In The News

The Double Game

May 11, 2011
After World War II amid a scramble for allies, the US chose Pakistan over India. Pakistan’s economy was more promising than India’s in the 1960s, but there’s been a reversal of fortunes since, suggests Lawrence Wright in an essay for The New Yorker. India emerged with a strong economy and democracy, and Pakistan is troubled, insecure and anti-American. Economic aid requiring matching grants was...

Palestinian Unity Raises New Problems as It Solves Others

David E. Miller April 30, 2011
Internal Palestinian politics and their relations with world have been turbulent since the Islamist resistance group Hamas won a majority of parliamentary seats in January 2006. Rival groups Fatah and Hamas reached an agreement to be signed 4 May, calling for an interim government and elections within a year. The agreement does not detail long-held differences on statehood, peace talks with...

Seven Steps to Prevent Recurring Food Crises

Shenggen Fan April 30, 2011
Extreme weather events that disrupt harvests lead to rising food prices, hitting hard the world’s poor who spend the majority of their incomes on food. The poor often work in agriculture, but rising costs of inputs and consumer resistance against rising prices “can reduce farmers’ profit margins, distort long-term planning and dampen investment in improved productivity,” explains Shenggen Fan for...

The War on Soft Power

Joseph S. Nye Jr. April 19, 2011
In a global age, national power rests less on issuing orders from top of a hierarchy than on being the center of a network. Countries depend on many tools besides military might – skilled diplomats, aid programs, educational and cultural exchanges and so on. Confronting a ballooning deficit, the US has to tackle budget cuts: A deal recently negotiated by Congress makes deep cuts in so-called soft...

Confluence of Horrors, Global Impact Makes Japan's Tragedy a Transcendent Event in History

Joji Sakurai March 21, 2011
As humans learn from the experience of others and make accommodations, the tsunami and nuclear accident could transform many future endeavors, explains Joji Sakurai in an essay for the Canadian Press. Japan, an advanced economy, has been the second most generous foreign aid donor in the world and now welcomes financial and technological assistance from around the globe. The internet and...

How to Get Gaddafi

Niall Ferguson March 18, 2011
“The reality is that very few revolutions, good or bad, succeed without some foreign assistance,” argues historian Niall Ferguson in an essay for Newsweek. The French aided George Washington with the US revolution; the Soviets armed Mao – and since this essay was published, the UN Security Council voted to authorize military action against Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. Without foreign support,...

Turning Old Oil Into New Mileage

David L. Chandler March 18, 2011
Interest in hunting garbage piles for any reusables – a common job in the developing world – has spread to wealthier nations, attracting attention and innovation awards from the world’s most elite universities. Students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology have taken the notion one step further. Working with catadores cooperatives in Brazil, a MIT biodiesel team started a project called...