Latest in Opinion Highlight
Latest in Opinion
NATO’s dangerous Afghan dream
By Brahma Chellaney NEW DELHI: The agreement at the NATO summit meeting in Lisbon on a transition plan to help end the war in Afghanistan within the next four years raises troubling questions about regional security and the global fight against transnational terrorism. As the US and other coalition partners gradually wind down their combat role, …
In America, youth bring people together
By Eboo Patel and Samantha Kirby CHICAGO, Illinois: Last month, Zach Jordan, a senior at Elon University in North Carolina, found himself aghast at what he was hearing in the media about Muslims. But instead of just turning off the television or even yelling at it, Zach took what sociologists Bob Putnam and David Campbell tell …
Silatech index highlights challenge of ‘waithood’ for young Egyptians
By Mohamed Younis After completing their education, many young people throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region spend a considerable amount of time attaining the financial means to establish themselves as independent adults. The first hurdle is finding a quality job. This period of “waithood” – as defined by Dhillon and Yousef in Generation …
Time to ratify new START
By Radosław Sikorski WARSAW: As a long-time observer of American politics, I know that United States senators will decide whether to ratify New START, the arms control treaty with Russia negotiated this year, on the basis of a thorough evaluation of their country’s national interests. As the democratically elected representatives of the American people, they alone …
Japan’s options
By Joseph Nye TOKYO: The current tensions between China and Japan have revived talk about how far Japan has fallen since its glory years of the 1980s. To the extent that this sense of decline is grounded in reality, can Japan recover? Japan’s economy has suffered two decades of slow growth because of the poor policy …
Human rights groups united in demand for Bush’s prosecution
By César Chelala NEW YORK: Several human rights groups are united in their demand that former president George W. Bush face prosecution following his open admission that he authorized the use of waterboarding, one of the cruelest forms of torture. Former president Bush made his admission during interviews publicizing his book, Decision Points. As an answer …
Financing the green economy
By Meles Zenawi and Jens Stoltenberg ADDIS ABABA: At the climate-change summit in Copenhagen last December, political leaders expressed a strong will to urgently combat global warming. As we approach the next climate-change summit in Cancún, Mexico, this December, the international community must deliver concrete results and move forward to address the challenge. Finance is a …
The Brotherhood’s electorate
By Khalil Al-Anani CAIRO: Whereas the number of Muslim Brotherhood members is still a big secret, it’s not difficult to determine its electorate. Three categories of people tend to vote in favor of the Brotherhood (or the Ikhwan) candidates. First, there are those who are committed to Ikhwan’s religious and political ideology. They’ve been called “Ikhwan …
Gaza’s blockade silences voices of women
By Mary Robinson and Lakhdar Brahimi GAZA: We have just visited the Gaza Strip where we met many courageous people trying to live relatively normal lives despite the crippling effects of the illegal Israeli blockade. The blockade was imposed to punish the Hamas-led government, but it is women and children who are paying the highest price. …
Asia After Obama
By Brahma Chellaney NEW DELHI: US President Barack Obama’s 10-day Asian tour and the consecutive summit meetings of the East Asian Summit (EAS), the G-20, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) have helped shine a spotlight on Asia’s challenges at a time when tensions between an increasingly ambitious China and its neighbors permeate the region’s geopolitical …
Eastern Europe’s Tito option
By Andrew Wilson LONDON: Success stories in what the European Union calls “the neighborhood” have been hard to come by. First Georgia, then Ukraine, and most recently Moldova have all been big EU hopes. But, in each case, those hopes were dashed. Unfortunately for the EU, this year’s annual summit with Ukraine (on Nov. 22) will …
American foreign policy after the mid-term elections
By Richard Haass NEW YORK: Few Americans cast their ballot in the recent mid-term elections on the basis of foreign policy. While it may be difficult for people around the world to comprehend this, given the global reach of the United States, it is an undeniable fact. Most Americans are, after all, preoccupied with the US …
G20 or G2?
