COMMENTARIES
COMMENTARIES
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The Great Firewall of China
Rebecca MacKinnon Series: China World 2006-01-31Writing from 1930’s Shanghai, China’s great essayist Lu Xun once observed: “Today there are all kinds of weeklies. Although their distribution is not very wide, they are shining in the darkness like daggers, letting their comrades know who is attacking the old, strong castles.” Muckraking broadsheets in the first half of the last century played cat-and-mouse games with Chinese government censors, ultimately helping to expose the corruption and moral bankruptcy of the Nationalist (KMT) government and contributing to the Communist victory in 1949.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 42530
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Getting Serious About Global Poverty
Rodrigo de Rato Series: Frontiers of Growth 2006-01-30Institutions and governments, like people, make bold resolutions at the beginning of every year. But, for the millions who face the crushing burden of poverty, mere proclamations that help is on the way are not enough to create jobs or foster development. This year, the international community must move decisively from pledges to action in the effort to reduce poverty. What will this require?... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 28373
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The Hamas Earthquake
Mkhaimar Abusada Series: Islam 2006-01-28Hamas’s crushing defeat of Fatah in this week’s elections brings the Palestinian people to a crossroads. An Islamist political party that previously abstained from national politics and rejects Fatah’s policy of negotiations with Israel, is now in charge in Palestine. ... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 36861
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Back to Afghanistan
George Soros Series: The World in Words 2006-01-28While the unremitting violence in Iraq grabs the world’s headlines, Afghanistan still struggles for peace. The country’s parliament is packed with warlords, the drug trade is thriving, and violence is on the rise.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 32271
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What Corporate Tax for Europe?
Stefano Micossi Series: European Economies 2006-01-27The European Commission is considering a common model of corporate taxation for the European Union that cannot possibly work. Instead, it should consider a simpler, and more viable, alternative that already exists.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 37003
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Hamas in Power
Shlomo Avineri Series: Islam 2006-01-26The victory of the fundamentalist Hamas in the Palestinian elections will have far-reaching consequences for the region, some totally unexpected. Two aspects, however, are already visible.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 24195
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The Great Man Syndrome
Dominique Moisi Series: European Observer 2006-01-25In our globalized age, vast impersonal forces are supposed to determine events. Globalized markets, unfettered trade, militant Islam, China’s awakening: these are the things historians and strategists usually portray as the key forces shaping our destiny. But most people don’t see things this way.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 43676
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The Forgotten Side of the War on Terrorism
Fidel V. Ramos Series: The Asian Century 2006-01-24During the past decade – particularly since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States – Westerners have generally considered international terrorism to be the most urgent threat to human security. Accordingly, vast resources have been mobilized and expended to counter its many forms.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 21588
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Poppy Power
Emma Bonino Series: Human Rights 2006-01-23This month, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on Afghanistan that could pave the way for a new and more open-minded approach to counter-narcotics strategies worldwide. In fact, the resolution calls on the participants at a conference of donors, to take place in London at the end of January, “to take into consideration the proposal of licensed production of opium for medical purposes, as already granted to a number of countries.” ... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 35976
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Embracing Science
Jeffrey D. Sachs Series: Economics and Justice 2006-01-23Long-term economic progress comes mainly from the invention and spread of improved technologies. The scientific revolution was made possible by the printing press, the industrial revolution by the steam engine, and India’s escape from famine by increased farm yields – the so-called “Green Revolution.” Today’s era of globalization emerged with the spread of computers and the Internet. Thus, when we seek solutions to some of the world’s toughest problems, they, too, are likely to be found, at least in part, in new technologies that can resolve old and seemingly intractable problems. ... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 37098
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Iraq’s Potemkin Government
Ian Bremmer Series: The World in Words 2006-01-21With the votes in Iraq’s election in December now counted, attempts to form a new government are set to move into high gear. Encouragingly, all sides appear to accept the results. But the key question concerning the future of the country remains: will Shia, Sunnis, and Kurds will unite behind a functioning central authority?... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 23309
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The Chimera of Russia’s Gas Power
Joseph S. Nye Series: Of Might and Right 2006-01-20Russia began 2006 by cutting off natural gas exports to Ukraine after its government refused to pay a fourfold increase in the subsidized price. The crisis in Ukraine, many of whose Soviet-era industries depend on cheap Russian gas, soon spread to Europe, which consumes 80% of Russian gas exports, when Ukraine began to divert gas from the pipeline that crosses its territory.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 40611
