PARIS – Russia is not Egypt. And Moscow is not on the eve of revolution as Cairo was less than a year ago. Indeed, Russia’s powerful have at…

MOSCOW – Twenty years ago, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev resigned, the Soviet Union ended, and Russia began an imperfect transition to …

NEW YORK – What does the New Year hold for the global wave of protest that erupted in 2011? Did the surge of anger that began in Tunisia cre…

MUMBAI – As if undermining the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round of global free-trade talks was not bad enough (the last ministerial mee…

SANTIAGO – On matters of sex, the citizens of mostly Roman Catholic Latin America often proclaim one thing and practice something very diffe…

BERKELEY – In 1950, finance and insurance in the United States accounted for 2.8% of GDP, according to US Department of Commerce estimates. …

BUDAPEST – Today, millions of Europeans are afraid and frustrated as they face unemployment, loss of savings and pensions, radically reduced…

BERLIN – For two years now, one European summit after another has ended with assurances that – at long last – the necessary measures for con…

MUNICH – Interest rates for public debt within the eurozone have spread once again, just as they did before the introduction of the euro. Ba…

VIENNA – For a European these days, thinking about the future is disturbing. America is militarily overstretched, politically polarized, and…

NEW DELHI – At a time when China’s economic, diplomatic, and military rise casts the shadow of a power disequilibrium over Asia, the just-co…

CAMBRIDGE – The French government just doesn’t seem to understand the real implications of the euro, the single currency that France shares …

PARIS – Whenever people seek a justification for European integration, they are always tempted to look backwards. They stress that European …

NEW YORK – Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis has rumbled on for so long that some people are beginning to take it for granted that eurozone lea…

NEW HAVEN – Today, fears are growing that China and India are about to be the next victims of the ongoing global economic carnage. This woul…

MEXICO CITY – For Latin America, 2011 was, in Frank Sinatra’s terms, a very good year – and 2012 doesn’t look like being so bad either.…

ISLAMABAD – Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari abruptly returned to Karachi on the morning of December 19, following a 13-day absence for …

CANBERRA – Václav Havel, the Czech playwright and dissident turned president, and North Korean despot Kim Jong-il might have lived on differ…

TOKYO – On December 17, North Korea announced that its supreme “Dear Leader,” Kim Jong-il, had died in a train carrying him on one of the ma…

JOHANNESBURG – The United Nations’ recent 17th Conference of the Parties (COP-17) in Durban, South Africa succeeded in renewing the Kyoto Pr…

NEW DELHI – Asia’s economic dynamism is beginning to find a parallel in the region’s diplomacy, particularly where security is concerned. In…

BRUSSELS – Over the past four years, the European Investment Bank – the European Union’s house bank – has loaned €48 billion ($62 billion) …

LONDON – No sooner had I finished reading an article that eulogized Václav Havel, the playwright turned dissident turned peaceful revolution…

LONDON – The term “Arab Spring” is already highly disputed. Do the revolutions across the Arab world presage the glory days of summer, or a …

LUKYANIVSKA PRISON, KYIV – It has been said that there are no atheists in a foxhole. Here, after my show trial and four and a half months in…