A year ago, with the election of a US president who had fulminated against the international trade and financial systems, some analysts worried that the engine of global prosperity might soon be sputtering. But that’s not what happened.The global economy has surged forward this year, significantly outperforming expectations. As the International Monetary Fund wrote in its latest world economic outlook, published in October: “The current upswing reaches more broadly than any in a decade -- roughl

Misinformation and propaganda have been around for as long as mass communication. What has changed is the speed and scale of the delivery. Social media platforms have intensified the spread of pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, threatening democratic institutions in frightening new ways. One only has to Google “Russia” and “Trump” to see the impact of so-called fake news on democracy. But the best way to fight disinformation may be to follow the example set by Ukraine, a country that has fac

Stunning mini-revolutions have erupted in recent months in two of the world’s largest Muslim countries. The first shock came in Indonesia, where a little-known group of activists led a mass protest against the Christian governor of Jakarta. Accused of disrespecting the Prophet, the governor, a close ally of the country’s president Joko Widodo, is now in prison. In Pakistan in late November, another pop-up political outfit besieged the capital city Islamabad, forcing the government to concede to

Since President Moon Jae-in was inaugurated in May, he has formulated four national security strategies: western diplomacy dealing with China; eastern diplomacy dealing with Japan; northern diplomacy focusing on the Russian Far East and China’s three northeastern provinces, Central Asia and Mongolia; and southern diplomacy focusing on Southeast Asia and India. The South Korea-US alliance plays the role of an axis in the sense that it affects the above four diplomatic strategies.President Moon’s

Calling it a “recognition of reality” and “the right thing to do,” President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that the US was recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and that the American Embassy will be moved from Tel Aviv to the contested city.　The announcement leaves many questions, two of which are primary. The first is whether violence will ensue. The Palestinians and Turks are making threats, and Israel’s security establishment is said to be on alert. But many Israelis are dismissing th

Fifteen years ago, I published Globalization and Its Discontents, a book that sought to explain why there was so much dissatisfaction with globalization within the developing countries. Quite simply, many believed that the system was “rigged” against them, and global trade agreements were singled out for being particularly unfair.Now discontent with globalization has fueled a wave of populism in the United States and other advanced economies, led by politicians who claim that the system is unfai

The US-North Korea confrontation is nearing another tense inflection point, with North Korea signaling that it could be ready for negotiations with Washington soon, even as it moves toward becoming a full nuclear-weapons power.When such diplomatic standoffs get resolved, it‘s often by allowing each country to claim it’s entering negotiations on its own terms. In this case, North Korea would assert its status as a nuclear-weapons state, while the US would insist the dialogue is about eventual den