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Inequality and Discontent
Ralf Dahrendorf Series: Against the Current 2006-01-19In the last two decades, the world as a whole has gotten richer, but, while some national economies have advanced sharply, others have fallen farther behind. The increase in aggregate wealth has not led to the abolition, or even reduction, of poverty.... read Comments: 1 Recommended: 0 Read: 44366
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Coping with Catastrophic Risks
Richard Posner Series: Science and Society 2006-01-18One year after the Indian Ocean tsunami, what are the lessons? The biggest one is that it was the type of disaster to which policymakers pay too little attention – one that has a very low or unknown probability of occurring, but that creates enormous losses if it does occur. Great as the death toll, physical and emotional suffering of survivors, and property damage caused by the tsunami were, even greater losses could be inflicted by other disasters of low (but not negligible), or unknown, probability. ... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 27123
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Fear and Freedom on the Internet
Peter Singer Series: The Ethics of Life 2006-01-18Earlier this month it was reported that, at the request of China’s rulers, Microsoft shut down the Web site of a Chinese blogger that was maintained on a Microsoft service called MSN Spaces. The blogger, Zhao Jing, had been reporting on a strike by journalists at The Beijing News that followed the dismissal of the newspaper’s independent-minded editor.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 46077
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The False Promise of Private Pensions
J. Bradford DeLong Series: Anatomy of the Global Economy 2006-01-17One of the strangest claims made in the debates about social insurance now roiling the world’s richest countries is the that government-funded defined-benefit pension programs (such as America’s Social Security system) are outmoded. These programs were fine, the argument goes, for the industrial economy of the Great Depression and the post-World War II generation, but they have become obsolete in today’s high-tech, networked, post-industrial economy.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 43863
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Russia’s Economic Imperialism
Vladimer Papava and Frederick Starr Series: The World in Words 2006-01-17Russia’s use of natural gas to exert economic and political pressure on Ukraine has caused grave concern in the West. But Russia’s pressure on Georgia has been even heavier – and has scarcely been noticed.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 44734
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Justice Is Reconciliation
Desmond Tutu Series: Into Africa 2006-01-16In South Africa, indeed around the world, we are raised on a strict diet of justice as retribution. With violent crimes on a shocking upsurge, with the hideous crimes of child rape and abuse on the increase, there are nowadays frequent calls – backed by wide public support – to restore capital punishment. Mercifully, South Africa’s Constitutional Court has ruled that the death penalty – which South Africans eliminated at the same time we were liberated from apartheid – is unconstitutional. ... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 34776
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Is Bernanke Ready?
Robert J. Shiller Series: Finance in the 21st Century 2006-01-13Ben Bernanke, the nominee to replace Alan Greenspan this month as Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board, is a highly capable economist who has devoted his professional life to understanding the historical role of central banks and the problems that they have faced. His views represent, as much as can be expected, a consensus among those who have studied the issues carefully.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 42956
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The Stem-Cell Race Continues
H. T. Goranson Series: Science and Society 2006-01-12Scientific research is usually conducted to improve our lives, but it is also an industry, one that represents a massive investment by governments and corporations alike. The stakes and potential rewards for a few research topics are exceptionally high, which is why the recent finding that the Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk fabricated the results of his work on stem cells has reverberated so widely. ... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 31814
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An Open Letter to Ehud Olmert
Daoud Kuttab Series: The World in Words 2006-01-10Dear Mr. Olmert,... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 21329
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Hard Truths about Bird Flu
Henry I. Miller Series: Health and Medicine 2006-01-10The issues surrounding the possibility of a pandemic of the H5N1 strain of avian flu are extraordinarily complex, encompassing medicine, epidemiology, virology, and even politics and ethics. Moreover, there is tremendous uncertainty about exactly when H5N1, which now primarily affects birds, might mutate into a form that is transmissible between humans, and how infectious and lethal it might be. It is thus hardly surprising that commentaries about avian flu often miss the mark. A recent New York Times editorial, for example, decried wealthy countries’ “me first” attitude toward a possible H5N1 pandemic, because “[t]he best hope of stopping a pandemic, or at least buying time to respond, is to improve surveillance and health practices in East Africa and Asia, where one would probably begin.” To be sure, good surveillance is needed in order to obtain early warning that a strain of H5N1 flu transmissible between humans has been detected, so that nations around the world can rapidly initiate a variety of public health measures, including a program to produce large amounts of vaccine against that strain. But the massive undertaking required to “improve health practices in the poorest countries of the world” plays better on the editorial page than on the ground. ... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 39110
