From the Shah of Iran to Egypt’s Mubarak to Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister, cozy relationships in US foreign policy need to be questioned
Beijing’s promotion of a new strike aircraft may be less a powerful addition to its military arsenal than a sophisticated part of a deeper strategy.
The extraordinary arc of Barack Obama’s popular appeal tells a deeper story of America: of how the relationship between liberalism and religion was forged, then frayed and broken, and how the president’s rhetoric offered the mirage of healing. Theo Hobson asks what, if anything, can be recovered f
A murderous assault on a public meeting in Arizona has further exposed the United States’s deep political divisions. President Obama’s reaction, for all the praise it received, failed to meet the moment, says Godfrey Hodgson. Now, with the state-of-the-union address, he has another chance.
A year after the earthquake in Haiti, the tasks of reconstruction remain vast. A shadowy election and blocked political process reinforce the sense of drift. Yet a coherent international effort can still make a real difference, says Johanna Mendelson Forman.
Gabour, Giffords, gangs, guns and self-righteous thugs. The massacre in Arizona is part of a murderous culture, one in which death and violence are a norm and hardly reprehensible. It needs weapons to survive, but also a sentiment of righteous indignation that only a real or imagined support group
After four years, the UN peace mission in Nepal will leave the country with an uncertain political and security future. Kyrgyz national commission blames Uzbeks for last year’s deadly ethnic violence. Sudan may be removed from the US state terror sponsor list by summer, officials say. All this and
An accumulating network of ignorance and prejudice is being mobilised in the United States against hyperbolised versions of the religion of Islam and its adherents. What are the core elements and ideological underpinnings of this powerful campaign? In a forensic essay first published in TomDispatc
Provocative demonstrations of US military might are no way to avert conflict in east Asia, argues Angel Gómez-de-Ágreda
The systemic flaws in United States governance make long-term policy to address its cavernous deficits impossible, says Godfrey Hodgson.
The last time this happened, the British government was hoping to combine a modern-looking commitment to nation-building with the old imperial aim of political domination. Wilkileaks shows that all too little has changed.
