Global Challenges

The continued departure of young men for jihad in Syria is raising alarm in Georgia’s Pankisi Valley, a Sunni Muslim area that allegedly has seen scores of men leave for the war over the past few years. The continued departure...

Globally, water demand is threatening to dangerously outpace supply, while in the US, dry states such as Texas and California are suffering from shortages and the future forebodes more suffering. For the North American shale boom, the lack of water...

Stung by his complete failure to muster the parliamentary support needed to join in a Saudi-led intervention in Yemen’s civil war, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is now counting the costs of his $1.5 billion folly. Stung by his complete...

The recent university terror attack at Garissa on 2 April 2015 marked the highest number of deaths in one single terror attack in the history of Kenya. Surpassing the 67-recorded deaths in the Westgate attack on 21 September 2013, the...

Those who seek reconciliation with Japan’s neighbours and those who would rather paint a picture of a glorious wartime past still tears at Japan. These differences in attitude are never more apparent than between the increasingly nationalistic Liberal Democratic Party...

On 21 January 2015, the Japanese government received a threat from the Islamic State (IS) that it would behead two Japanese hostages unless Japan paid a US$200 million ransom. The message from IS pointed to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s...

For decades, and especially since 11 September 2001, many academics, policymakers and activists have struggled against what they consider unacceptable attacks on Muslims and Islam itself. Over a decade before President Obama used the same words, President Bush said of...

South Asia is home to a growing youth population and widely considered to benefit from the “demographic dividend” in the coming decades. The United Nations Population Fund’s State of World Population 2014 report The Power of 1.8 Billion: Adolescents, Youth...

High levels of immigration are often justified by the positive effect on economic growth, but there are powerful environmental and economic arguments for limiting the numbers. High levels of immigration are often justified by the positive effect on economic growth,...

The US dollar is broadly lower, with the escalation of the conflict in Yemen dragging it down, as are month and quarter-end position adjustments and the ongoing technical correction following last week's FOMC meeting.  The euro, yen and Canadian dollar...

Russia is hoping football can become an instrument that it can use to help legitimize its annexation of Crimea. Russian troops invaded Crimea in late February 2014, in response to the Euromaidan Revolution in Kyiv. Pro-Russian Crimean authorities signed an...

On 1 July 2014, the cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe issued a decision reinterpreting the Japanese constitution’s Article 9 ‘peace clause’ to allow the country to exercise collective self-defence — the right to use force to aid an ally...

Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, South Africa and Venezuela proposed a treaty to regulate transnational corporations last year. You’d be forgiven for feeling a sense of déjà vu. It has been a long and complicated road tightening the leash on the giant,...

Australia’s foreign policy has been a mix of positives and negatives under the Liberal-National Coalition government, as was true of the previous Labor government. Former Prime Ministers Gough Whitlam and Bob Hawke recognised the need for Australia to think strategically...

Women had stood shoulder to shoulder with men in the Russian Revolution of 1917, according to its leader Vladimir Lenin, and were said to be at the vanguard of the drive to build an equal society in the world’s first...