In The News

Making Globalization Work

Joseph Stiglitz September 8, 2006
Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize for economics in 2001, complains about unfair trade, excessive debt and poverty, yet still argues that globalization offers enormous potential if managed properly by nations. He compares complaints about globalization to complaints about unemployment during the Great Depression of the 1930s: If governments had ignored economist John Maynard Keynes’ call...

Civil War Returns to Sri Lanka

Rüdiger Falksohn August 31, 2006
For more than 20 years, the Tamil Tigers have fought to establish their own state in Sri Lanka. Representing about 18 percent of the small island’s population, the largely Hindu group suffered persecution for years before signing a treaty with the Sri Lankan government in 2002. Not long after the December 2004 tsunami, brutal ethnic violence broke out with assassinations and bombings of schools...

Japan's History Problem

G. John Ikenberry August 28, 2006
By not admitting errors during World War II, Japan remains isolated, with closest neighbors – China and South Korea – suspicious of its goals. With annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, the prime minister defiantly resists any remorse about Japan’s aggression more than sixty years ago. Ironically, Japan has won respect throughout the world for its constitution that emphasizes peace and...

Water, Water Everywhere?

August 22, 2006
One third of the world’s population is already short of water, according to a UN report to be released in November 2006. A main culprit behind the increasing scarcity is agriculture – it requires about 3000 liters of water to grow enough food for a person to eat one day. With an increasing global population, agriculture’s demand for water will double by 2050. World water supplies could be...

Natural Resources Are Fueling a New Cold War

Erich Follath August 22, 2006
The modern world depends on oil and other natural resources for survival – and the most powerful countries travel the globe, searching for supplies. China, surpassed only by the US in oil-consumption levels, has blocked UN sanctions against Sudan to secure oil shipments and increasingly becomes friendly with Iran. When it come to oil, the US and China have policy differences, leading some...

Preventing Misuse of Development Aid

Syed Mohammad Ali August 18, 2006
The difficulties in the appropriation of international aid are nothing new, writes researcher Syed Mohammad Ali. Donor governments have long faced accusations of distributing aid to countries deemed strategically important while shortchanging other crises. Aid groups struggle to distribute supplies in dangerous combat zones or simply in undeveloped areas with minimal infrastructure. Receiving...

Globalization for the Rich

Sunita Narain August 17, 2006
In the 1980s, the world’s most industrialized nations deliberately set out to create standards of global integration and trade liberalization, often foisting policies upon less-developed nations that had little say in the negotiations. In the area of trade liberalization, the world’s richest countries refuse to reduce agricultural subsidies while insisting that developing nations expose their...