In The News

Thai Democracy Enters Dangerous New Crossroads

Todd Pitman December 10, 2013
Bitter division in Thailand is a crisis for democracy, a divide that goes hand in hand with complicated relations with the nation’s monarchy. Protest leaders have suggested a preference for a government of elite experts and, according to Todd Pitman of the Associated Press, seek to establish “what amounts to a parallel government – complete with ‘volunteer peacekeepers’ to replace the police, a ‘...

Obama Gets His Groove Back in Asia

Robert A. Manning December 5, 2013
The United States continues to play an influential role in the Asia Pacific, even though the president had to cancel an Asian visit amid a US government shutdown. This influence was shown in the rapid relief for the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan and dispatch of B-52s after China announced an air-defense identification zone, legal but abrupt and overlapping with air zones for Japan and South...

NSA Spying: A Threat to US Interests?

Bruce Stokes December 5, 2013
Reports that the US National Security Agency has collected internet and telephone data in Europe could influence negotiations for a proposed Transatlantic Trade and Partnership and require new understanding on rules for the digital economy. Bruce Stokes, director of global economic attitudes at the Pew Research Center, reports on recent surveys: A majority of Americans suggest that it’s...

Putin's Russia: Too Weak to Stop Ukraine Joining Europe, But Will Try

Charles Crawford December 2, 2013
Ukraine finds itself in the middle of an old cultural battleground between Russia and Europe, explains Charles Crawford for the Telegraph. “Ukraine had no independent existence as a state until the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991,” he explains. “In 2004 the ‘Orange Revolution’ saw the first big Ukrainian convulsion over this question after huge popular protests against clumsily rigged...

A Dangerous Interregnum

Roger Cohen November 29, 2013
The 9/11 attacks, followed by long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, have left the United States exhausted, which has transformed its approach to the globe. New York Times columnist Roger Cohen cites political theorist Antonio Gramsci who suggested that transitions, during which old ways resist new approaches, can magnify crisis. The United States, and other nations, too, have taken an “inward turn...

Two Schools of Thought on China – Both Wrong

Eric X. Li November 19, 2013
China’s Communist Party has concluded its Third Plenum, and analysts in the West scrutinize details, hoping to pinpoint the direction of the world’s largest emerging power. Two theories on China’s rise have dominated since 1989, and both are wrong, argues Eric X. Li, venture capitalist and political scientist, in an essay adapted from his lecture at the Oxford Union: The “imminent collapse”...

Should Extremist Parties Be Banned?

Jan-Werner Mueller November 8, 2013
Some political organizations, formal or informal, often seem bent on fomenting anger, attracting attentionby excluding citizens based on race, religion, gender or other characteristics rather than practicing good governance and solving problems. “Is there a place within liberal democracies for apparently anti-democratic parties?” asks Jan-Werner Mueller for Project Syndicate. He examines the...