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Capitalism with Special Chinese Characteristics

June 19, 2007
On the surface, China’s fast-growing economy looks superb. However, growing income inequality and the massive inflow of foreign funds can pose problems that often go unrecognized. International economics professor Gustav Ranis categorizes China’s economic problems as a type of “Dutch Disease,” a...

New Statesman: No Serious Strategy for Syria

April 23, 2018
After seven years of civil war, Syria is in peril. UN peace efforts have flailed, and leaders of Iran, Turkey and Russia have met just before a chemical attack on Ghouta. The three countries do not agree on a role for Syria’s leader Bashar al-Assad, but are “are increasingly alienated from the West...

What the Tea Party Tells Us About the Trump Presidency

November 9, 2016
The Tea Party movement foreshadowed Donald Trump’s winning the US presidential race. Vanessa Williamson, writing for Brookings, describes the grassroots activists as a coalition of older, white conservatives and a conservative media infrastructure funded by ideologue billionaires who oppose taxes...

Indifference to Muslim Woes: Financial Times

January 2, 2020
The world’s western leaders would express outrage if China detailed a million Christians or if India pointedly excluded refugees who identify as Christians. About 1.8 billion people, a quarter of the world’s population, are Muslim. “By downplaying much larger-scale violations against Muslims, [...

The Dilemma of Dealing With Terror Central

January 19, 2009
Ample evidence suggests that elements in Pakistan were behind November’s brutal terrorist assaults in Mumbai claiming more than 160 lives. As the clamor for retribution rises in India, the international community has urged restraint. International relations expert Ramesh Thakur argues that...

Denmark the “Happiest Country” and Burundi the “Least Happy”

March 21, 2016
Wealth and weather may not influence happiness as much as many may assume, and inequality contributes to unhappiness. The UN's Sustainable Development Solutions Network ranked 156 countries by analyzing surveys in which people are asked to evaluate their lives on a scale of 1 to 10 and...

US Can't Rely Solely on Might

November 17, 2003
The privatization of war by transnational terrorists is the gravest threat of the twenty-first century, argues Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Nye believes that insofar as the source of threat is changing from large conventional states to rogue states and...

Worried About China? Keep Calm as Markets Return to Earth

September 1, 2015
A long anticipated slowdown in China’s growth prompted a downturn in stock prices and firm government interventions. The percentage of foreign investors in Chinese stocks are low, but the abrupt moves unnerved investors around the globe. Market prices fell in Europe, the United States, Japan and...
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