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Russia’s “Oil-for-Knowledge” Scheme
Alexander Etkind Series: A Window on Russia 2006-01-09Whenever you fill up your European compact car’s gas tank, or that of your American SUV, you pay as much as a Russian schoolteacher earns in a month. And every time you pay, you subsidize a regime that relies on energy, not information, as its main product. You finance the pre-modern and the inefficient, and perhaps worse: every time you pay, you may be collaborating with political evil.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 38243
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The Bush Repression
Aryeh Neier Series: Human Rights 2006-01-09How will President George W. Bush’s administration be remembered historically? After five years in office, and with another three years to go, some answers are already apparent. Others are emerging gradually. The latter category includes an increasing assault on civil liberties within the United States that now compares to that of Richard Nixon’s administration more than thirty years ago. ... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 36012
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Don’t Forget Wim Duisenberg’s Legacy
Melvyn Krauss Series: Transatlantic Perspectives 2006-01-06The most surprising and controversial thing about last December’s rate hike by the European Central Bank was that, after two and a half years of keeping interest rates at exceptionally low levels, the bank ventured an increase of only 25 basis points with no promise of more to come. Political pressure on Europe’s central bank may be the reason for that timid move.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 26251
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Sharon’s Triumph
Barry Rubin Series: The World in Words 2006-01-06Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s disabling stroke has thrown Israeli politics into turmoil yet again. Or so it seems. Sharon was considered a certain victor in the planned March elections, for which he had organized his own Kadima (Forward) party, attracting leading figures from the Labor party on the left and the Likud party on the right. But will his departure from public life really be as destabilizing as many observers suggest?... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 20961
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The Next Gas Crisis Awaits
Yuliya Tymoshenko Series: European Economies 2006-01-06Europe’s sigh of relief at the supposed end of the dispute between Russia and Ukraine over gas pricing was audible here in Kyiv. But the settlement raises more questions than it answers. By placing Ukraine’s energy needs in the hands of a shadowy company linked to international criminals, the agreement has planted the seeds of new and perhaps more dangerous crises.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 35587
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Godless Morality
Marc Hauser and Peter Singer Series: The Worldly Philosophers 2006-01-04Is religion necessary for morality? Many people consider it outrageous, even blasphemous, to deny the divine origin of morality. Either some divine being crafted our moral sense, or we picked it up from the teachings of organized religion. Either way, we need religion to curb nature’s vices. Paraphrasing Katherine Hepburn in the movie The African Queen, religion allows us to rise above wicked old Mother Nature, handing us a moral compass.... read Comments: 3 Recommended: 0 Read: 53851
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America’s Perpetual Christmas
Kenneth Rogoff Series: The Unbound Economy 2006-01-04Has the United States transcended the laws of economics? As the New Year begins, the US continues to race ahead of its rich-country counterparts. The gargantuan US trade deficit? No problem. In 2005, it widened further, and the dollar only strengthened. Low investment and a deteriorating primary education system? Not to worry. The super-flexible US economy keeps managing to produce more with less.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 33453
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For Turkey, For Europe
Michel Rocard Series: The Statesmen's Debate 2006-01-03Turkey is now, finally, negotiating with the European Commission the terms of its possible membership in the European Union. But whether “possible” becomes “eventual” remains very much an open question. Indeed, completing the negotiations is likely to prove as difficult as the decision to start them.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 38360
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The Next IMF
Jurgen Stark Series: Frontiers of Growth 2006-01-03The international monetary and financial system has witnessed tremendous change over the recent decades. Rapid expansion in cross-border capital flows, continued financial innovation, and deepening financial markets pose increasing challenges not only for national policy makers, but also for international financial institutions. This has been particularly true of the IMF as it seeks to serve its global membership, and it has triggered a critically important discussion of the Fund’s strategic direction.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 25352
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Latin America at a Crossroads
Raúl Alfonsín Series: Latin America 2006-01-01Last year witnessed a decisive turn in Latin America. A growing number of countries in the region now seem determined to pursue their interests regardless of what the United States desires.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 30438
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Global Malaise in 2006?
Joseph E. Stiglitz Series: Unconventional Economic Wisdom 2006-01-01The almighty American consumer had another banner year in 2005, helping sustain global economic growth, albeit at a slower pace than in 2004. As in recent years, he consumed at or above his income level, and the United States as a whole spent well beyond its means, borrowing from the rest of the world at a feverish pace in 2005 – more than $2 billion a day.... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 1 Read: 42387
