The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights notable op-eds on major issues from the past week. Hedging Against Democracy Prompted by a recent New York Times article on the extent to which American companies and investors are involved in the creation and maintenance of China’s increasingly sophisticated internal surveillance system, the past week saw more than one noteworthy op-ed about the progressively capitalist nature of China’s big brother state. Harold Meyerson mused in the Sept. 19 Washington Post that the “American economy […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights notable op-eds on major issues from the past week. Bin Laden’s New Image The sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks prompted a surge of op-eds analyzing how Osama bin Laden’s image has changed since 2001, why he hasn’t been captured, and what the future may hold for him. Fawaz A. Gerges argued in the Sept. 13 Christian Science Monitor that a recent bin Laden videotape showed how he is now “venturing into a new […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights notable op-eds on major issues from the past week. The Stage Is Set With the much anticipated September report due this week by U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker on the status of the Iraq war, there was little surprise last week’s opinion pages were dominated by claims of what’s gone wrong, what’s gone right and what the U.S. should do now in Iraq. Leading the charge was Madeleine K. Albright, […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights notable op-eds on major issues from the past week. Headscarves and Military Uniforms;What Gul Means for Turkey The Aug. 28 ascension of Justice and Development Party member and former Islamist Abdullah Gul to the Turkish presidency (here’s a CNN report on it) prompted a barrage of op-eds about what the near and distant future will hold for Turkey, which enjoys a border with Iran, Syria and Iraq. Claiming Gul’s election “marks a watershed in the […]

The Commentary Week In Review will return to this space next week. It is normally posted on the blog every Friday by World Politics Review Senior Editor Guy Taylor, who is on vacation this week. Drawing from more than two dozenEnglish-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights ahandful of the week’s notable op-eds. You can read last week’s installation by clicking here. The installation from two weeks ago is here. The columndraws from links aggregated every weekday morning in WPR’s MediaRoundup, which you can receive by email for free by registering now.

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notable op-eds. Sarkozy Helps France’s Wealthy The first law passed by Nicolas Sarkozy’s government was a tax cut, which, according to Jordan Stancil’s assessment in an article posted on the Web site of The Nation on August 15, was “massive and unnecessary,” will go “mostly to the wealthy, [will] further degrade France’s public finances and probably lead to cuts in programs the majority of people rely on.” Stancil asserted: The […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notable op-eds. World Bank-Rolling Iran Mark Kirk pointed out in the August 10 Washington Post that while both the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency have found Iran in breach of its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the World Bank continues to fund projects in Iran. According to Kirk, a Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, the World Bank is presently funding “nine government projects in […]

