Politics

Joachim_Gauck

Is Europe’s Problem German Strength or Weakness?

By Roland Bensted

The election in March 2012 of Joachim Gauck as Germany’s President demonstrates a remarkable achievement of recent German history. For the first time since unification in October 1990, Germany has a Chancellor and President from the former East Germany. Widely admired both for the size of its export oriented economy, Europe’s largest, and for its more enlightened way of doing capitalism, Germany had the capability and the necessary goodwill before the start of the Eurozone crisis to take a positive leadership role during the downturn. 

Atlantic Community

Partners in Democracy, Partners in Security: NATO and the Arab Spring

By Alexander Corbeil, Gillian Kennedy, Geoffrey Levin, Vivien Pertusot, Josiah Surface

The Arab Spring has created significant challenges and unprecedented opportunities for NATO and its partners in the Mediterranean region. New security issues have emerged alongside new regimes and regional instability looms. State failure, civil conflict, and institutional collapse could present a number of major security threats, among them the creation of a refugee crisis affecting NATO members, increased illegal arms trafficking, and a breeding ground for militant groups in a Somali-like setting near European shores.

Boris-Johnson-Ken-Livingstone

The Race for City Hall

By Roland Bensted

An outside observer to the race for Mayor of London could be forgiven for wondering how little has changed since 2008. 

PBS

American Advocacy in the Information Age

By Emily Best

Recently, two stories of American advocacy have been making the news, but not in the way their PR teams would have wanted. 

REE

Rare Earths: The Dragon's Pearl

By Edith Lai

Most people are familiar with the periodic table from secondary school, though few have ever paid much attention to the elements in the top row of the separate box on the bottom left. 

UK Budget

The Art of the Comprehensible

By Christian Nicholson

Government economic policy is political. This is obvious, but not always fully understood by economists who prefer to keep things like public opinion out of their abstracted modelling. 

Guantanamo

America's War on Terror and on Human Rights

By Saiful Saleem

On 11 September  2001, a great crime against humanity was committed, with the loss of thousands of innocent lives in a series of devastating attacks in the US.