Global Archive

WASHINGTON — With U.S. presidential elections approaching, debate over the long-term future of U.S. foreign policy is sure to become increasingly animated, and there’s no shortage in this town of scholars and analysts eager to weigh in. Among them is Jakub J. Grygiel, whose new book, “Great Powers and Geopolitical Change,” offers a history of how geopolitical strategy — or geostrategy — has shaped the fate of past and present empires from the Romans to the Ottomans and the Chinese. I recently chatted with Grygiel, the George H.W. Bush Assistant Professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University’s School of […]

WASHINGTON — Two recent suicides have shaken the political landscape of Japan in the weeks approaching the first legislative election during the tenure of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The elections for Japan’s upper legislative house are set for July 22, and the suicides, apparently related to an investigation into a bid-rigging scandal, reflect Japanese culture’s emphasis on avoiding shame and dishonor. Toshikatsu Matsuoka, Japan’s Minister of Agriculture, Forestryand Fisheries reportedly hung himself on May 28, and Shinichi Yamazaki,a former business executive, is said to have leapt to his death fromhis apartment a day later. Both men are believed to have […]

The latest report by illegal logging watchdog Global Witness has received the highest accolade an investigative NGO’s work can receive from the Cambodian Government: It has been banned. The reason? It exposes the country’s largest illegal logging syndicate and its links to senior government officials, including the prime minister. Plus, it details the way the army has been used as a log courier service for the secret trade with Vietnam and China. Now, as Cambodia’s annual pledge-a-thon approaches, international donors are scrambling to react to accusations they haven’t done enough to protect Cambodia’s forests.Global Witness, the U.K.-based logging and blood […]

It is Joshi, the spring festival of the Kalash tribe in isolated northeastern Pakistan. Celebrating rebirth, the festival is being performed under a heavy police presence at a time of rising tensions between the 3,000 remaining Kalash and their Muslim neighbors, among which are several missionaries who believe that the conversion of the polytheistic tribe is Allah’s work. Using financial and religious incentives equally, the missionaries have set up tens of madrassahs in the three mountain valleys inhabited by the Kalash. A Greek NGO active in the area seeks to teach the Kalash — a people scorned by their Muslim […]

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 […]