Europe

A recent survey suggests 37 percent of Britons expect riots in the next year on account of the financial collapse; in Kiev, Ukrainians have made runs on major banks, being turned away from even the nation's largest institutions with empty pockets.

The European Union is ripping apart at its most vulnerable seam: that between well-established Western economies and former Soviet states still grappling to build viable capitalist systems.

William Hartung opened the discussion by citing “$32 billion in foreign military sales in 2008,” by the United States, and that “there are many big deals in the works that may make 2009 as big or bigger.” The report looks at the biggest recipients of foreign military aid and analyzes their human rights record and the extent to which they embrace the tenets of democracy. All 25 of the largest benefactors are “undemocratic regimes or major human rights abusers,” Hartung remarked.

These days it is not fashionable to speak of empires, which are considered to be aggressive, mercantilist relics supposedly consigned to the dustbin of history with post-World War II decolonization and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Many then predicted that ethnic self-determination would drag the world into a new era of political fragmentation as the number of countries proliferated from fewer than 50 at the end of World War II to, potentially, hundreds in the 21st century, with every minority getting its own state, currency, and… more

The rise of other global powers is a profound new reality of today’s world. As headlines remind us nearly everyday, China, India, Russia, as well as the European Union, Japan, and others are rapidly gaining strength and influence. How should the U.S. navigate this new world landscape? Does the rise of these powers represent an ideological challenge or an economic boom? Will global warming convince us we are all in the same boat? The Next World conference will explore… more

In the wake of Russia’s military incursion into Georgia, too many current, former, and aspiring U.S. officials are caricaturing the Russian state that was shaped and is still guided by Vladimir Putin as a revisionist aggressor. For Robert Kagan, John McCain’s neoconservative foreign policy adviser, as well as for long-time Democratic foreign policy hands Richard Holbrooke and Ronald Asmus, Russia’s actions in Georgia are comparable to Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938. For Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Russia’s actions are more reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in… more

Few places hold as much symbolic power for presidential speechmaking as Berlin. So it’s little surprise that Barack Obama chose this city for his first major foray onto the global stage.

But if the West was united in 1963 when John F. Kennedy offered a lacerating indictment of communism and in 1987 when Ronald Reagan demanded that Mikhail Gorbachev tear down the Berlin Wall, today the trans-Atlantic alliance is teetering, with genuine and serious divisions between Europe and the United States.

To bridge these fissures, Mr. Obama returned… more

All the evidence suggests that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear sites would be a disaster for the greater Middle East, for the world economy and for western security. It would not even benefit Israel, which is adequately protected by its own nuclear deterrent. On the contrary, by creating new links between Sunni and Shia extremism, it would worsen Israel’s long-term chances of survival. Finally, as last week’s remarks by Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US joint… more

This past week saw not only the Irish rejection of the Lisbon treaty, forcing a crisis summit this week to chart an alternative path to EU continuity, but also the annual EU-American summit in Slovenia, aiming to forge a common transatlantic agenda on Middle East peace, climate change and trade. The Irish vote is likely to fuel rumours of the EU's demise, yet it is the latter summit that will prove more revealing about its future. While mending transatlantic divides… more

This article is adapted from Parag Khanna's book The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order.

The term "second world" has fallen out of use. It used to mean countries of the socialist world; today I use the phrase to refer to those countries in eastern Europe and central Asia, Latin America, the middle east and southeast Asia which are both rich and poor, developed and underdeveloped, postmodern and pre-modern, cosmopolitan and tribal -- all at… more