The Commentary Week in Reviewis posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozenEnglish-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights ahandful of the week’s notable op-eds. What Bush could learn about the Middle East from Napoleon, Peru’s economic inequality, Japan’s historic election, Poland’s identity crisis and more. Demands on Peru’s Poor Writing in the July 30 Miami Herald,Michael Shifter described the “profound social divisions” afflicting Peruwhere President Alan García has just completed the first year of hisfive-year term. “García can at least have thepeace of mind that his second term marks a vast improvement over thefirst,” wrote […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notable op-eds. Dawn of the Migration Age U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon argued in the July 10 Guardian that “we should welcome” a new era of mobility, which has the potential to bring millions out of poverty worldwide. Noting that, at the opening of the 21st Century, it has become “commonplace to say that we live in a globalised world,” the secretary general wrote: Less well understood is that globalisation […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notable op-eds. The Qaddafi Saga John K. Cooley argued in the June 22 Christian Science Monitor that despite Col. Moammar Qaddafi’s abandonment of Libya’s secret WMD programs, Western governments still need to insist the Libyan leader prove his good faith about democratic and judicial reform. Citing recent coziness enjoyed between Qaddafi, the Bush administration and outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Cooley asserted that “there are dark aspects to this […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notable op-eds. China’s Expanding Military Noting how “China’s defense spending has been on the rise for more than 15 years,” Gary Schmitt asserted in the June 14 Washington Post that Americans “don’t know the strategic ‘why’ behind this buildup.” “As China adds hundreds of advanced fighters; builds scores of new submarines, frigates and destroyers; modernizes and expands its strategic nuclear arsenal; and fields hundreds of new theater-range missiles,” wrote Schmitt, […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notable op-eds. Bargaining With Russia to Contain Iran Claiming “relations between the United States and Russia have hit their lowest point since the Cold War,” Joseph S. Nye Jr. asserted in the June 8 Boston Globe that the “growing tension has real and dangerous implications for US security: Washington is struggling to get Russia’s help in sanctioning Iran for its nuclear program.” “The latest International Atomic Energy Agency report paints […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notable op-eds. Brazil’s Sugar-Cane Revolution Brazilian President Lula da Silva argued in the May 31 Guardian that “developing countries cannot be expected to share an equal burden in offsetting the environmental impacts mostly caused by richer countries, currently still responsible for 65% of overall greenhouse gas emissions.” Noting that his own country’s current “energy matrix is 45% renewable, against a worldwide average of 14%,” Lula asserted that Brazil is actually […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notable op-eds. Africa’s secret prisons Writing in the New Statesman on May 21, Christopher Thompson claimed that the United States has “quietly opened” a War on Terror front in East Africa, specifically through the use of undocumented Ethiopian jails for “‘rendition’ and interrogation of terror suspects” rounded up in the region. “Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing the exact number of prisoners. They are kept in secret detention that […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notable op-eds. February’s bilateral agreement between the United States and North Korea to push Pyongyang toward giving up its nuclear programs is now on the verge of collapse, according to John Bolton, who reminded us in the May 18 Wall Street Journal that “the first step, 60 days after ratification, was to be that North Korea ‘will shut down and seal for the purpose of eventual abandonment’ the Yongbyon nuclear […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notable op-eds. With the United States deep in battle against insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and “fearing the next terrorist attack” on its own shores, Lorenzo Vidino posed the following in his May 9 Boston Globe commentary: “Why not empower moderates within the Muslim world? Why not intervene in what is often defined as a civil war for the soul of Islam in support of those who espouse positions that […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notable op-eds. As news broke of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s “impromptu 3-minute discussion” with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Ghassan Atiyyah’s commentary in the May 4 Daily Star asserted that the much anticipated conference of the region’s foreign minister’s “could be a turning point that leads all sides toward concerted action.” In addition to using the conference to demonstrate a “new commitment to sustained, […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notable op-eds. Despite the wars, oil and endless Western punditry over its geopolitical significance, Edward Luttwak argued in the May cover story of Prospect Magazine that the Middle East is less relevant today than ever, and it would be best for everyone if the rest of the world learned to ignore it. “Strategically, the Arab-Israeli conflict has been almost irrelevant since the end of the cold war. And as for […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notable op-eds. An analysis by Salah Hemeid in this week’s Al-Ahram Weekly asserted that “a key Sunni Arab insurgency group in Iraq has called on Osama Bin Laden to step in and discipline his Al-Qaeda associates” from another group called the “Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia Organization.” “The growing tension was triggered by a power struggle between Al-Qaeda and powerful Sunni tribal leaders angered by the terror group’s indiscriminate killing of […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notable op-eds. A great deal is at stake as the African powerhouse of Nigeria heads into nationwide elections this week, and so far initial indications “have not been promising,” according to John Ghazvinian’s April 12 assessment on the Web site of The Nation. “President Olusegun Obasanjo, a darling of Western business interests, has appeared reluctant to leave office,” Ghazvinian explained. “At its nominating convention in December, the ruling People’s Democratic […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notable op-eds. After last week’s New York Times piece by Nicholas D. Kristof made the case for U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney being a spy for Iran, Iason Athanasiadis drew attention in his March 29 World Politics Review exclusive to similarly tongue-in-cheek claims in the Israeli media that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could be working for Israel. Athanasiadis’ WPR piece, written from Tehran, examines Iranian foreign policy and chronicles his […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notable op-eds. Harsh Mander argued this week in The Times of India that little positive response has been made by the Indian government during the five years since mobs of Hindus fatally attacked the Muslim minority in Gujarat state in 2002. “Several thousand people have still not returned to their original homes and are losing hope of doing so in the future,” wrote Mander. “Many have moved out of the […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notable op-eds. This could be the end for Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, not because he’s 83, but simply, according to Ben Macintyre’s assessment in the March 17 Times of London, because of his regime’s sloppily managed torture recently of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. “All tyrannies have a tipping point, a moment when the power of the dictator crumbles and he reads the writing on the wall,” wrote Macintyre. “Usually, that […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday.Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outletsworldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notableop-eds.The price of truth continues to rise. Bush should be thinking Brazil, Brazil, Brazil. Egypt could soon end up run by the Muslim Brotherhood. Sunni Muslims aren’t going to buy U.S. claims that Iran is out to get them. The African Union should be done away with. And don’t blame China for the currently plunging world markets. Coming on the heels of reports that Russian journalist Ivan Safronov was working on a […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notable op-eds. In this week’s review: Despite the 2008 Olympic games, human rights improvements in China won’t come easy; the outlook for the Darfur Peace Agreement is bleak; opponents of U.S. foreign policy are using the courts to frustrate American aims; three views on what Iraq needs; and the rise of new great powers pose a challenge to the international system. With the 2008 summer Olympics fast approaching, China “knows […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notable op-eds. Blogs are challenging the mainstream media and, in some parts of the world, that’s good thing. Expect the unexpected in the French presidential race. The British drawdown in Iraq is no surprise. Syria is “just as complicit as Iran,” and the Cold War is over, so let’s have a toast. Writing in the Feb. 21 Guardian, Simon Tisdall offered an insightful update on the French Presidential race: Despite […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notable op-eds. Normally, in our Commentary Week in Review, we highlight five notable op-eds from the week, on the theory that a review of the world’s opinion pages can’t hope to be comprehensive, but can merely highlight a few interesting or excellent examples among the very diverse smorgasbord of subjects and points of view that are covered each week in newspapers and magazines from New York and Washington to Mumbai, […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notable op-eds. Will the United States bomb Iran? Is that exactly what Iranian hard-liners want? Those questions and others, including ones on Sri Lanka’s civil war, Pakistan’s Taliban collusion and global warming, made their way into opinionated print the week of Feb. 4 through Feb. 9. Noting the Bush administration is “beating the drums of war with Iran,” Lenoard Weiss and Larry Diamond wrote in the Feb. 5 Los Angeles […]

