Recent YaleGlobal Articles

Pakistan’s youth confront two stark realities: one that’s ambitious and cosmopolitan and the other radical and inward looking. Oddly enough, young Pakistanis obtain much of their news from international sources like BBC or CNN, even as those same broadcasts focus on violence and radical elements of...

Modern-day diplomats in Asia and beyond envision reviving the Silk Road, an ancient network of routes crisscrossing the continent for trade and security. But Valerie Hansen, author and professor of history at Yale University points, out that trade was not the primary purpose of the network. “...

Throughout 2011, protests that came to be known as the Arab Spring swept through Northern Africa and the Middle East. NATO stepped in on the Libyan protests, restricted to civilian protection. But the US gave a nod to Qatar sending machine guns, ammunition to rebels in the Libyan rebels; France...

Global civil society has long been ideologically diverse and hard fought over many years, as demonstrated with the anti-slavery or suffrage movements. Causes with global stature carry greater prominence than local or national efforts, giving supporters access to more allies, resources and shared...

US President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai are meeting throughout the day at the White House, developing specifics on troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and the US role in the region. Afghanistan faces two futures. “The direction depends on whether Afghanistan breaks its...

Americans, like most citizens all over the world, resent paying taxes, but are fond of government programs that allow health care, education or science to flourish. The US is overextended, living beyond its means, and Congress is divided over how to ease the climbing debt: Liberal Democrats want to...

US Congress, bitterly partisan, engages in petty bickering and repeatedly fails to resolve any number of pressing crises, let alone craft uplifting legislation for the country and the world. The poor behavior of the legislative body – blocking opponents at any cost – is symptomatic of the fading...

The surge of uprisings across North Africa began in Tunisia with the self-immolation of a desperate college graduate turned street vendor in December 2010. The pace for democracy since then has been slow, along with economic reforms, as is the case in Egypt and Libya. Economic challenges dog the...

Large oilfields often don’t fall neatly within national boundaries. Intent on securing underground or undersea reserves, nations contest territorial claims. China battles Japan for the Diaoyu/Senkakku Islands and ASEAN members for large sections of the South China Sea. Settling disputes quickly is...