This is a bit like sampling I suspect, but I happen to think that the World Bank’s blog on South Asia is magnificent. The breadth of intellectual and informed discussion supported by logic and empirics is wonderfully awe inspiring. Well, certainly to me, if no one else. But I’d suggest that if you read this […]
Alright. I admit it. I probably sound like Dick Cheney on the verge of the Iraq invasion with the amount of war foreshadowing that I’ve referenced repeatedly in recent posts. But, that won’t stop me. I write what I see. Both Iran and Israel are stocking their arsenals to prepare for a head-on collision, with […]
The FPA has gone European over the last while as several blogs addressed the issue of the Greek Tragedy and focused on Europe in concert with a talk by French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde as she addressed the 2nd annual Global Financial Forum, sponsored by the FPA, Chatham House and British-American Business, on global financial regulation […]
My colleague Kimberley Curtis at the FPA Human Rights Blog has an important post, “Saying enough is enough,” on the implications of House of Representatives passing the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act. Also check out Texas in Africa’s take on her attendance at a Town Hall meeting hosted by the government […]
It wasn’t long ago I wrote a piece titled ‘Obama-Karzai: Fighting Alone in a Locked Room‘ and now look at where we are….hugs and kisses of the political flavor are all the rage. The Obama administration has literally and figuratively rolled out the red carpet for Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his entourage and relations […]
No surprise alert: The Atlanta-based Carter Center has raised “serious questions about the accuracy of [Sudan’s] election results.”
I’ve been writing on Bangladesh’s power and water crisis. Admittedly I’ve been playing catch-up, because the story has been written up in The Daily Star and other news outlets. Nevertheless, it’s not a story that has reached an international audience, principally because the story, though a milling centipede does not have legs. No one has […]
As Nadia Petrova threw Serena Williams out of the Madrid Open, President Medvedev made his own powerplay in the Middle East by delivering landmark nuclear pacts with Turkey and Syria. As a result, Russia may begin building nuclear power plants in the two countries. Certainly, America is feeling diplomatically outflanked, but is there any real […]
An approaching deadline doesn’t permit me time to pick this apart, so I’ll leave that to you. A 12 Step Recovery Plan for the US-Japan Alliance by Michael Green and Nick Szechenyi of the CSIS Japan Chair: 1) Don’t give up on Futenma (Yet.) 2) Call a Time Out if the Deal Collapses 3) Damage […]
South Asia is seen as a geo-strategic, geo-economic unit by some and a single civilizational whole by others. The program of regional cooperation was expected to benefit immensely from the historical and cultural ties connecting people across national borders in South Asia. Such assessments created positive possibilities regarding cooperation in the region. Despite differences over […]
Mexico notched a ho-hum 1-0 victory over Senegal on Monday night. Afterward, a Mexican TV commentator said the game, played at Chicago’s Soldier Field, “was embarrassing.” The good news is the squad playing in South Africa in a month’s time is likely to start only a few of players from Monday night’s starting line-up. Luckily, […]
It’s well known that Bangladesh and Pakistan suffer from chronic power shortages. Those two countries simply do not produce enough electricity to meet the demand of their respective populations. Along with that quagmire, Bangladesh, particularly its capital, Dhaka, has been suffering a terrible water shortage. This is due, principally, because of the prior electricity shortage. […]
SIPRI’s report in March 2010 highlighted China’s growing desire to develop its Arctic capabilities. Yet China is also collaborating with other countries to possibly expand its role in the Arctic. Two of those countries are North Korea and Iceland, neither of which have Arctic coastlines, but which are far enough north to give China greater […]
Suppose the economy in which you go about your business is run by export revenue and remittances from migrant workers. Suppose further that one can reasonably suppose that remittance revenue will soon dip. In that circumstance, export revenue matters, doubly. Consider then the long run impact of the Icelandic volcano mess on the import and […]