Can the BRICS wrest control of the global economy from the United States and Europe, or will their internal contradictions tear them apart?
The BRICS: Challengers to the Global Status Quo
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Soviet Union
Stalin’s Purge Binge
The more party members Stalin killed, the more he thought he had to kill.
The Ukraine Crisis: Rebooting Russia?
The case of Sovietologists’ inability to foresee the end of the Soviet Union grows curiouser and curiouser.
Why North Korea Today Is Not East Germany 1989
Policymakers have long predicted that North Korea will go the way of East German Communism. Not so fast.
Working for Peace and Justice
In July 1990, on my way home from the meeting with our new friends in Moscow, I stopped off in London to do research for The Struggle Against the Bomb. Sitting in the Public Record Office and examining the newly-opened prime minister’s records, I was startled to discover a folder of documents showing that in the late 1950s cabinet-level government officials had launched a conspiracy to undermine Britain’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).
Review: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives
Why did the Soviet Union come to an end? Was the Soviet system reformable? Were there historical alternatives to Stalinism? These are the questions that Stephen F. Cohen raises in Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War. In a series of seven essays, Cohen challenges conventional assumptions on the course of Soviet and post-Soviet history, examining the fates and lost opportunities of Stalin’s preeminent opponents.
Mother Earth’s Triple Whammy: Are We All North Koreans Now?
Gas prices are above $4 a gallon; global food prices surged 39% last year; and an environmental disaster looms as carbon emissions continue to spiral upward. The global economy appears on the verge of a TKO, a triple whammy from energy, agriculture, and climate-change trends. Right now you may be grumbling about the extra bucks you’re shelling out at the pump and the grocery store; but, unless policymakers begin to address all three of these trends as one major crisis, it could get a whole lot worse. Just ask the North Koreans.
Now Class, Let’s Review Iraq’s Lessons
The American people have expressed themselves clearly on the Iraq War itself for quite a while now. By large majorities hovering around 70 percent, they want it to end. Fulfilling this expressed will of the people is our most urgent foreign policy priority, one that can’t be forgotten, ignored or deferred. But there is other, related, unfinished business to which we as a people need to attend. The worst foreign policy disaster in U. S. history may actually have an upside of sorts: that the war has served as a tryout for a number of policy innovations. “Thanks” to the war, we know enough now to cross them permanently off our list.
