Shadi Hamid, Vox
Libya and the 2011 NATO intervention there have become synonymous with failure, disaster, and the Middle East being a "shit show" (to use President Obamas colorful descriptor). It has perhaps never been more important to question this prevailing wisdom, because how we interpret Libya affects how we interpret Syria and, importantly, how we assess Obamas foreign policy legacy.
Mary Dejevsky, Guardian
Some of the biggest havens of dirty money, they argue, are British overseas territories and the London property market. And until a UK government is prepared to remove the beam in its own eye, rather than wittering on about the motes in the eyes of others, our credibility as a country will be compromised.
Harold James, Project Syndicate
As populations in Europe and Japan age, the demographic pyramid is rapidly inverting – and a war of generations, rather than of classes, is emerging. The war is fought primarily at the ballot box – old people win elections, while young people stay home – and the spoils lie in the national budget, in the balance among education, pension, health-care, and tax regimes. With this clash, the intergenerational pact that long underpinned social and political stability has been broken.
Luke Patey, Foreign Policy
Africa’s petrostates are crashing hard. A cool 5 in the summer of 2014, a barrel of Brent crude, the international pricing benchmark, now fetches below . And having failed to build massive foreign exchange reserves like Saudi Arabia or other Gulf monarchies, African oil exporters are now being forced to grapple with depreciating national currencies, mounting inflation, and deep cuts in government spending.
David Bergman, NY Times
In 1971, Bengali nationalists and the people of what was then called East Pakistan waged a war of independence against the Pakistani Army. The conflict culminated in the birth of a new nation, Bangladesh. The war, which lasted nine months, was a brutal one: Depending on the source, some 300,000 to three million people were killed, and millions were displaced.
The National Interest
The relationship between Russia and Iran has come to the fore because of their coordination on the battlefield in Syria. A recent article in the Daily Beast noted President Vladimir Putin’s “fondness” for Iran, while another from Al-Monitor argued that cooperation will extend beyond Syria as “Moscow will seek to expand its regional role through coordination with Iran and Hezbollah.” However, Russian-Iranian cooperation is not as close as it appears to be in many arenas, and the relationship has built-in limitations... Читать дальше...
Evans & McDowall, Reuters
Saudi Arabia spearheaded efforts to get Gulf Arab states and the Arab League to designate Hezbollah a terrorist organization, which led to reports of Lebanese nationals being forced to leave Gulf countries because of alleged Hezbollah links. Lebanon says it is unable to confirm any expulsions, but politicians in Beirut are taking the reports seriously.
George Friedman, Geopolitical Futures
Washington wants Ankara to lead the fight against the Islamic State, but Turkey is strong enough to keep meddling third parties at bay. Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan is focused on domestic problems like curbing political opposition and making sure the Kurds cannot secede.
L. Broers, Chatham House
For three days a long-feared large-scale escalation between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces has raged around the disputed territory of Nagorny Karabakh. For the first time since 1994 slivers of territory have changed hands. Reports from the ground remain confused and contradictory, but at least 30 combatant and two civilian fatalities are confirmed. What is certain is that the conflict parties have abandoned their self-regulated ceasefire, and the South Caucasus is today suspended in a security vacuum.
Ron Tiersky, RealClearWorld
Victory or defeat in war is often as much psychological as it is military. Military forces fight to impose their wills, and at a certain moment, even if the weapons are not yet silent, one side or the other loses heart. Its will to resist breaks, and defeat becomes a matter of time. Arguably, we are getting to that point in the war against the so-called Islamic State group.
David Cameron, Telegraph
When you look at the consequences of leaving this market, you have to ask: why on earth would we do this to ourselves? I believe it would be needless and reckless – an act of economic and political self-harm.
Jon. Gatehouse, Maclean's
Canadians, are on the whole, awfully worried about people lining their pockets. Transparency International’s last Global Corruption Barometer survey from 2013 found that 53 per cent of respondents said that corruption has increased “a lot” or “a little” over the previous two years. And 62 per cent identified our political parties as the most rotten apples in a stinky, spoiled barrel.
