North Korea, the US and the Status Quo
In the age of “fake news” and President Donald Trump claiming that Sweden was riddled with terror attacks which of course never took place, and of perpetual corporate and state-media...
Reintegrating the Taliban after the Death of Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda leader, was killed by US forces in Abbottabad, near Islamabad, Pakistan on 2nd May 2011. Nearly 10 years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks coordinated by al-Qaeda,...
Is the G20 the Real Security Council?
Is the G20 the real Security Council? Over the past two days the heads of state and government of the G20 (Group of Twenty) top world economies met in Hangzhou...
Modernization Theory and “Third Wave Democracy”: Internal and External Impediments to Democracy and Development
Introduction Known mostly for The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order(1996) Samuel Huntington, like Francis Fukuyama (End of History and the Last Man, 1992), caught the...
World Social Justice Day – 20 February
In February 2007, the United Nations General Assembly declared 20 February “World Social Justice Day”. The concept of social justice can be traced to ancient religions and philosophies East and...
Repairing the Policy-Making Processes of the United States: The First Step in Improving Its Defense
Former US Department of Defense (DOD) Secretary Robert Gates explained on the January 21, 2016 Business Insider website that our military’s biggest weakness is sequestration, compounded by unpredictability in the...
Saudi Arabia is Paying a Heavy Price for Iran’s Global Rehabilitation
As 2015 drew to a close, you could have been forgiven for cautious optimism as far as Saudi-Iranian relations were concerned. With the years-in-the-making nuclear deal finally sealed, Iran had...
Predictions for 2016
As I write, global stock markets kicked off 2016 by plunging, so much so in the case of China that stock market exchange was closed to stop selling. The fall...
Review of Global Developments in 2015 and Prospects for 2016
Introduction Top events in 2015 that shaped the world and are very likely to continue doing so include the economic slowdown not just in China and India, but in most...
Economic Development Models and Capitalism
The question of "Development Models" In the post-Communist era now more than two decades old, many people around the world are questioning what is the best economic development model? One...
21st Century Challenges to American Democracy: Part 3
“Consumption Democracy” Consumption values are at the core of contemporary American culture. The mass media, businesses and politicians equate such values with freedom and democracy. The social contract as the...
21st Century Challenges to American Democracy: Part 2
Rising Public Debt, Dwindling Democracy. Conservatives attribute the rising public debt to government spending on costly entitlement and social programs. They conclude that deficit financing for entitlement and social programs...
21st Century Challenges to American Democracy: Part 1
Abstract: It requires several hundred pages to address the complex subject of challenges to American democracy in the post-Cold War era of a global multi-polar economic and political power structure....
Argentina: A Case Study of Israel’s Zionist-Wall Street Destabilization Campaign
Introduction A recent article by Jorge Elbaum, the former executive director of DAIA (Delegation for Argentine Jewish Associations), the principle Argentine Jewish umbrella groups, published in the Buenos Aires daily...
Russian Foreign Policy under Dmitry Medvedev’s Presidency (2008-2012)
Summary Putin’s Russia (2000-2008) not only established internal stability, following the difficult and painful transition of the 1990’s onwards, but recovered economically, bolstered by a rapid increase in revenues from...