The single best description of the changes in the world system I’ve ever heard came from Henry Kissinger.  When assessing the political importance of recent events, he said sometime after the fall of the Berlin Wall that “the unification of Germany is more important than the consolidation of the European Union.  The fall of the [...]

Nobody really knows what will happen in 2010, although Larry Sabato’s Jeanne Dixon-inspired post at Politico comes pretty close.  But there are ten stories that will shape the world this year — for better or for worse.  Other crises may erupt (I have not, for example, included the long-running conflict between Israelis and Palestinians on [...]

The Cluster of Copenhagen, the chaotic and orgiastic assembly of the representatives of 192 countries plus uncountable throngs of NGO leaders and miscellaneous activists, is, as Les Gelb notes this morning over at The Daily Beast, a window into the future.  In many ways, it’s not a very nice future.
In the first two posts, I [...]