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notable op-eds. Peel the lid off China’s activities in Africa, ponder what happened to the anti-ballistic missile treaty and laugh at the witty battlefield lingo being tossed around in Iraq. Jan. 28 through Feb. 2 was a diverse one in the opinion pages. Anene Ejikeme highlighted an astounding statistic in the Feb. 1 Christian Science Monitor: “Overall trade between Africa and China grew more than 50 percent in 2005 to […]

The WPR Commentary Week in Review is posted every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights the week’s notable op-eds. Though some claimed President Bush attempted to duck the issue in his State of the Union address, the Iraq war continued to dominate op-eds from Jan. 21 through Jan. 26. The Chinese satellite blast certainly made a good showing though, and various other often-ignored corners of the world were examined in opinionated print this week — namely Kosovo and Ecuador. Philip Bowring’s Jan. 21 piece in the International Herald Tribune claimed that China’s […]

The WPR Commentary Week in Review is posted every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights at least one notable op-ed from each day of the week. Jan. 15 through Jan. 19 was another week dominated by op-ed articles on crisis in the Mideast and Iraq and what the United States should do now, and how the whole mess is affecting the geopolitical strategies of countries across the world. But first, a couple of nuggety pieces about other parts of the world. For instance, Alexandra Starr argued in the Jan. 15 Los Angeles […]

The WPR Commentary Week in Review is posted every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights at least one notable op-ed from each day of the week. This week, commentary about Bush’s mid-week speech to the U.S. public on Iraq strategy dominated the opinion pages. On Sunday, John McCain tried to set to the tone for the week’s debate on Iraq with an op-ed in the Washington Post titled “Send More Troops.” “Contrary to popular notions that U.S. troops are getting ‘caught in the crossfire’ between Sunni and Shiite fighters and are therefore […]

Saddam Hussein hangs, the U.S. military shifts left, Lebanon’s Democracy is so fragile, and Somalia is on the brink. . . . The World Politics Review Commentary Week in Review is posted by noon every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights one op-ed for each day of the past week and aggregates other noteworthy pieces from the week. Jan. 1 through Jan. 5 was dominated by analysis of Saddam’s execution. Mark Bowden led the way, arguing in the Jan. 2 Wall Street Journal that one of the better allies in promoting the […]