Regional Directory

The Venezuelan president is motivated now more than ever to accept a transition deal.

For several years, there has been a significant shift underway in U.S. strategy toward the Middle East, where Washington has consistently sought to avoid...

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army has begun minor operations to try to quell the unrest in Hong Kong. This is a step that the...

May 28, 2016 Canada is one of those countries where a vast land mass obscures the fact that the country has a relatively small population. While Canada is the second largest country in the world, its 35 million inhabitants make Canada only the 39th most populated country.

In this way, Canada is similar to countries like Egypt, Russia and Australia. Egypt is a country of over 80 million people and its size is formidable on a map, yet most of its inhabitants are located on a thin strip of land about the size of the state of Maryland on either bank of the Nile River. For Russia, the world’s largest country by land mass, its population centers are located in the west, close to Europe, while the vast and desolate Siberian region is sparsely populated and not connected to Russian infrastructure. Australia – the world’s sixth largest country by land mass and a continent in its own right – has even fewer people than Canada (around 23 million), all living in cities along the coast. The interior of the country is unforgiving and inhospitable.

The dispute was decades in the making.

The United States has openly accused Iran of being behind the drone and cruise missile attacks on Saudi Arabia’s largest oil refinery. Now the...

With China's recent threat to ban exports of rare earth elements to the United States, it may be time to find an alternative.

The U.S. is still the pre-eminent global power, whether the world likes it or not.

Socialism is a global political movement that emerged from the French Revolution. Its goal was to speak for the dispossessed, only sometimes as a democratic political party. In all of its guises, it has been a powerful political force in most of the world. In the United States, however, it has been relegated to the political margins, seen largely as alien to the American ethos. It has now emerged explicitly as a subject of debate in American politics and therefore requires some thought. Origin Stories The important difference between socialism and capitalism – even more important than what each actually preaches – is that capitalism is less an intellectual or moral system than a reality born of the industrial revolution. Socialism, on the other hand, has always been an intellectual movement, crafted by intellectuals such as Saint-Simon, Fourier, Lassalle and Marx, all of whom made the moral case for socialism and imagined what such a system would look like. These intellectuals loathed inequality and despised the intellectual shallowness of the rich and sought to create a political movement that could bring their vision to life. It was commandeered by politicians such as Karl Kautsky in Germany, and Vladimir Lenin in […]

The United States is under enormous pressure. The nature of the particular pressure is unique, though pressure on the United States from various forces...

Nov. 15, 2017 Multilateral groupings are usually impotent, so why are there so many of them?

Battling the coronavirus is essential. But the battle has costs, which are invariably measured against the gain. “No matter what the cost” – the approach many countries appear to be taking – is a principle that can be disastrous, particularly when the cost is so high that it cannot be borne socially. With the coronavirus, like all new and lethal diseases, alarm shapes the responses. As the cost starts to emerge, there is an inevitable recalibration. We are approaching that point of recalibration. First the risk. The coronavirus seems as difficult to contain as other coronaviruses like the common cold. Some people do not know they have been infected, and many who never fall ill carry the disease. Everyone is suspect. The only safe course is complete social isolation. That is of course impossible. Jobs must be worked, children must go to school, food must be bought and consumed, and so on. Humans are inherently social animals, and the perpetual threat of infection undermines a fundamental human imperative: to be with other people. Coronaviruses are persistent; they appear, disappear, reappear, mutate. There will be no clear moment at which the virus is eradicated, no moment at which the dread of […]