The appointment of a new head of the lead United Nations anti-drugs agency is a precious opportunity to abandon a failed policy, says Juan Gabriel Tokatlian.
The transition to a new Chinese leadership has already begun. The domestic and international demands made of it will be greater than ever. But the character of the emerging generation will severely constrain its ability to cope, say Kerry Brown & Loh Su-hsing.
The failed assault on a Japanese oil supertanker is, alongside developments in Iraq and Yemen, a signal of the al-Qaida movement’s protean challenge.
Israel’s combative military posture, evident both in a tense border skirmish with Lebanon and in its wider strategic plans, is a recipe for permanent insecurity.
The Beijing leadership’s obsession with order and control in face of citizens' search for justice highlights the dysfunctional nature of China’s political system, says Li Datong.
The release of official United States material by the website Wikileaks confirms and amplifies enduring political assessments of the Afghanistan war, not least on openDemocracy.
In half a generation, a period that straddles two presidencies, politics has lifted millions of Brazilians from misery. Arthur Ituassu explains how it was done.
The United States and its allies are rethinking their commitment to Afghanistan by the week. But an attack on Iran would return all calculations to ground zero.
The achievement of Isaias Afewerki’s regime in Asmara is to have used confrontation with its neighbours to entrench its survival. It is a political lesson that the international community still needs to learn, says Selam Kidane.
The entrenchment of inequality in the United States damages the economy, degrades politics and corrodes the American dream. A new reality is also an epic challenge of leadership, says Godfrey Hodgson.
A lengthy political crisis in Nepal has exposed deep divisions over the country’s future, in which matters of identity - national, ethnic, caste, class - are to the fore. A new federal constitution is intended to address these. The obstacles in its way could be removed by rethinking the “identitar
An Israeli assault on Iran’s nuclear and missile infrastructure and personnel would be far more extensive than many realise. The prospect that it will happen in the next few months is increasing.
