BERLIN: Nov. 15, 2008, is a date to remember, because on that day history was made. For the first time, the G-20, the world’s 20 leading economies, came together in Washington, D.C., to find an answer to the global financial and economic crisis. While this first meeting resulted in nothing more than declarations of intent, …

DUBAI: Watching King Abdullah unveil a landmark interfaith initiative at the United Nations last month, one couldn’t help but recall his visit to Vatican last year. He was doing something that would have been unthinkable not long ago. The custodian of Islam’s two holiest shrines traveled to the Vatican and met Pope Benedict, offering him …

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts: The terrorist attacks in Mumbai have dramatized how the urgent will often take precedence over the important for the incoming Barack Obama administration. The attacks have plunged relations between Pakistan and India into unpredictable territory just when a series of policy reviews in Washington are focused on overhauling strategy in Afghanistan. With Afghanistan …

ISLAMABAD: Sitting next to a four-foot-tall water pipe, I asked the tribal leader in front of me: What does victory mean to you? He sputtered smoke, raised his bushy white eyebrows, and said, “Victory. How can you have victory here? The United States went into Afghanistan to destroy Al Qaeda. But seven years later, what …

ROME: Once again, the reputation of Pope Pius XII is under scrutiny and attack. Indeed, so searching are the questions and so inflamed are discussions about the Roman Catholic Church’s pontiff during World War II that the current pope, Benedict XVI, recently announced that he may postpone Pius’s beatification until the Vatican’s archives for the …

SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO: Attending the Creativity for Peace summer camp two years ago was one of the most meaningful and unforgettable experiences in my life. Creativity for Peace is a year-round program which brings together Arab and Israeli girls for three weeks in the United States to promote understanding and respect with the promise …

CAIRO: The state assets management plan floated by Egypt’s National Democratic Party is nothing but a failure, not only because of the way the project was announced, as it seemed that the party is still living in the 1950s and 1960s when people used to be taken by surprise, but also because it torpedoes everything …

TEL AVIV: When I told this to Anwar Sadat, he laughed: “The moment the door of your airplane opened, all Israelis held their breath. I live on a main street in Tel Aviv, and at that moment I looked out at the street below. It was totally empty. Nothing moved, except one cat which was …

LONDON: NATO, whose foreign ministers will meet next week, is dying. Death, of course, comes to all living things. And, as NATO approaches its 60th birthday next spring, there seems no immediate urgency about writing its obituary; 60-year-olds may reasonably look forward to another decade, perhaps two or even three, of active and productive life. …

WASHINGTON, DC: The election of Barack Obama to be the 44th president is profoundly historic. We have at long last been able to come together in a way that has eluded us in the long history of our great country. We should celebrate this triumph of the true spirit of America. Election Day celebrations were …

NEW YORK: So, why did he do it? What led Barack Obama to tap his former adversary, Hillary Clinton, to serve as his Secretary of State, the face and voice of his foreign policy, his emissary to the world? There are plenty of plausible explanations. One can imagine that he is applying that old adage, …

BERKELEY: For 15 months, the United States Federal Reserve, assisted by the financial regulators of the US Treasury, have been trying to make the macroeconomic consequences of the American mortgage-backed securities financial crisis as small as possible – trying, above all, to avoid a deep depression. They have also had three subsidiary objectives: . Keep …

MUMBAI: In most cities of South Asia, hidden beneath the grime and neglect of extreme poverty, there exists a little Somalia waiting to burst out and infect the body politic. This netherworld, patrolled and nourished by criminals who operate a vast black-market economy, has bred, in Mumbai, a community that has utter contempt for the …

PARIS: When the heads of state of the world’s 20 largest economies come together on short notice, as they just did in Washington, DC, it is clear how serious the current global crisis is. They did not decide much, except to call for improved monitoring and regulation of financial flows. More importantly, they committed themselves …

LONDON: I recently took part in a public debate with Paul Keating, Australia’s former prime minister. He is an interesting man, a genuine intellectual driven by his inner demons both to flay those who pay insufficient credit to his transformational role in Australian politics and to expose what he regards as waffle and myths. This …

