Recent YaleGlobal Articles

The Arab Spring has pummeled a region with waves of hope for recovering lost dignity, short-lived success and then despair and more despair. Unending conflict has killed many and left millions more refugees. The international community has long empowered brutal dictators, in pursuit of oil or short...

Innovations in drilling and hydraulic fracture technologies have opened new supplies of shale oil and gas for the United States, and other countries are intrigued. The United States anticipates energy independence, but the “shale boom may be more short-lived than many had expected, and shale’s...

Each political transition underway since the Arab Spring has its own characteristics, reports a group of researchers who conducted post-election surveys in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. The international community should resist applying stereotypical responses. “A one-size-fits-all approach to the...

Russia has reasons to resist military intervention in Syria. “Moscow has been resolute in the defense of the principle of state sovereignty in the traditional Westphalian sense, of non-interference by outside powers in the internal affairs of another state, a principle it considers to be the...

The Chinese economy is inevitably slowing. This doesn’t mean doom for the global economy or even China’s. Much depends on how Chinese leaders rebalance the economy, and signs so far point to a smooth transition, explains Michael Pettis, author, finance professor at the University of Peking and...

Iranians – frustrated by a flailing economy, compounded by rigid policies of a theocratic government and sanctions from the West that target the country’s nuclear program – expect reforms from President Hassan Rouhani. Iran confronts challenges that, if left unaddressed, will bring severe...

The political certainty that comes with a landslide victory in July and the Liberal Democratic Party’s control of both houses of the Japanese parliament may be short-lived. And while the conservative LDP has held steady power in Japan since 1955, except for two brief periods, a win does not mean...

The urge to do something, anything, to stem the bloodshed in Syria is intense. Ryan Crocker served as US ambassador to six countries including Syria, 1998 to 2001. Now a Kissinger senior fellow at Yale University, he reviews the history and explains how the civil war in Syria began well before the...

Edward Snowden, a former contract worker who exposed secret National Security Agency practices, has been trapped inside Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport for 23 days and counting. The United States, alternately pressuring and pleading with other countries not to offer Snowden asylum, has charged him...