The revolving-door experience of United States military commanders in Afghanistan is but symptom of a flawed strategy with its roots in the response to 9/11.
A new report that highlights Afghanistan’s extensive mineral deposits provides fuel for the United States’s military project. But it also signals the existence of a wider resource-competition that reflects the 21st-century’s emerging geopolitics.
Iran is at the centre of a global storm: targeted by new sanctions, suspected by Washington, defended by Brazil and Turkey. But the complex diplomacy around its nuclear programme could be ended by decisions made not in the United States but in Israel.
Albania’s iron communist regime survived until 1990, five years after the death of its great dictator, Enver Hoxha. But the country’s political path since then is full of unburied ghosts, says Bernd Fischer.
Many voices warn that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories is corroding the country’s democracy. Now, a worrying onslaught by Israel’s right-wing government on domestic dissenters raises further concerns. But the two issues are distinct as well as linked, say Keith Kahn-Harris & Joel Sch
The Burmese junta’s sophisticated and ruthless project of reinvention - “SPDC 2.0” - is preparing the way for an extension of its rule in civilian guise, says David Scott Mathieson.
Nepal’s path from civil war to a new constitutional and democratic order is proving hard. An influential Maoist movement and a powerful India are at the heart of the country’s stalemated political transition, says Manjushree Thapa.
The work of the Argentinean writer Tomás Eloy Martínez is intimately bound with the country’s modern history of political delusion and personal liberation. Ivan Briscoe reflects on a fiction-reality fusion that made a unique contribution to “inventing Perón”.
The scholar of world politics and openDemocracy columnist Fred Halliday lived and worked in - and fell in love with - Barcelona. In a warm essay written five months before he died on 26 April 2010, Fred celebrates the home of his last years.
Chinese politics exist on an economic cliff-edge. This makes the outcome of a contest within the country’s elite decisive, not least for the future relationship with the United States, says Kerry Brown.
The end of Sri Lanka’s post-war electoral cycle makes it even more important for the world to stand for justice over the country’s human-rights abuses, says Meenakshi Ganguly.This article was first published on 28 April 2010
Israel’s assault on a flagship attempting to break the blockade of Gaza has sparked international condemnation. Behind the crisis lie deeper shifts in world politics in which Turkey is playing a key part.
