The price of empire

Indians tend not to dwell on the country's colonial past. Whether through national strength or civilisational weakness, India has long refused to hold any grudge against Britain for 200 years of imperial enslavement, plunder, and exploitation. But Indians' equanimity about the past does not annul what was done.
22 February 2017

How to survive the Trump era

Trump sees the world in terms of a zero-sum game. In reality, globalisation, if well managed, is a positive-sum force: America gains if its friends and allies — whether Australia, the EU, or Mexico — are stronger. But Trump's approach threatens to turn it into a negative-sum game: America will lose, too.
21 February 2017

Ensuring Euro-Atlantic security

The chasm between Russia and the West appears to be wider now than at any point since the Cold War. But, despite stark differences, there are areas of existential common interest.
19 February 2017

Restoring faith in globalisation

I must confess that I am a firm believer in the benefits of globalisation. To my mind, the gradual interlinking of regions, countries, and people is the most profoundly positive development of our time.
18 February 2017

Trump and the rebirth of press freedom

US President Donald Trump's administration has shocked the mainstream press by bullying news outlets and unabashedly trafficking
17 February 2017

The private sector and the SDGs

Achieving the ambitious global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – which include ending poverty, improving global health,
16 February 2017

Trump's chaos theory of government

IN the weeks since Donald Trump's inauguration as President of the United States, it has become clear that he intends to roll back the progressive-egalitarian agenda that is commonly associated with “political correctness” to the starting block – not just in the United States, but globally.
14 February 2017

Navigating the Trumpscape

To say that US President Donald Trump's administration made waves in its initial weeks would be an understatement. Large protests across the United States and around the world attended his inauguration, and have continued since.
12 February 2017

Africa's decade of industrialisation

In today's interdependent global economy, Africa remains a weak link. If the world is to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, thereby completing the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, it must help Africa accelerate its development by promoting rapid and responsible industrialisation.
9 February 2017

The Female Resistance

Antagonism is mounting between today's right-wing populists and a somewhat unexpected but formidable opponent: women.
8 February 2017

Trust in markets and antitrust in media

This year's World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos came at a moment of puzzlement for the world's economic and financial elites. Although the global economy has lately been doing rather well, voters have been rebelling against them.
31 January 2017

Theresa May's Trump Card

In the same week that British Prime Minister Theresa May outlined her vision for a “hard” Brexit from the European Union – withdrawing from the single market and the customs union – incoming US President Donald Trump met with Michael Gove, a leading Tory Eurosceptic.
29 January 2017

Breaking the WHO's glass ceiling

It is time to break the WHO's African-leadership glass ceiling. Sustainable development is truly achievable only when leaders of global institutions are from the communities most affected by those institutions' work.
24 January 2017

Trump before Trump

Understanding the political success of US President-elect Donald Trump is not easy. There have been many glib comparisons with populist politicians of the past, from Huey Long to George Wallace. But the most revealing comparison may be with an historical figure from another country: the British nativist firebrand Enoch Powell in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
14 January 2017

America's failures of representation and prospects for democracy

As the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump approaches, the best way to assess the incoming administration may be to
13 January 2017

Trumpian uncertainty

Donald Trump grasped the spirit of the time: things weren't going well, and many voters wanted change. Now they will get it: there will be no business as usual. But seldom has there been more uncertainty. Which policies Trump will pursue remains unknown, to say nothing of which will succeed or what the consequences will be.
10 January 2017

The pitfalls of strongman populism

The year 2016 showed that the durability of liberal democracy can no longer be taken for granted, even in the West. In fact, Harvard University political scientist Yascha Mounk's analysis of World Values Survey data shows that, in many Western countries, public confidence in democracy has been declining for quite some time.
7 January 2017

The five lessons of populist rule

The political ideal that a populist government strives for is essentially an elected dictatorship. And recent US experience suggests that this can be a sustainable model.
3 January 2017

Will dollar strength trigger intervention in 2017?

Only a small group of central banks refrain from intervening in the foreign-exchange market to stabilise their currencies' exchange rate or coax it in the desired direction.
1 January 2017

Radical realism about climate change

Mainstream politics, by definition, is ill-equipped to imagine fundamental change. But in December 2015 in Paris, 196 governments
31 December 2016