CAIRO: The proverbial being from Mars who accidentally lands in Egypt (assuming that it can read) will instantly identify Egypt’s national ailment as some deviant form of schizophrenia marked by haphazard outbursts of excruciating violence. And that’s an understatement. It seems that the “system has morphed into an a-reasonable creature who not only defies basic …

JAKARTA: Two weeks ago, Indonesia’s parliament passed an anti-porn bill, which bans anyone from wearing clothes or promoting material that could incite “sexual desire . Although regulations regarding pornography are important, there is some concern that there will be other implications, for instance for women’s rights, even down to what is permissible to wear in …

HARARE: Some time ago, the head of the United Nations refugee agency, Antonio Guterres, said of the Democratic Republic of Congo: “Nobody in the outside world feels threatened, and so the international community is not really paying attention. Not anymore: currently, Congo’s eastern province of North Kivu is in the headlines almost every day. Last …

PARIS: Exceptional circumstances – namely, the depth and urgency of the financial and economic crisis – have contributed to bringing an exceptional man, Barack Obama, to the American presidency. But will they also prevent him from succeeding? Will the spirit of hope that brought Obama to power triumph over the winds of economic and social …

WASHINGTON DC: One of President-elect Barack Obama’s top priorities will be to rethink the “war on terror from the ground up. That means following through on his campaign promises to close the US military prison at Guantánamo, which would be a major symbolic achievement. Obama’s administration-in-waiting is now crafting plans to bring several dozen detainees …

NEW YORK: The global recession now underway is the result not only of a financial panic, but also of more basic uncertainty about the future direction of the world economy. Consumers are pulling back from home and automobile purchases not only because they have suffered a blow to their wealth with declining stock prices and …

CAIRO: Those who seek the truth and secrets of the mujahideen should read the document published a few days ago by Sayed Imam Al-Sharif, previously known as Dr. Fadl. I will not get into too much detail about the document, but I would like to highlight some points that shape their main gist. Sayed Imam …

WASHINGTON, DC: I watched Barack Obama’s victory speech in Kabul, where his campaign promises have had particular resonance. The stage is now set for Washington to send thousands more US troops to Afghanistan, and once Obama’s new team reviews the complexities of the counterinsurgency mission there, I suspect the United States will match troop increases …

NEW YORK: Next year will mark the twentieth anniversary of the collapse of communism in Europe. Liberated from the complexity of knowing too much about the cruel past, the young people of Eastern Europe’s post-communist generation seem uninterested in what their parents and grandparents endured. Yet the recent revelation of the Czech writer Milan Kundera’s …

LONDON: After World War I, H.G. Wells wrote that a race was on between morality and destruction. Humanity had to abandon its warlike ways, Wells said, or technology would decimate it. Economic writing, however, conveyed a completely different world. Here technology was deservedly king. Prometheus was a benevolent monarch who scattered the fruits of progress …

DUBAI: Dear Mr. Obama, The Americans have elected you hoping you could put out the Bush fires. They believe you could clear this spectacular mess. In picking up an African American with a Muslim father and a name that is often mistaken for Osama and who grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia, the Americans have …

WASHINGTON, DC: The financial crisis that began in 2007 has been persistently marked by muddled thinking and haphazard policymaking. Now, the United States Treasury is headed for a mistake of historic and catastrophic proportions by refusing to bail out America’s Big Three automakers. Make no mistake. If Detroit’s Big Three go bankrupt, the perfect storm …

PARIS: The world has been shaken by unprecedented spikes in food prices, by hunger riots, and by social tensions that demonstrate that food supplies have returned as a source of insecurity – to which global warming and declining natural resources are adding unprecedented urgency. By 2050, it is estimated that there will be nine billion …

Somalis who made it through this summer of fighting and hunger are living through one of the lowest points in their country’s history. At this time of desperate need, courageous aid workers seeking to alleviate the suffering of Somalis are at great personal risk. Nevertheless, despite the risks, and the bombing in late October of …

BERLIN: In looking at how the ascension of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States could affect the Middle East, I am firmly of the belief that to find the answer one need look no further than the way he ran his stunningly successful campaign. By far, it was the most professional, strategically-mapped …