Let Cubans decide
Members of the Christian Liberation (MCL) and the project Movement Cuba Decides delivered Thursday to the National Assembly over 10,000 signatures of citizens requesting a plebiscite for Cubans to decide on the… Read more »
Ukraine’s victory
Even as Ukraine rapidly develops its own historical debate and its own national literature, it is still missing from Western historiography, the Western literary canon, and even from Western political… Read more »
Is Democracy in Decline?
For all the commentary on democratic recession, there has been nothing like the kind of “reverse wave” that Samuel P. Huntington’s The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century… Read more »
U.N. seeks to try North Koreans for rights abuses
The United Nations Human Rights Council decided on Wednesday to appoint a panel of experts to explore legal avenues for prosecuting North Korean leaders for crimes against humanity, The New… Read more »
Obama carpets ‘stone-faced’ Castro
Cuba’s Communist regime should tolerate dissent, criticism and even protests, President Barack Obama told its leaders, in a powerful speech, televised across the island, in which he outlined the benefits… Read more »
Engage civil society in party-building to consolidate democracy
Criticizing U.S. missteps in promoting democracy is certainly reasonable—particularly in light of the debacles in Iraq and Libya—but elevating these criticisms into high doctrine and principled critiques of democracy promotion… Read more »
Egypt’s civil society crackdown: rights defenders at risk of prosecution
Fourteen global human rights groups today urged Egypt to halt a renewed crackdown on civil society and rights defenders. The demand came as President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced a cabinet… Read more »
China’s ruling party ‘struggles for a new normal’
Two remarkable documents emerged from China last week, notes ChinaFile: the first is the essay “A Thousand Yes-Men Cannot Equal One Honest Advisor”—available here in Chinese and translated here into English—which appeared on the website… Read more »
Envoy Khalilzad’s knack for being in room while history was written
One of the most intriguing individuals to play a leading role in the Bush-era wars is Zalmay Khalilzad, a polished diplomat who was the most senior Muslim in the White… Read more »
Perfect sandstorm? High stakes in the Sahel
There is only one region in which Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and ISIS have all emerged as major threats – the Sahel. United Nations secretary-general Ban… Read more »