The effects of the catastrophic earthquake in Japan’s northeast will be felt for years to come. How Japan responds will help to define its capacity to meet other 21st-century tests, says David Hayes.
Egyptians managed by peaceful protest to force the removal of their president. With barely a pause, they are now engaged in building a constitutional democracy. Mansoor Mirza assesses the leading forces in the emerging political landscape.
The military balance of Libya’s domestic conflict is raising debate about external intervention. But the strategy of the Gaddafi regime is also crucial to what happens next.
The fate of the popular insurgencies in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine and elsewhere in the early-mid 2000s could offer guidance or warning to the middle-east uprising of 2011 - and to western states, says Vicken Cheterian.
Israel’s political class is struggling to make sense of a crumbling Arab order and the loss of the certainties it embodied, reports Thomas O’Dwyer.
An Arab world in transformation has found France’s elite shamed by its links with the old order. A control-freak president with base political instincts offers little hope for a better policy, says Patrice de Beer.
Saudi Arabia’s ruling family is seeking to mollify discontent by spending some of its vast wealth. But that approach fails to meet the aspirations of a changing society, says Christoph Wilcke.
The military-political deadlock in Libya between supporters and opponents of the Gaddafi regime leaves a pervasive uncertainty over the country’s future. But even greater challenges will follow this conflict, says Alison Pargeter.
The waves of change in the Arab world have women at the centre. But how will they fare as revolt turns towards a new political and social settlement? Rada Ivekovic considers the emerging balance.
The crisis in Libya is confronting the United States with a new awareness of its military and political constraints, says Godfrey Hodgson.
The democracy uprisings in the Arab world hold a lesson for New Delhi, says Meenakshi Ganguly: the need for a foreign-policy stance that matches India's global ambitions.
