Assassinations. Pitched battles. Cross-border bombing raids. Hundreds of thousands of refugees. At what point will the rising conflict between Sudan and South Sudan be recognized as a new war?
India-Japan Talks: A ‘Post-American’ Partnership?
With the Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda completing his state visit to India this week, the relationship between these two Asian countries bears a close look. Their recent moves toward greater economic and political …
Yesterday’s Gone: Euro Optimism Goes Flat and Here Comes 2012
As has become common during the nearly two years of Europe’s escalating debt crisis, reasons for guarded optimism that surfaced this week are being replaced with concern and doubt. In the wake of last week’s uplifting news …
The Wailing Heard Round the World: North Korea’s Grief Hits the Web
Today, as images from the funeral of the late Kim Jong Il go out around the world, North Korean official media delivered what has to be one of the most surreal and widely witnessed pieces of state theater ever created. Set …
Yet Another Fast by India’s Anti-Corruption Crusader
The Indian anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare began another public fast today to pressure Parliament to pass an anti-corruption law that meets the demands of his movement. While a similar fast this summer — a 13-day marathon …
If 2011 Was a Turbulent Year for Obama’s Foreign Policy, 2012 Looks Set to Be Worse
The foreign policy crisis horizon shows little respect for the calendar New Year: The Obama Administration ought to have a pretty good idea of the crises that await it in different global hotspots as it braces for election year, …
More Taxes, Please: We’re French
Europe may be agonizing amid the worst financial crisis since the Second World War, but that still isn’t forcing France to accept the logic of economic liberalism that dominates much of world. That largely “Anglo-Saxon” …
In China, a Christmas Crackdown on Dissent
Christmas means different things around the world, but in China one of the things it’s come to stand for crackdown. In recent years Chinese courts have chosen the holiday season as the time to hand down the harshest sentences
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Why the Damascus Bombing is Better News for Syria’s Regime Than for its Opposition
The twin suicide bombings that killed at least 30 people in Damascus on Friday are good news for the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, and bad news for the opposition protest movement. That’s because the regime’s narrative of …
How a Huge Infusion of Cheap Money will Help European Banks But Not Europeans
Might the world be witnessing the first signs of stabilization in the European debt crisis that has placed the euro’s very existence in doubt? That’s a hypothesis some observers are starting to consider carefully, thanks to a …
Bhutan’s Royal Newlyweds Inaugurate a New Tradition: Tourists Welcome!
It’s an icy-cold December morning at the Dochula Pass in western Bhutan, about an hour’s drive north of the capital, Thimphu near a ridge in the lower Himalayas. The royal family of this tiny mountain nation is about to …
At Christmas, a Maronite Christian Village in Israel Revives the Language Spoken by Jesus Christ
In the far north of Israel, in a stone church tucked onto a remote hillside, Christmas Mass will be recited, as it is every year, in the language Jesus Christ spoke. Aramaic remains the liturgical language of the Maronite Christians in the Galilee, where Christ grew up and a resilient congregation struggles to revive the language in …
Is The Government Of Protest-Loving France Orchestrating Strikebreaking?
To many observers abroad (and even some closer to home), France has the reputation of being a singularly strike-happy place—a country whose workers will walk out at the first sign of professional or even political discord. …