In at least a […]
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was supposed to mark both the “end of history” and the birth of an international community founded on the universal acceptance of Western values — a world in which “market democracy” was the norm. Instead, the West has suffered a litany of disappointments — from costly wars […]
Three major forces will loom behind the headlines in 2013, driving events in the new year: the crisis of the Western political order, rising sectarian strife in the Middle East, and worries about American withdrawal from the world. The most immediate challenge is the crisis of the Western democratic model, caused by the inability of […]
Over the decades Turkey has dictated its Middle Eastern relations based on opportunities presented by shifts in the regional balance of power. In the early 1990s up until around 2006, Turkey was finely enmeshed in Western sentiments and policies. But beginning in 2006 it recognized a leadership vacuum in the Middle East and began attempting […]
Mao Zedong believed that revolutionary fervor could overcome technological backwardness. But when more pragmatic leaders took power in Beijing, they found that China lagged so far behind the West that the country risked permanent second-class status. Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, launched China’s rise by reforming the economy and opening the country to the West. With […]
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 […]
Parts of Aleppo‘s historic souk, or marketplace, have been burnt to the ground. The storied Sissi House, one of the region’s finest restaurants and famous for its tasty cherry lamb kebabs, has reportedly burnt down. Dar Zamaria, part of a wave of chic boutique hotels being carved out of Ottoman merchant houses (and which I reviewed […]
If you were to list the factors with the biggest potential impact on the business world over the next few decades, you’d likely cite some common themes – evolving technology, the globalization of markets, and fiscal challenges in Western countries, perhaps. But here’s one you might not have considered: women. According to our research, nearly […]
looking beyond borders 