The New York Times (Continuación)

InternacionalOrden Mundial

Twenty years is not a very long time in history but the fall of the Berlin Wall already seems like another era. The euphoria, confidence and excitement that accompanied that event were overtaken in short order by cynicism, fear and doubt resulting, according to some quarters at least, from American triumphalism.

Despite the new leaf that Barack Obama’s election appears to have turned over, it will be a long time before the world hears the United States speaking of itself again as the “indispensable nation” or the American way of life as the harbinger of the end of history.

This has also been called the beginning a “new” era of globalization.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia

On its 20th anniversary, the fall of the Berlin Wall stands out as the most momentous event in post-World War II history. The end of the Cold War transformed geopolitics, thereby changing the world. But no continent benefited more than Asia, as has been epitomized by its dramatic economic rise, the speed and scale of which has no parallel in world history.

An important post-1989 effect was the shift from the primacy of military power to a greater role for economic power in shaping global geopolitics.

That helped promote not only an economic boom in Asia, but also led to an eastward movement of global power and influence, with Asia emerging as an important player on the world stage.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia

Thais are naturally preoccupied with immediate issues — their convoluted politics and the succession to the revered but ailing King Bhumibol, 81. But in the long term they may need to be thinking about how the country will rate 20 years from now against its traditional rivals, Vietnam and Myanmar, long-established nation states of roughly similar size, as well as against the nearby giants, India and China.

As of now, Thailand is well ahead of all but China when measured by G.D.P. per capita and all of the other countries by most social and quality of life indicators. But there is a sense of unease that the nation has lost its momentum and that others, perhaps even Myanmar, are catching up.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia

China’s foreign policy is about to change, and not entirely by choice.

The country’s engagement with the developing world has accelerated markedly in the wake of the economic crisis. And for all the focus on Beijing’s relationship with Washington, it is Beijing’s relationship with the emerging world’s capitals, from Cairo to New Delhi, that may contain the greater surprise.

In the past months, a series of Chinese academics have proposed using the country’s foreign-exchange reserves to finance infrastructure projects in the developing world. The economist Xu Shanda has called for a Chinese “Marshall Plan” to boost demand for Chinese goods. A governor of the People’s Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan, has argued for establishing a supra-sovereign wealth fund to invest in the developing world.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa

It is generally accepted that America’s destruction of Iraq overturned the balance of power in the Gulf, opening the way for the Islamic Republic of Iran to emerge as a major regional power, able to challenge the dominance of Sunni Arab states and pose as a rival to both Israel and the United States.

Its influence has spread to Iraq itself — now under Shiite leadership — and beyond to Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and even perhaps to Zaidi rebels in northern Yemen fighting the central government in Sana‘a, a development that has aroused understandable anxiety in Saudi Arabia.

However, the Iraq war has had another important consequence that is also attracting serious notice.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalOrden Mundial

Ask an average American how the Cold War ended and often as not he or she has a ready answer. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” said Ronald Reagan. And lo, as if word were deed, it was so.

Everyone remembers that immortal line. A generation of speechwriters wish they had crafted it. A generation of statesmen wish they had uttered it. And for a generation of Americans, particularly on the political right, it has become shorthand for an entire geopolitical worldview.

Like the Gipper, we have only to stand tall against tyrants. Hollow at the core, they will fall. Their downtrodden people will rise up, triumphant, like the multitudes of captive East Europeans of yore.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalOrden Mundial

The year 1989 was a turning point for Europe and for the world, a time when history went into high gear. This acceleration was symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the velvet revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe. Totalitarian and authoritarian regimes were exiting the stage of history.

Those events, and their peaceful unfolding, were made possible by changes that began in the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s. We initiated them because they were overdue. We were responding to the demands of the people, who resented living without freedom, isolated from the rest of the world.

In just a few years — a very short time in history’s span — the main pillars of the totalitarian system in the Soviet Union were dismantled and the ground was readied for a democratic transition and economic reforms.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza, ,

Is eating a hamburger the global warming equivalent of driving a Hummer? This week an article in The Times of London carried a headline that blared: “Give Up Meat to Save the Planet.” Former Vice President Al Gore, who has made climate change his signature issue, has even been assailed for omnivorous eating by animal rights activists.

It’s true that food production is an important contributor to climate change. And the claim that meat (especially beef) is closely linked to global warming has received some credible backing, including by the United Nations and University of Chicago. Both institutions have issued reports that have been widely summarized as condemning meat-eating.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

The highly decorated general sat opposite his commander in chief and explained the problems his army faced fighting in the hills around Kabul: “There is no piece of land in Afghanistan that has not been occupied by one of our soldiers at some time or another,” he said. “Nevertheless much of the territory stays in the hands of the terrorists. We control the provincial centers, but we cannot maintain political control over the territory we seize.

“Our soldiers are not to blame. They’ve fought incredibly bravely in adverse conditions. But to occupy towns and villages temporarily has little value in such a vast land where the insurgents can just disappear into the hills.”…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

Sunday's coordinated suicide bombings in Baghdad, which killed more than 150 people, were a brutal reminder of how far Iraq still has to go in terms of security. While things are far better than a few years ago, one huge task remains: getting the public to trust the Iraqi security forces.

