world

Once again, a grave humanitarian crisis draws attention to the virtues of calibrated, but constructive international diplomatic engagement, even with the most unsavory of characters. Eighteen days ago, Cyclone Nargis ravaged southwestern Myanmar, affecting nearly 2.5 million people. Myanmar’s isolationist ruling junta has responded abysmally to the crisis, rejecting assistance from foreign aid workers and…

When Turkey’s chief prosecutor brought a lawsuit this spring asking the country’s Constitutional Court to close down its governing political party, he set in motion a dangerous chain of events that could undo years of political and economic progress in Turkey. The prosecutor, along with many of Turkey’s top judicial and military officials, consider themselves…

At about the same time my little sister was getting married three weeks ago – it was a lovely beach ceremony in the Florida Keys; she was beautiful, and I was teary, having the bittersweet privilege of subbing for our dead father on the walk up the aisle – food riots were breaking out across…

Most Americans, even those who have occasionally faced what the U.S. Department of Agriculture calls “food insecurity,” will never experience the depth of hunger gripping poor countries around the globe and triggering a rash of food riots. It is the sort of hunger that causes families to forage garbage dumps to look for discarded food,…

Diaryatou Bah was just eight years old when she went through the most traumatic experience of her life. “A woman brought me into the bush with my grandmother and her sister-in-law,” she recalls. “They took off the red loincloth I was wearing, placed leaves on my face and caught my hands and feet. Then the…

I am out of Africa and into Singapore—a country mostly off my radar screen—except when I am visiting Francis Daniels, the father of my godson, Themba. To Francis, Singapore’s former Prime Minister, Lee Kwan Yew is a kind of icon who invariably comes up in conversations about what Africa needs to do to get out…

The question I posed in this space before the Zimbabwe election on March 19th was whether the election would bring Democracy or Disaster? What comes to mind now, with no results announced after almost three weeks, is that old saying: ‘It’s always darkest just before it gets pitch black.’ Despite the pronouncements of friendly observers…

The biggest civil war in Africa’s history is looming, and the world naps. (The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof is awake, but groggy). The sad fact is that we, in the West, are only roused to Africa’s ills after the fact. I think we like it that way. Mourning failed states is a lot easier…

In domestic politics during this 2008 election year, Democrats are positioning themselves as the party of the “underdog”, the poor and the dis-empowered, and paint the Republicans as the party of the wealthy and the power elite. I find this ironic given that in at least one aspect of the international arena the roles seem…

NATO recently held its twentieth summit in Bucharest, Romania to deal with key issues facing the alliance, including one of the thorniest – expansion of its membership. While Romania, one of NATO’s most recent members, was an enthusiastic host and took great pride in its new role, some aspiring members of the alliance did not…