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Ball Project Syndicate weekly and monthly commentaries are intended to foster public debate and deliver a diversity of viewpoints to newspapers around the globe. Written by distinguished commentators across the entire democratic political spectrum and from countries around the world, Project Syndicate commentaries present to general readers the most influential contemporary ideas in politics, economics, science, medicine, culture, and diplomacy.

Into Africa

Does foreign aid to Africa only make matters worse? Will AIDS wipe out a generation? Can Zimbabwe be saved from Robert Mugabe’s misrule? What can stop the genocide in Darfur? How will Africans feed and educate themselves? Does debt relief promote or ultimately hinder economic growth?

Africa’s challenges seem too numerous to count, and too overwhelming to overcome. The AIDS pandemic victimizes the sub-Sahara, even as high birth rates burden societies already unable to educate and employ their youth. Poverty remains a scourge, and ethnic wars seem emblematic of the continent’s incapacity for tolerance. Besieged by problems, Africa is often dismissed as a basket case and consigned to a future as a ward of the international community.

The Asian Century

Will Pakistan implode? Whatever happened to “Asian values”? Is there a Pacific arms race? Will China’s rise swamp Asia’s smaller economies? Will the Taliban’s revival bring chaos to Central Asia? Can Japan ever establish relations of trust with its neighbors?

Sixty percent of the world’s population resides in the countries extending from Afghanistan to the micro-states of Oceania. Immense and immensely diverse, Asia now confronts the simultaneous challenges of modernization and globalization. This compels not only awareness of the wider world, but also accommodations that may clash with embedded values. Modernization offers real material gains, but also incites serious internal divisions.

THE ASIAN CENTURY, undertaken in cooperation with the Asia Society, one of the world’s premier think tanks on Asian affairs, brings readers a unique mix of leading Asian commentators and decision-makers, as well as Asia experts from around the world.

China Stands Up

As Asia’s giant continues its rise, China‘s impact is being felt everywhere, with its economy a major factor in world trade and the modernized People’s Liberation Army a mounting concern. China’s appetite for cars, computers, and other goods promises both to spawn the world’s biggest market and to pose a danger to the global environment.

Edited by renowned China scholar and former Dean of University of California's School of Journalism, Orville Schell, the series brings to the readers of Project Syndicate's member papers the views of the most important experts, statesmen, and scholars from China and around the world.

Europe at Home and Abroad

Is a common European foreign policy a pipe dream? Can the European Union shape the way international relations and international law evolve? Will the United Kingdom turn inward? Is Sarkozy's France poised to re-emerge as a global actor? What is Europe’s role in a world grappling with the decline of American leadership, the rise of China and India, the resurgence of Russia, and the challenge of Islamism?

Produced in collaboration with the European Council on Foreign Relations and the Europe-wide policy journal Europe's World, Project Syndicate's monthly series EUROPE AT HOME AND ABROAD is the premier source for discerning analysis of Europe’s search for global influence. With contributions from such senior policymakers as Martti Ahtisaari, José Manuel Barroso, Javier Solana, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, EUROPE AT HOME AND ABROAD provides an incisive and provocative perspective on developments within Europe that will shape the Continent's future.

European Economies

Can entrepreneurship be encouraged in Europe if the continent’s social welfare policies remain unchanged? Is the European Central Bank too focused on inflation? Is Italy the new "sick man of Europe"?

These types of questions are the focus of Project Syndicate's monthly commentaries on European economics, edited by one of the continent's leading economists, Professor Niels Thygesen of the University of Copenhagen.

Latin America: The New New World

Is Latin America doomed to be ruled by caudillos? Does political turmoil in Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, and Ecuador mean that Latin America’s democratic revolution has run its course? How important are regional trading blocs? Whatever happened to "Liberation Theology"? Whither Cuba after Fidel Castro?

Edited by Roberto Guareschi who was the managing editor of the newspaper Clarín in Buenos Aires for 13 years. He is currently a writer and university lecturer. These monthly commentaries make Latin American affairs comprehensible to a global public.

A Window on Russia

“A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” – so Winston Churchill once described Russia. Subsequent efforts at understanding that huge and complex country have not made it much more transparent. But Project Syndicate’s special monthly column on Russian affairs offers readers a clear-eyed view.

Project Syndicate's monthly commentaries on Russian affairs and Russian life, edited by the historian and political commentator, Nina Khrushcheva, make the politics, culture, and economy of this often murky country explicable to an outside audience. Written primarily by eminent Russians, they present Russian society "from the inside," delivering to readers the people and ideas that will shape Russia in the months and years ahead.