Singapore and the Asian Century
Gabriele Giovannini and Emanuele Schibotto When, on August 9, 1965, Singapore became a sovereign state following its expulsion from the Malaysian Federation it was, without any doubt, a poor country. Yet only four decades later, the former British colony boasted the second most competitive economy i…
The 4 Major Geopolitical Challenges Investors Must Face
Ian Bremmer In early September, with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization reeling from a Russian land grab just outside the alliance’s borders , President Barack Obama traveled to NATO member Estonia to deliver a message to the unnerved Baltic states. “We have a solemn duty to each other,” Obama t…
Note from Berlin: Lessons from Munich
Josef Janning The 2015 Munich Security Conference has focused like a burning glass on the dilemmas of Western crisis management in international security. While the desire to maintain a united position on the war in Ukraine was apparent, divisions over strategy and tactics run deep within Europe and…
Financing the Fight Against Climate Change
Anne Paugam Climate change is already wreaking havoc throughout the developing world. Vietnam, for example, has reported that natural disasters, some of them exacerbated by climate change, have caused annual losses equivalent to 2% of its GDP. In agriculture-dependent countries like Ethiopia, longer…
Frontiers New and Old: Russia’s Policy in Central Asia
Institut français des relations internationales For much of the post-Soviet period, Central Asia has been a backwater of Russian foreign policy. But things are changing. Circumstances in and beyond the region are driving a more committed approach in Moscow. Central Asia is critical to Putin’s aim of…
Crowded Waters: The South China Sea’s Next Big Flashpoint?
Sean Mirski The South China Sea ranks high on any list of the world’s geopolitical hotspots. But though the region has been volatile for centuries, the last two decades have witnessed a subtle shift in the underlying drivers of conflict. Through most of the second half of the twentieth century, the …
The New Drivers of Europe’s Geopolitics
George Friedman For the past two weeks, I have focused on the growing fragmentation of Europe. Two weeks ago, the murders in Paris prompted me to write about the fault line between Europe and the Islamic world. Last week, I wrote about the nationalism that is rising in individual European countries …
The Global Risks report 2015
The Global Risks report 2015 The Global Risks Report is an annual study published by the World Economic Forum ahead of the Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. The 2015 edition of the Global Risks report completes a decade of highlighting the most significant long-term risks worldwide, draw…
Disaster and Development
NEW YORK – When Typhoon Hagupit made landfall in the Philippines on December 6, memories of Typhoon Haiyan, which killed more than 6,300 people, were fresh in people’s minds. Some 227,000 families – more than a million people – were evacuated ahead of Hagupit’s arrival, according to the United Natio…
What Happens if Iran Opens Up?
With only a couple of weeks having passed since the Vienna talks failed to deliver a comprehensive deal on Iran’s nuclear program, many are inclined to believe that the new June 30th, 2015 deadline set by the parties presents an even slimmer chance of producing an agreement. Perhaps this should not …