LONDON – For years, it was assumed, certainly in the West, that, as society developed, religion would wither away. But it hasn’t, and, at th…

SANTIAGO – Chile celebrated 200 years of independence in 2010. Only 20 of the 198 countries on Earth have reached that age. Therefore, it ha…

TOKYO – President Hu Jintao’s visit to Washington is coming at an increasingly tense moment in Sino/American relations. Indeed, mesmerized b…

NEW YORK – The United Nations today leads what seems at times like a double life. On the one hand, pundits criticize it for not solving all …

JOHANNESBURG – It has been said, correctly, that Sudan is a microcosm of Africa. For this reason, the entire continent will follow events in…

LAHORE – Pakistan remains the world’s never-ending question. As 2010 concludes, several outstanding issues continue to bedevil the country. …

WASHINGTON, DC – Throughout 2010, the pattern for negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program held to form. With just about every diplomatic ef…

SAO PAULO – The war on drugs is a lost war, and 2011 is the time to move away from a punitive approach in order to pursue a new set of polic…

BRUSSELS – The financial crisis that began in 2007 had its roots in excesses in the housing market that remained unresolved in 2010 – and th…

WASHINGTON, DC – As we enter 2011, the Euro-Atlantic region is a study in strategic contrasts. Over the past 20 years, no geo-political spac…

NEW YORK – For nearly a decade, American foreign policy has been dominated by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As 2011 begins, with 50,000 …

WASHINGTON, DC – Over the last quarter-century, the global economy enjoyed a remarkable stretch of stable growth and low inflation. The so-c…

NEW YORK – The fiscal stimulus that most advanced economies and emerging markets implemented during the 2008-2009 global recession – togethe…

NEW YORK – Baruch Spinoza, the seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher, Benjamin Disraeli, the nineteenth-century British prime minister, and …

NEW DELHI – The key role of emerging and developing countries – including India, China, and Brazil – in sustaining world economic growth was…

NEW YORK – The global economy ends 2010 more divided than it was at the beginning of the year. On one side, emerging-market countries like I…

BERLIN – The International Monetary Fund estimates that the crisis-induced net cost of financial-sector support provided by G-20 countries i…

MADRID – With budgets exceptionally tight in Europe nowadays, worries about European defense have been growing. Paradoxically, however, deve…

BEIJING – China’s per capita income, at $3,800, has now surpassed the threshold for a middle-income country. But, even as economists and str…

ANKARA – Turkey put its imprint as one of the most influential countries not only on 2010, but on the first decade of the third millennium. …

WASHINGTON, DC – One of the best-kept economic secrets was strongly reconfirmed in 2010: most countries, intentionally or not, pursue an ind…