Topic Category: World

A decade-long trend toward an increasingly conservative makeup of all of Iran’s most powerful political institutions was disrupted at the presidential election held in June 2013. Hassan Rowhani, the lone moderate among the six candidates vying to succeed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, emerged the victor, winning slightly more than 50 percent of the first-round vote.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s minority coalition government is under pressure to restore public and investor confidence, as concerns surrounding the slowing pace of growth have more recently been compounded by the rupee’s alarming depreciation. A general election is required no later than the second quarter of 2014, and the latest opinion polls signal an abrupt shift in popular attitudes away from the governing UPA, a bloc headed by Singh’s Indian National Congress.

The policy direction under President Xi Jinping will become clearer at the forthcoming Third Plenum of the ruling CPP in November, at which the outlines of the economic reform agenda for the next decade will be mapped out. Investors will be watching closely for indications of how the regime plans to engineer a shift from an export- and investment-led growth model to one that is more consumer-driven.

On Saturday President Barack Obama surprised most everyone in America by making the right decision and asking Congress for authority to go to war in Syria. Now Congress should make the right decision and vote no. One of the impacts of being a superpower is that America has interests everywhere. However, most of those interests are modest, even peripheral.

What started as a small demonstration by opponents of the redevelopment of a landmark park in Istanbul in late May escalated into some of the biggest anti-government protests to erupt in Turkey in years. This is presenting Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan with the most serious challenge to his authority during his decade in office. 

Comparisons almost always cause resentment. The French political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that when humans lived alone in the state of nature, they were happy with their lot and needed only their own self-approval. But the move to society, living cheek by jowl with others, invited precisely those comparisons with others that creates ill-will, envy and jealousy.

Since 2009, the federation government has grappled with difficulties stemming from a debt crisis in Dubai and the threat of internal unrest amid the Arab Spring in 2011. To all appearances, the emirs have met those twin challenges with success. The wave of rebellion that swept across the region largely bypassed the UAE. It was kept at bay by generous social spending rather than political concessions.

There are many grand failures of U.S. foreign policy. Egypt has joined the pantheon, with Washington seemingly under attack by every faction in Cairo. Egypt long has been a national wreck. Its recent history featured rule by an indolent king and a leftish Arab nationalist. A couple of authoritarian generals followed. The economy was ruined by dirigisme economic plans, endless bureaucratic incompetence, and pervasive political corruption.

SPECIAL REPORT—As the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has re-emerged onto the world stage in the first decade of the 21st century, its growing economic and political weight has captured the attention of business and political elites worldwide. And due to China’s intense focus on expanding and diversifying exports to spearhead the development of a country of more than 1.3 billion people, its actions have profoundly impacted countries around the world.