According to a recently released UNICEF report, Tracking Progress on Child and Maternal Development, some 200 million children in the developing world currently suffer from stunted growth, due to chronic undernutrition. Chronic undernutrition, is a factor in over a third of all deaths in children under five years-old. This often unnoticed and often silent killer, […]
Now that the big Asia trip is history, it’s natural to judge it on the basis of known results from its biggest portion — Obama’s three days in China. For the American president, there were no obvious breakthroughs on exchange rates or trade, climate or human rights, so maybe this visit was not the most […]
President Obama’s visit to China has ended. As I reviewed the coverage of his visit I was looking to see how he would balance the traditional U.S. concern for human rights with trade and security concerns. Would he, as past presidents have done, sternly lecture the Chinese on human rights, or would he (as Secretary […]
There are many arguments floating around, including the one I touched on earlier this week, against trying 9/11 suspects in New York. Let’s examine them. 1) It signals the end of the War on Terror. As John Yoo writes in the Wall Street Journal, the decision “is in effect a declaration that this nation is […]
Several recent posts here have looked at the state of play leading up to the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). I’ve been generally optimistic about prospects – although the title of my last post may belie that. There are several reasons why I’m […]
Despite the global recession, the number of Indian billionaires has nearly doubled in just a year. Political science and democratic theorists have long held that the more unequal distribution of wealth, the harder it is to sustain democratic government. Indeed, the Guardian writes that .00001% of India’s population account for a full quarter of its […]
Last year, Tim DeChristopher, a student in Utah, bid $1.8 million he did not have in a federal oil lease auction. He won the leases. He stated he did it to protect the environment and to prevent further global warming, arguing that the danger from this drilling was too great and immediate to try to […]
Since its founding in 1998 and its official kick-off in 2002, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has had to build its strength and influence without any help-and indeed with strong opposition-from the U.S. “[E]stablished to help end impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community,” including genocide, crimes […]
Presidents Hu and Obama finished their summit in Beijing and issued a joint statement. Below, Christiaan Tuntono of CSFB notes that President Obama didn’t get a commitment from China to revalue the RMB against the U.S. dollar, which would effectively increase Chinese demand for U.S. exports. As RMB undervaluation is a key focus of such […]
Last month, in Washington D.C., I met one of my favorite journalists, James Fallows, from the Atlantic Magazine. Mr. Fallows was returning from a 3-year post in China, where he reported on the country’s foreign policy, culture, its rising economy and its climate issues. We spoke briefly about about a 2008 article he wrote after […]
1) To nobody’s surprise, Somalia is the most corrupt country on earth—followed closely by Iraq and Afghanistan. Transparency International wrote in its report, “When essential institutions are weak or non-existent, corruption spirals out of control.” The task, then, for America is institution building—but is it willing to spend the time and effort to create civil […]
FPA Russia blogger Vadim Nikitin tackles that question in his latest blog entry: “In the 1990s, the Russian film landscape had come to resemble something straight out of Tarkovsky’s Stalker, with stray dogs wandering through Mosfilm studios in Eisenstein’s footprints and actors and directors stumbling around a menacing no man’s land in search of money […]
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