From 2005 to 2008, I was the mayor of Tel Afar, a town in Nineveh Province in northern Iraq that become the model for the “clear, hold and build” strategy credited with turning the war around during the surge. In some ways, the story of Tel Afar is indicative of what we are now seeing on a larger scale in Iraq.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

If the second round of Afghanistan’s presidential elections, now scheduled for Nov. 7, is a rerun of the fraud-stained first round, it will be catastrophic for that country and the allied military mission battling the Taliban and Al Qaeda. In the next week and a half, the United States and the United Nations, which has a mandate to support Afghanistan’s electoral bodies, must do everything possible to ensure that the election is, in the words of that mandate, “free, fair and transparent.”

In spite of the clear connection between successful elections and stability in Afghanistan, the rest of the world largely chose to ignore the obvious risks of fraud before the Aug.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica, , ,

Our ability to immunize large numbers of Americans quickly and effectively against the H1N1 virus may depend on an unlikely resource: our voting system. I do not mean our elected leaders, but our network of polling places. As we learned in last year’s presidential election, American polling sites can process more than 130 million people in a single day.

Last Nov. 4, my colleagues and I conducted a national test of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Vote and Vax initiative. We found we were able to deliver more than 21,000 flu shots in 42 states and the District of Columbia. We worked with local public health practitioners and cleared the program with election officials to make sure we didn’t violate any polling regulations.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea,

Aix-en-Provence, France — There is a tendency among the French to welcome certain aspects of American life with immediate and uncritical enthusiasm: hamburgers, Jerry Lewis, baseball caps, elderly television series (“Starsky & Hutch” is still running on French TV), Westerns, Marlboro Lights, button-down shirts — these and much more besides have crossed the Atlantic to become firmly embedded in le lifestyle français.

The Celtic-by-way-of-America celebration of Halloween is one more example that has always stuck in my mind because it arrived in France about the same time that I did, 20 years ago.

I remember the moment well. I was passing the window of a shop that specialized in avant-garde underwear when my eye was caught by a small pumpkin, half-concealed behind the lacy thickets of a black brassiere.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalIglesia Católica

The images and clichés came spluttering out of the laptops of church people and religious affairs correspondents on Tuesday: The pope has parked his tanks on the Church of England’s lawn; Rome has made a hostile takeover bid for Canterbury. It is understandable if people are at a loss for words, since the move has been made so decisively and so without warning. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, knew nothing of the plan until a few days ago.

What has happened? Basically, it seems that Pope Benedict XVI has offered disgruntled Anglicans the opportunity to come over to Roman Catholicism en masse.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

Finally! I hear we’re all living in a women’s world now.

For the first time, women make up half the work force. The Shriver Report, out just last week, found that mothers are the major breadwinners in 40 percent of families. We have a female speaker of the House and a female secretary of state. Thirty-two women have served as governors. Thirty-eight have served as senators. Four out of eight Ivy League presidents are women.

Great news, right? Well, not exactly. In fact, it couldn’t be more spectacularly misleading.

The truth is, women haven’t come nearly as far as we would have predicted 25 years ago.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

“I hope people who say this war is unwinnable see stories like this. This is what winning in a counterinsurgency looks like.”

Lt. Col. William F. McCollough, commander of the First Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment, is walking me around the center of Nawa, a poor, rural district in southern Afghanistan’s strategically vital Helmand River Valley. His Marines, who now number more than 1,000, arrived in June to clear out the Taliban stronghold. Two weeks of hard fighting killed two Marines and wounded 70 more but drove out the insurgents. Since then the colonel’s men, working with 400 Afghan soldiers and 100 policemen, have established a “security bubble” around Nawa.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalSalud Pública

Earlier this month, a study published in the journal Science answered a question that medical scientists had been asking since 2006, when they learned of a novel virus found in prostate tumors called xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus, or XMRV: Was it a human infection?

XMRV is a gammaretrovirus, one of a family of viruses long-studied in animals but not known to infect people. In animals, these retroviruses can cause horrendous neurological problems, immune deficiency, lymphoma and leukemia. The new study provided overwhelming evidence that XMRV is a human gammaretrovirus — the third human retrovirus (after H.I.V. and human lymphotropic viruses, which cause leukemia and lymphoma).…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

Over the last few weeks, there’s been a very public debate over American strategy in Afghanistan. Foreign policy experts, generals, politicians and journalists have all offered their advice to the president. Just about everyone has had a say; just about everyone has been heard. Except for one crucial group, perhaps the one group with the most to win, or lose, in Afghanistan: the troops.

I can hear the criticism already. Some might dismiss the notion that our leaders should now turn to 20-year-olds in the field for strategy recommendations. Some might criticize the White House for pausing to analyze even more information.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

As the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chairman for 20 years and now founding chairman emeritus, I must do something that I never anticipated: I must publicly join the group’s critics. Human Rights Watch had as its original mission to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.

At Human Rights Watch, we always recognized that open, democratic societies have faults and commit abuses. But we saw that they have the ability to correct them — through vigorous public debate, an adversarial press and many other mechanisms that encourage reform.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalSalud Pública

Vaccine researchers don’t often find themselves at the center of public controversies. But a storm has erupted over the announcement last month that an experimental AIDS vaccine tested in Thailand proved modestly effective. It was billed as a major scientific advance — the long-awaited hard evidence that it is possible to inoculate people against AIDS. But now the trial has been called into question in a way that is overblown and possibly destructive.

At a biotech conference last week, I asked a major industry scientist what he thought of the Thai trial announcement, and, although no additional data had been presented, he replied simply, “I don’t believe it.”…  Seguir leyendo »