Steve Hilton, Politico
Like Republicans today, the British Conservative movement had its own reckoning with ideological confusion and despair. In 2005, after Tony Blair of the Labor Party won his third general election in a row, a postmortem for the Conservatives revealed that the top reasons for not voting Tory were a perception that the party was “for the rich,” and that it was “old-fashioned.” By old-fashioned, the British voters meant that Conservative politicians were out of touch with—and... Читать дальше...
Aries & Paravicini, Politico EU
Leaked documents show how Panamanian company helped some clients launder money and avoid tax.
M. Bozadzhieva, HBR
Experienced executives in this market have gone through at least two large crises over the past 20 years: in 1998 when the government defaulted on its debts, and in 2009 when Russia was infected by the global financial crisis. From these, they learned to stay committed to the market, protect their margins, make some selective investments, and wait for the recovery. This worked, because both crises were short-lived (lasting approximately 1-1.5 years) and were followed by rapid recoveries. Читать дальше...
Benjamin Friedman, National Interest
ISIS’s initial success with showy brutality might cause them to overrate its effectiveness. The U.S. public was mostly opposed to making war on ISIS until they broadcast beheadings of U.S. hostages in 2014. Maybe they wanted to be bombed, but miscalculation is a simpler explanation. We should take their counterproductive tendencies seriously.
W.R. Mead, American Interest
The hypocrisy of a leftist elite that lectures and speechifies endlessly about social justice while looting the treasury with the enthusiasm of the most backward ‘colonels’ and oligarchs richly deserves the scalding and scorching comeuppance that is now falling due.
Evelyn Gordon, Comm.
Refugees in Turkey don’t have it easy, but they’re surviving. Thus, relocating them to Europe isn’t necessary to fulfill the refugee convention’s goals; it’s necessary only to achieve a political purpose: remaking Europe by flooding it with millions of migrants.
John Psaropoulos, Daily Beast
Most of the pressure, according to Stavropoulou, is coming from “countries that are very invested in the deal with Turkey working.” Germany, which received over a million asylum seekers last year, took a leading role in negotiations with Turkey during a tense two-day summit last month.
Orville Schell, New York Review of Books
Indeed, not since the 1970s when Mao still reigned and the Cultural Revolution still raged has the Chinese leadership been so possessed by Maoist nostalgia and Leninist-style leadership.
Adam Ramsay, Foreign Policy
To engage in this exercise, however, is to largely miss the point: not just the point of this astonishing leak, but the point of the whole United Kingdom. Because it’s hard not to look at the whole affair and see Britain right at the core of it. Or, at least, the British state, which one might argue is a very different entity.
Leonid Bershidsky, Bloomberg View
The investigative journalists who studied the Panama Papers may have the biggest political impact in the country where repercussions would make the least sense. Russia, Ukraine or Pakistan would benefit much more from scandal-induced leadership shakeups than Iceland, which is about to rejoin the financial world as a citizen in good standing.
Ross Douthat, NYT
Its too soon to say Europeans are actually from Mars once again. But the Continents Venusian idyll has taken blow after blow: the euro crisis, the aggressions of Vladimir Putin, and now the convergence of mass migration and Islamist terror. Nationalism is returning, border fences are going up. The center is weakening, the far right is gaining power. The Mediterranean and the Russian marches are zones of conflict again, and ancient habits French military adventurism, Little Englander separatism... Читать дальше...
Adam Minter, Bloomberg View
Its a crazy idea, of course. And if this so-called Global Energy Interconnection had been proposed by anyone other than the chairman of the worlds wealthiest power company, it wouldnt deserve much consideration. But the billion in cash generated by State Grid last year gives the company the deep pockets and political standing to put its priorities on the international energy agenda.
