The Freedom or Autocracy Dilemma

Les Etats-Unis ont alternativement défendu le système westphalien et fustigé ses principes d’équilibre des forces et de non-ingérence dans les affaires intérieures d’autrui en les prétendant immoraux et démodés. Il leur est même arrivé de faire les deux à la fois. Ce qui ne les empêche pas de continuer à affirmer la validité universelle de leurs valeurs pour l’édification d’un ordre mondial pacifique et de se réserver le droit de les soutenir à l’échelle planétaire. Henri Kissinger ...

The trade tensions between the United States and China will cause only minor immediate damage to their giant economies. However, tariffs have important and diverse effects on individual sectors and cause heightened uncertainty. The main adverse effects on Sub-Saharan Africa will therefore be through global investor confidence, economic growth and commodity prices, and these effects could be severe if the dispute escalates further and endangers the rules-based trading system. The tra ...

The African arena is but an episode in the China-USA soap opera. Nevertheless, given the continent's significance in terms of opportunities for major powers, it is also a space where their rivalry comes to the fore. This is the lens through which the beginning of Africa's return to the American agenda can be seen. ...

TEARS OF JOY CHANGED INTO THOSE OF PAIN January 28, 1986. It was just another day in the whirlpool of news and speculations of a new Foreign Correspondent to be assigned to the White House. Shivering on his way to the most important political center of the Western World, resisting arctic cold and snow on the way to work, hardly ever seeing the President himself. Instead, he found himself on this fateful day in a rendez-vous with Tom Foley, majority leader in the House of Representa ...

“ARE THEY PLAYING US? I DO NOT KNOW” There they were, the North Koreans, covered by red flags, and more red flags — a Hollywood production indeed. Were the soldiers singing? There was nothing to sing about since they're marching for endless hours, being scrutinized by cameras and bothered by aching pains of hunger, unable to speak and stimulate their voice. The colonel in charge of the marchers may discover some rusty spot on a belt buckle or a truck on parade may run out of fuel - ...

“NONE OF AFRICA’S PROBLEMS CAN BE RESOLVED THROUGH MILITARY FORCE” Colonel Raul Rivas arrived in dress uniform, his parachute citations well polished. His ribbons for bravery and combat duty were aligned at the upper left-hand side of his jacket, a colorful display of combat, death and battles in Afghanistan and Iraq.  The Colonel, just a few years above 40, and despite his 21 years in the military, was as “proud of being an American as one can be,” a true patriot. He jumped out ...

Not far from highway 95, near a town named Lathrop Wells, only one establishment, besides the petrol station, was known to the rough cowboys and joyless soldiers of the nearby nuclear testing site, and that was “Mabel’s whore house”, advertised as such without shame and ready to accept credit cards. Luigi Raugi, a legal immigrant (from Sicily), as it is wise to insist these repressing days of  American immigrant bashing, was running the local drugstore and really excited, as were t ...

Donald Trump, a golf addict with a self-declared handicap of 3, is not noted for any chess enthusiasm, although the game is a simulation of a battle, and filled with military terminology such as double attack, demolition, breakthrough, decoying, interception, blockade, and x-ray attack among others. The historic game is intellectual, structured, and logic. The object is to maneuver the antagonist’s king into a position from which escape is impossible. The two contenders - at times - ...