In The News

The Russian Challenge – Part I

Katinka Barysch October 3, 2008
The US and Europe increasingly seem at odds over an assertive Russia, flush with oil money, strong militarily and ambitious with an educated, nationalistic population. This two-part YaleGlobal series explores the implications for Europe, the US and the world. In the first of the series, Katinka Barysch, deputy director of the European Centre for Reform notes many common interests held by the US...

The Fragility of the Global Nuclear Order

Graham Allison October 1, 2008
In 1968, the international community joined forces on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, taking decisive action before crisis hit. Forty years later, “global trend lines in all things nuclear are worsening,” note Harvard professor Graham Allison and Ernesto Zedillo, former president of Mexico and director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, in an essay for the Boston Globe. Both...

North Korea: Life After Kim

Shim Jae Hoon September 26, 2008
Uncertainty and infighting await nations that lack a strategy for leadership succession. The Kim family has ruled North Korea since it declared independence in 1948, but Kim Jong Il has not groomed his children for leadership. So speculation centers on them along with Kim’s fourth wife, Kim Ok, who visited Washington during the waning days of the Clinton administration. Analysts anticipate an...

Pakistan’s Dangerous Double Game

Ron Moreau September 16, 2008
After the 9/11 attacks, planned by Al Qaeda in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, Pakistan and the US linked up as allies in the “war on terror” declared by George Bush. The Taliban have long since scattered, many to the rugged Pakistan-Afghanistan border area, and regrouped in camps. The US alludes to an agreement, possibly made with former President Pervez Musharraf, that allows its troops to cross the...

Egypt: Will the Dam Burst?

September 15, 2008
Poverty and bitterness seethe in Egypt: “The fact is that most of Egypt’s 75m people struggle to get by, their ambitions thwarted by rising prices, appalling state schools, capricious judges, a plodding and corrupt bureaucracy and a cronyist regime that pretends democracy but in fact crushes all challengers and excludes all participation,” the Economist reports. Pent-up frustration contributes to...

Russia and a New Democratic Realism

Francis Fukuyama September 12, 2008
The weakened Russia of the 1990s has bulked up into a formidable nation that makes the former satellites of the Soviet Union uneasy. In the meantime, the US allowed negotiation opportunities and moral credibility to slip away. The US invasion of Iraq and support of separation for Kosovo handed an excuse to others that might invade sovereign states for regime change or disgruntled provinces that...

America and the World Into a New Era – Part II

Shada Islam September 4, 2008
One of the goals of the Treaty on European Union, signed in 1992, was for the continent “to assert its identity on the international scene, in particular through the implementation of a common foreign and security policy including the eventual framing of a common defence policy, which might in time lead to a common defence.” At the time, many anticipated Europe to continue a strong and enduring...