In The News

A Trusteeship for Palestine?

Martin Indyk May 12, 2003
Worrying that US President Bush’s "road map" agenda for the end to the Israel-Palestine conflict will fall through, Martin Indyk, the former US ambassador to Israel, and other members of the Saban Center's Israeli-Palestinian Workshop have proposed an alternative solution. They suggest a three-year international governing force in Palestine, headed by the UN, IMF, WTO, and various...

Under Global Spotlight, China's New Leaders Have to Reform

Susan L. Shirk May 12, 2003
China's integration into the global capitalist economy has been predicted by successive US presidents and others to be a necessary pre-cursor to expanded freedoms and democracy. Ironically, it may turn out to be a domestic Chinese issue – the fast-spreading Sars epidemic – that generates real openness and government accountability. China-scholar Susan L. Shirk explains that Sars has given...

Truck Bomb in Chechnya Kills at Least 36 and Wounds Scores

Steven Lee Myers May 12, 2003
The continuing separatist movement in the southern region of Russian territory certainly suggests that the breakup of the Soviet Union over 10 years ago is not quite over. Chechen rebels, fighting for independence from the Russian state, claim that the Russians are denying their right to sovereignty over their own nation, while Russian officials consider the rebels to be a fringe terrorist...

Eastern Germany to Stay Aboard EU Subsidy Train

Carola Schlagheck May 9, 2003
Economic integration on a scale the size of Europe is not easily accomplished. A plan to bring in another 10 member states expands the possibilities for regional cooperation, but it has also threatened to harm the economy of the former East Germany. After some deliberation, the European Commission agreed this week to continue subsidizing eastern Germany for the next few years, even though...

Europe's Identity Crisis

Steven Erlanger May 5, 2003
Europe's left wing has given the right a boost. Popular liberal fears of Americanization and "coca-colonization" have fostered the belief that individual cultures are in danger of extinction. And France's extreme right is exploiting this pervasive anxiety in the current presidential elections. Though Jacques Chirac is sure to win ultimately, the neo-fascist Jean-Marie Le...

Sars Gives China a Lesson in Globalization

Frank Ching May 2, 2003
China may have begun opening its economy 20 years ago, but Sars has shown that capitalist economic reforms aren't the only criteria for being part of the global economy. Control of the media is still seen as a basic function and right of the Chinese Communist Party, but it is precisely the party's obsessive control of information that helped fan the spread of Sars after its initial...

Why the Security Council Failed

Michael J. Glennon May 1, 2003
The UN was weak and irrelevant long before the divisive US-led war on Iraq made this painfully obvious, International Law scholar Michael Glennon maintains. He explains that Iraq is more a symptom of UN structural problems and changes in its geopolitical environment than a cause.. The UN was created to preside over a multi-polar world and now finds itself dealing with an unrivalled US hegemony...