In The News

Double Jeopardy: Russia Strives to Reintegrate With the West

Ashkhen Kazaryan November 24, 2015
Russians want to be responsible members of the global community and seek reintegration, yet they also fervently support their government's aggressive foreign policy. “As the leaders in the West contemplate joining Russia in a strategy to defeat the Islamic State, the world needs to understand the deeper reasons for Russian behavior as much as Russia needs to modify its strategies and...

ISIS Wives and Enforcers in Syria Recount Collaboration, Anguish and Escape

Azadeh Moaveni November 24, 2015
When terrorists storm a town and take control, some occupants resist, others collaborate, and most inevitably try to flee. Three young women describe life in Raqqa – a Syrian city of 220,000 – under the control of the Islamic State since early 2014. The three once wore casual clothes, worked or attended school, dated as they pleased and led independent lives, reports Azadeh Moaveni for the New...

Paris Attacks: The Global Consequences

Gideon Rachman November 16, 2015
Cosmopolitan cities like Paris, London and France are vulnerable to terrorist attacks, yet also resilient. The Islamic State’s would-be caliphate imposed by coercion and violence on communities in Iraq and Syria suffering from power vacuums could never hope to match the allure of Paris and French culture. Still, acts of terror challenge freedom and liberal ways in countries like France. Gideon...

Is China the Next Mexico?

Jorge Guajardo November 5, 2015
China’s political and economic transformations should be compared with that of Mexico, suggests Jorge Guajardo, a former Mexican ambassador to China, in an essay for Zócalo Public Square. In the 1990s, during the negotiations for the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, analysts cheered Mexico’s economic expertise and openness to free trade by the ruling party with its lock on power. “Lost in all...

The New South and the Economics of Taking Down the Confederate Flag

Micheline Maynard June 29, 2015
The Confederate flag was flown in battle by a general for the losing side during the US Civil War, the nation’s bloodiest war, with more than 620,000 deaths. Many throughout the American South have defiantly raised the flag, long regarded as a symbol for states’ rights including slavery, over official and unofficial venues since the war’s end in 1865. After the murder of nine black people at a...

China Is Building the Most Extensive Global Commercial Military Empire in History

Steve LeVine June 9, 2015
Great nations invest in innovations and infrastructure, and societies in decline allow those investments to crumble. “China views almost no place as uncontested,” writes Steve LeVine for Quartz, about the nation’s strategy to project power and influence. “Chinese-financed and -built dams, roads, railroads, natural gas pipelines, ports, and airports are either in place or will be from Samoa to Rio...

Megacities Might Not Save the Planet After All

Lizzie Wade April 29, 2015
Large cities are described as the “economic and cultural beating heart” for countries, attracting those seeking jobs, economic markets and entertainment. “In 2010, 6.7 percent of the human beings on Earth lived in a megacity,” reports Lizzie Wade for Wired, writing about research from engineer Christopher Kennedy with the University of Toronto, assisted by 28 researchers in 19 countries. “That...