China’s Debt Grip on Africa

LONDON – The pandemic is confronting highly indebted poor countries with a fateful dilemma. As Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a Nobel Peace...

The Pandemic of Fear

Capitalism We Can Believe In

BERKELEY – Even before the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the United States and other developed economies, trust in capitalism had eroded around the...

Saving America’s Public Pensions

Navalny’s Return

MOSCOW – Alexei Navalny is about to disturb Russia’s laziest month. As in Soviet times, the New Year holiday stretches halfway through January,...

America’s Post-Trump Reckoning

Latin America’s Pandemic of Woe

Britain’s Vaccine Gamble

LONDON – The British have often taken great pride in dubious achievements, from the “victorious” retreat from Dunkirk during World War II to the...

The Eternal Promise of the Arab Spring

VIENNA – The Arab Spring that erupted a decade ago was a quest for human dignity whose protagonists sought to overcome decades of repression,...

China’s Fateful Year

Doing Business with China

Why Biden Should Abandon Trump’s Failed Trade War with China

SHANGHAI – When President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated next week, he will quickly move to transform most dimensions of US policy. A glaring...

The Fight for Women’s Rights Beyond #MeToo

BRIGHTON – For most people, the #MeToo movement has become synonymous with campaigns against sexual harassment. The movement – which went viral...

A New US Agenda for Central America

WASHINGTON, DC – Most undocumented migrants crossing the United States’ southern border come from three small countries: El Salvador, Guatemala,...

America’s Turbulent Transition

Recovering Global Leadership

Who Profits from the Assault on American Democracy?

WASHINGTON, DC – Since January 6, when a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol, dozens of rioters have been charged with...

An Infrastructure Inoculation for America’s Recovery

BERKELEY – With the Democrats’ stunning sweep of Georgia’s two Senate run-off elections handing them control of both houses of Congress as of...

American Capitalism’s Poor Prognosis

The BRICs at 20

LONDON – This November will mark the 20th anniversary of the BRIC acronym that I coined to capture the economic potential of Brazil, Russia,...

The Danger of Deplatforming Trump

LONDON – Social-media platforms are finally turning on Donald Trump. Since the US president incited a violent attack on the Capitol on January 6...

Saving US Democracy from Corporate America

WASHINGTON, DC – The insurgency that overran the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, just as Congress was certifying the results of the 2020...

The Effort to Disqualify Trump Is Worth It

CHICAGO – On Friday, January 8, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced plans to impeach US President Donald Trump for the second time in a...

A New “Year Zero”

How Companies Should Leverage Digitization

NEW YORK – It is no secret that rapid digitization is upending firms’ operations, systems, and entire business models. Whether companies can...

Xi Jinping’s Strategic Overreach

America Is the New Center of Global Instability

NEW YORK – Whether the storming of the US Capitol was an attempted coup, an insurrection, or an assault on democracy is merely a question of...

Can America Lead Again?

ANN ARBOR – US President-elect Joe Biden’s impending inauguration has raised hopes that his administration will “make America lead again.” If...

Whither America?

NEW YORK – The assault on the US Capitol by President Donald Trump’s supporters, incited by Trump himself, was the predictable outcome of his...

Narendra Modi’s Potemkin Democracy

NEW DELHI – Indian legislators woke up in the new year to two realizations. First, the annual winter session of parliament, from which they...

A Fragile Recovery in 2021

NEW YORK – By the end of 2020, financial markets – mostly in the United States – had reached new highs, owing to hopes that an imminent...

The City on a Hill Besieged

MADRID – In 1940, with Europe gripped by a war from which the United States remained aloof, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared that...

Has Lukashenko Won?

WARSAW – Following his fraudulent re-election victory in August 2020, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko spent more than 100 days...

Donald Trump’s Costly Legacy

NEW YORK – We can finally state with confidence that US President Donald Trump will leave the White House, however reluctantly, on January 20. As...

A Post-COVID Labor Revival?

No Time to Spare for the Paris Climate Promise

DUBLIN – COVID-19 turned the world upside down in 2020. But it has also shown us that when there is a political consensus for action, human...

Europe’s China Gambit

CAMBRIDGE – Just as 2020 was ending, the European Union and China announced the completion of a Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI)...