Foreign Policy Blogs

Tag Archives: World Bank

China’s Infrastructure Bank Makes Inroads in Asia

China’s Infrastructure Bank Makes Inroads in Asia

With Beijing holding the majority of AIIB’s voting rights, the bank is seen by analysts as a deliberate effort to pull Asian countries closer into China’s orbit.

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Hanoi Protests China’s Fishing Ban

Hanoi Protests China’s Fishing Ban

Hanoi officially expressed its displeasure over Beijing’s annual fishing ban in the South China Sea at a regular press conference last week.

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Gambia Seeks to Clean Up the Past, Look to Future

Gambia Seeks to Clean Up the Past, Look to Future

After emerging from a harsh dictatorship, now comes the gargantuan task of reconciling Gambia’s past horrors, and laying the groundwork for future prosperity.

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Beijing’s Development Bank Gains Momentum

Beijing’s Development Bank Gains Momentum

Despite U.S. objections and concerns, China’s $100 billion initiative seems determined in its quest for respectability and prominence.

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Bringing Life to the Dead Sea

Bringing Life to the Dead Sea

Water can be an economic win-win agent and a ‘lubricant of peace,’ especially when basins transcend jurisdictional boundaries

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Marc Chandler on China’s Economic Growth Prospects

Marc Chandler on China’s Economic Growth Prospects

In the sixth and final installment of the virtual roundtable, Marc Chandler discusses China’s economic growth prospects in the current transitional period.

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Will China’s New Bank Undermine the World Bank?

Will China’s New Bank Undermine the World Bank?

While these institutions have made some headway in meeting the infrastructure needs of Asian countries, some critics of the World Bank and ADB argue they are slow and bureaucratic, and impose stifling environmental and social constraints which deter investment.

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Al-Shabaab and Party Balloon Effect

Al-Shabaab and Party Balloon Effect

From the outset, let me make one thing clear: Al-Shabaab, and its extremist world view is neither constructive nor sustainable. This extremist neo-Islamist group represents one of a two nihilistic worldviews that dominated the twenty first century political discourse—global (dysfunctional) jihadism and global war on terrorism. Both, due to their applied mantra—with hammer, all problems […]

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Can Mozambique be the Next LNG Hotbed?

Can Mozambique be the Next LNG Hotbed?

Like many other African countries, Mozambique has enormous potential, but there are many gaps to fill. Led by its natural resources, the economy has been booming with real GDP growth reaching 7.4 percent in 2012, seven percent in 2013 and is predicted to reach 8.5 percent between 2014–16, according to the World Bank. London based […]

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The Corruption Tango

The Corruption Tango

Any unchecked authority or power—especially when involving monies—ultimately leads to corruption. That is why it is necessary to put in place mechanisms to monitor, audit, reward, and, when necessary, punish.All laws stemming from a moral or a legal code are based on a system of rewards and punishments. By corruption I mean: Abuse of authority […]

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Some Realities Behind China’s Call for a “De-Americanized World”

Some Realities Behind China’s Call for a “De-Americanized World”

  How serious is China about “the introduction of a new reserve currency to replace the dominant U.S. dollar,” one of its proposed steps for creating the “de-Americanized world” that the official Xinhua news agency called for in the run-up to the denouement-cum-deferral of the U.S. fiscal crisis? American commentators’ responses have ranged from the […]

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Reducing Remittance Costs: A Matter of Competition, Technology — and Post Offices

Reducing Remittance Costs: A Matter of Competition, Technology — and Post Offices

  Ten years ago, it was typical for 20 percent or more of the money a migrant worker sent to his or her family in a developing nation to be eaten up by transmission costs. Thanks to factors including increased competition and technological advances, that percentage has dropped steadily over the past decade, so that […]

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President Obama Decides Time is Right for Climate Change Plan

President Obama Decides Time is Right for Climate Change Plan

As immigration legislation is prodded through the U.S. Senate then likely to collect mothballs in the U.S. House of Representatives, and major Supreme Court decisions are announced, the executive branch has garnered a portion of the headlines. Ready to take on another challenge, President Obama laid out his plan to combat Climate Change – a […]

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Vulture Funds Curbing African Development

Vulture Funds Curbing African Development

In late 2012, vulture funds came to light with the bold seizure of an Argentine naval vessel, the ARA Libertad, in the Ghana port city of Tema. After two-and-a-half months under the control of the U.S.-based vulture fund NML capital — run by billionaire Paul Singer — the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in […]

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Ending “Doormat Politics” In Somalia

Ending “Doormat Politics” In Somalia

“More than ever, foreign policy is economic policy. The world is competing for resources and global markets.”   John Kerry Considering the positive trend of the past eighteen months, Somalia is en route to recovery, and, in due course, to re-engineer a better state from the ground up. The caveat being: in the long term, this […]

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