Global Issues
Humanity's carbon countdown
First, the good news. We have enough fossil fuel to survive until the century's end. Today's proven reserves of coal, oil and gas combined is about 83 years (at current usage…
Why we shouldn't worry: This is what an economic transition is supposed to look like in China
Growth is certainly slower and its structure is changing, but is the outlook for China's economy quite as awful as global share markets seem to think?
Now the world's biggest…
Forget Greece and the Euro: Migration is the real challenge for Europe - Part II
In an attempt to better manage the migration wave to, and through, borderless Europe, the EU Commission is proposing policies on three fronts. The negotiations in the EU Council…
Forget Greece and the Euro: Migration is the real challenge for Europe - Part I
Well over a million political refugees and economic migrants from Europe’s Southern and Eastern ‘near abroad’ are this year making their way to, and through, borderless Europe…
Protests in Lebanon: Demonstrators should remain focused on the constitution
The crisis over garbage collection in Lebanon continues to pile up. This weekend thousands of Lebanese gathered again in downtown Beirut to denounce politicians for their failure…
Syrian refugees and the Gulf states' lack of charity
The humanitarian tragedy unfolding daily in Europe has forced the West to again try and redefine its obligations to those who have been made vulnerable as a result of conflict in…
Passive-aggressive rivalry deepens China-Japan tensions
By Yanmei Xie, International Crisis Group’s Senior China Analyst, and Rachel Vandenbrink, graduate student at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University.
China’s…
Note to Beijing: You can't tell financial markets what to do
There's a rule in economics called Goodhart's law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a useful measure. If a government chases a particular economic variable, then…
Greste, the West and 'the republic of darkness'
Over the weekend an Egypt court found Al-Jazeera journalists Peter Greste, Mohammed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed guilty on charges of operating in Egypt without a press licence and of …
Asian financial markets: Confected panic from professional doomsayers
Over the last few weeks, global financial markets have once again demonstrated their predilection for over-reacting to ephemeral news. For their part, the media are always happy…