In The News

WMD Proliferation Threatens the World

Carol E. B. Choksy, Jamsheed K. Choksy April 5, 2013
Forces battling in Syria accuse each other of discharging chemical weapons; the United States and North Korea shift equipment about, raising the threat of nuclear exchange. The globe has many accords to curtail weapons of mass destruction. Yet most are “are trumped by influence-peddling, profit-seeking and ideology-spreading considerations,” explain Carol E.B. Choksy and Jamsheed K. Choksy, who...

Environmental Woes Could Reverse Global Development

Christopher F. Schuetze March 20, 2013
Storms, fires, rising seas, floods and other consequence of climate change could plunge one third of the world’s population into extreme poverty by 2050, according to the 2013 Human Development Report, released last week by the UN Development Programme. On a more positive note, the report says, “Extreme income poverty has plummeted from 1990, when 43 percent of the globe’s population lived on the...

Kim Blows Up Again

March 8, 2013
Managing North Korea – isolated, dysfunctional, belligerent – is a pressing challenge, particularly for immediate neighbors South Korea and China. Another set of tough sanctions against North Korea for its February nuclear test have been imposed by the United Nations, and North Korea has responded with a threat to disregard the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War. Joint US–South Korean...

Mali Islamists Seize Town Amid French Intervention

February 7, 2013
France has launched military intervention in Mali, a former colony, with the hope of rousting extremists who control most of the northern half the country. France also asked the UN Security Council to convene as the Mali military is flailing to maintain control. Despite strikes by French warplanes, militants took control of Diabaly. “Rebels of the al-Qaeda-linked Movement for Oneness and Jihad in...

US and China Come Together Over Defiant North Korea

January 25, 2013
North Korea’s leaders have long sought international attention with threats of missile launches. Rather than ignore the errant behavior, China now sides with the United States. After meeting with Chinese officials, the US special representative for North Korea reported that “Both sides agreed that ‘a nuclear test would be troubling and a setback to the efforts to denuclearise the Korean peninsula...

All-Night Negotiations in Doha Produce No Cliffhanger

Scott Barrett December 10, 2012
Global leaders have been more adept at resolving economic crises than the climate crisis. Negotiating an economic crisis, whether it’s Brussels imposing euro budget oversight and consequences for excessive debt or the US avoiding a fiscal cliff of automatic spending cuts and tax hikes, is forced by immediate costs of inaction. Climate is not a human invention like an economy, and does not...

Non-Aligned Summit Belies Isolation of Iran

Dilip Hiro September 4, 2012
The Non-Aligned Movement was born out of the Cold War, as emerging economies looked to become partners in international relations, enhancing self-reliance and development without subservience to one superpower or another. NAM’s 16th summit was hosted by Iran, contradicting a notion that US-led sanctions are isolating the state. Instead, NAM endorsed Iran’s right to develop nuclear energy for...