The Geopolitics of Climate Change
BRUSSELS – The European Union is emerging as the world’s climate trailblazer. Just recently, lawmakers and European governments agreed on the European Climate Law, which anchors our climate-neutrality target in statute. With the Green Deal as our growth strategy and our 2030 emissions-reduction targ…
Biden announces US will aim to cut carbon emissions by as much as 52% by 2030 at virtual climate summit
At the White House summit, which is taking place on Thursday and Friday, Biden committed the United States to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 50%-52% below its 2005 emissions levels by 2030. While the goals are a part of the Paris climate agreement that Biden rejoined upon taking office, th…
Revealed: the Facebook loophole that lets world leaders deceive and harass their citizens
Facebook has repeatedly allowed world leaders and politicians to use its platform to deceive the public or harass opponents despite being alerted to evidence of the wrongdoing. The Guardian has seen extensive internal documentation showing how Facebook handled more than 30 cases across 25 countries …
Europe’s Complacency Trap
COVID-19 has wounded almost every developed country, but the truth is that living standards in many of them had been stagnating or declining for years. Many metrics highlight this trend, but perhaps the most telling comes from the OECD, which reports a 4% decline in household median net wealth acros…
The Liberal Order Begins at Home
For more than seven decades, the twin commitments by the United States and its allies to democracy at home and internationalism abroad animated the so-called liberal order. In recent years, however, the system has faced a growing crisis. Transitions toward democracy in Russia, Turkey, and southeast …
The Shadow of a New Cold War Hangs Over Europe
Temperatures are rising again in eastern Ukraine with informed commentators suggesting that intensive military action might start when the “mud season” passes. Quite understandably, Americans could suffer from Ukraine fatigue after observing the often bizarre conspiracies that have arisen connecting…
Pandemic threatens lost decade for development, UN report reveals
The highly uneven response to the pandemic has “widened the already yawning disparities and inequities within and between countries and peoples”, according to the 60 international agencies that authored the report. And while an historic $16 trillion in stimulus and recovery funds released by g…
Biden’s most important stimulus measure
The US federal government should spend more money, and fast, to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, rescue hard-hit families and help states, cities and small businesses. But it should also strive for a relief package built on some degree of bipartisan consensus. The first step to this package? Acknowledgi…
The Ethno-Territorial Separation of Bosnia Was the Key to Ending the War and Keeping Peace
As befits a successful peace agreement, the November 1995 Dayton accords that ended the Bosnian war were marked on their twenty-fifth anniversary with a flurry of international conferences. Oddly enough, even though a general acknowledgment that the accords have kept the peace, most reco…
Russia and US National Interests: Maintaining a Balance of Power in Europe and Asia
While Russia is not a superpower, it remains one of the few countries that both defines its interests in global rather than regional terms and retains limited but real global power-projection capabilities. Meanwhile, U.S. national security continues to be guided by the premise that the United S…