By John Defterios ABU DHABI: The good news is that the G20 represents 85 percent of global output. The bad news is that it is functioning more like the G2 with the current superpower (US) and the future superpower (China) dominating the agenda. US President Barack Obama is facing intense political heat at home and as …
A recovery for all
By Isabel Ortiz NEW YORK: Over the last two years, the majority of countries in the world chose to expand public spending in order to buffer the impact of the global financial crisis on their economies and populations. But, this year, with signs of economic recovery emerging, advanced countries have quickly shifted from fiscal stimulus to …
America’s employment and growth challenges
By Michael Spence NEW YORK: For many, if not most, Americans, the crisis that befell them in 2008 — leading to slow growth, rising unemployment, and high anxiety among voters — appeared to spring from nowhere. Certainly, the vast majority of economists, investment analysts, financial firms, and regulators failed to see the growing risk. In fact, …
Muslims and Jews visit each other’s holy places this November
By Habeeb Alli TORONTO, Canada: I can see your stares! I get them every time I say we are twinning our mosques and synagogues this month. “Really?” people ask, jaws dropping. For the third year, this exercise of interfaith exchange has progressed in good faith. Synagogues agree to twin with nearby mosques, with congregants visiting each …
Multiculturalism isn’t dead in Germany
By Lewis Gropp BONN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently declared that multiculturalism is “dead”. This statement has no basis in reality, because the word “multiculturalism” means nothing more than the functioning coexistence of various cultures within a community, which means that multiculturalism is in fact a universal, timeless concept. And in a globalized world, this concept …
Late, but not too late, for Sudan
By George Clooney and John Prendergast STANFORD: Well, we’re in it now. What we do best. Diplomacy. The White House has dispatched Senator John Kerry to Sudan with a proposal for peace between the North and South. It’s a giant step toward avoiding the kind of bloodshed that killed more than two million people in Sudan’s …
An independent Palestine might upset the status-quo
By Ghanem Nuseibeh LONDON: Many people view the prospect of creating an Arab state in the land of Palestine as nothing short of a political earthquake. The “Question of Palestine” has had tremendous influence across the region, and an independent Palestine would have a profound impact on regional politics, taking away one of the prime reasons …
A return to reason
By Bjørn Lomborg COPENHAGEN: Common sense was an early loser in the scorching battle over the reality of man-made global warming. For nearly 20 years, one group of activists argued — in the face of ever-mounting evidence — that global warming was a fabrication. Their opponents, meanwhile, exaggerated the phenomenon’s likely impact — and, as a …
The power of education to transform stereotypes of the West
By Inayah Rohmaniyah YOGYAKARTA: Extremism in Indonesia appears to be on the rise amid recent news of attacks against police headquarters in West Java and North Sumatra. Some members of the groups responsible for these attacks and a recent bank robbery are linked to Indonesia’s Jemaah Islamiyah, a militant religious group whose name is Arabic for …
Clarity about diamonds
By Peter Singer PRINCETON: Diamonds have an image of purity and light. They are given as a pledge of love and worn as a symbol of commitment. Yet diamonds have led to gruesome murders, as well as widespread rapes and amputations. Charles Taylor, a former president of Liberia currently facing war crimes charges at a special …
Don’t count on global governance
By Dani Rodrik CAMBRIDGE: Everybody agrees that the world economy is ill, but the diagnosis apparently depends on which corner of it you happen to inhabit. In Washington, accusing fingers point to China, blaming its currency policy for causing large trade imbalances and “destroying jobs” in the United States. Go to Seoul or Brasilia, and you …
Rejoice, it’s election season
By Rania Al Malky CAIRO: Some crimes are just unforgivable, no matter who committed them. In Shubra El-Kheima a few days ago, according to news reports, two 14-year-olds were arrested for raping and castrating a 10-year-old child. Both the horror of the crime and the age of those who committed it seem beyond the reach …
EU and Israel-Palestine
By Rory Miller LONDON: It is not difficult to understand the European Union’s determination to play a constructive role in solving the Israel-Palestine conflict. Generations of European policy-makers have believed that a permanent settlement of this conflict on the basis of a two state solution is not only vital for the Middle East but is, in …
The Big Blink
By Raghuram Rajan CHICAGO: World growth is likely to remain subdued over the next few years, with industrial countries struggling to repair household and government balance sheets, and emerging markets weaning themselves off of industrial-country demand. As this clean-up from the Great Recession continues, one thing is clear: the source of global demand in the future …
Students must pay for their education
By David B Roberts DURHAM: Some time ago, a tiny island called the United Kingdom ruled the world. Somehow an auspicious confluence of events transpired that meant that the sun never set on the British Empire. Its navy was the greatest and largest ever seen, its industries cornered the world’s markets, its political power reached …
We the People: restoring sanity in America
By Susan Koscis WASHINGTON, DC: “Hug a Muslim Today” was the first hand-held sign I saw upon arriving at the Rally to Restore Sanity, which was recently held on a beautiful autumn afternoon on the National Mall in Washington, DC. That sign set the tone for what was to come. I’m a child of the 1960s, …
Bahrain: Economic freedoms
By Oxford Business Group A series of international surveys published recently point towards the kingdom’s open and conducive investment environment as a key competitive advantage. On November 2, the Canadian public policy research the Fraser Institute released its latest study on economic freedom in the Arab world, with Bahrain ranked the most liberal of the 22 …
Funding the low-carbon revolution
By Trevor Manuel and Nicolas Stern PRETORIA: The two defining challenges of our time are managing climate change and overcoming world poverty. We cannot succeed on one without succeeding on the other. With international collaboration and sound policies, we can achieve that success by launching a new era of low-carbon economic growth while adapting to the …