[VIEWPOINT] The constitution of Uzbekistan enshrines norms of environmental law

  Today our life is undergoing profound qualitative changes. Cardinal reforms are rapidly forming a completely new image of our society. The new edition of our constitution contains special norms on ensuring environmental rights of citizens, in particular, everyone has the right to a comfortable environment, reliable information about its condition, the state takes measures on improvement, restoration and protection of the environment, maintaining the ecological balance, protection of the e

March 27, 2023

[Howard Davies] US financial regulatory system is still broken

When a bank fails, attention inevitably turns to its regulators. Who was asleep at the wheel? Who failed to spot the warning signs? The failure of Silicon Valley Bank is no exception. In the United States, these questions are often directed at many different agencies, since the system is complex and hard for outsiders to understand. So, the conclusion is often an inverted form of John F. Kennedy’s famous observation after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, to the effect that “success has many

March 27, 2023

[Martin Schram] Xi, Putin ‘no limits’ pact has limits

Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin ended their Moscow summit last week by showcasing economic help and diplomatic support China will provide the now supplicant banana-less republic that is Putin’s Russia today. But even more importantly, the two autocratic presidents were careful not to spotlight this year’s most important reality: Apparently, their famous “no limits” partnership they boldly declared in 2022, just three weeks before Putin invaded Ukraine, has limits, after all

March 27, 2023

[Robert J. Fouser] The new robotics superpower

In Dobong-gu in northeast Seoul, the Seoul Robot & AI Museum (Seoul: RAIM), which was built mostly by robots and drones, is nearing completion. Scheduled to open this fall, the museum represents a daring effort to integrate robotics into the construction of a public building. Experiments in robotics development and implementation are active in South Korea and hold the potential to turn the country into the undisputed leader in robotics. In 2021, South Korea ranked first in the world in robot de

March 24, 2023

[Wang Son-taek] Japan must take sincere measures

President Yoon Suk Yeol completed a surprise visit to Tokyo last week. The two leaders of South Korea and Japan agreed to finish the 12-year-old confrontation and open a cooperative relationship toward the future. As a result, GSOMIA, or the Military Information Protection Agreement, was normalized. Japan will lift export restrictions on Korea, while Korea will drop its WTO complaint over Japan's unfair trade practices. Japan welcomed the Korean government's proposal for a significant

March 23, 2023

[Doyle McManus] SVB's demise a blessing in disguise

In the brief but spectacular collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, we may just have witnessed the best banking crisis ever. It might even have been useful. Nobody got seriously hurt, except bank executives who made bad decisions and shareholders who weren't paying attention. Those Silicon Valley libertarians who spent years demanding that government get out of the way earned their comeuppance when they begged the Federal Reserve to save them. "Where is (Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H.) Powe

March 23, 2023

[Kim Seong-kon] If you are proud of your country, act accordingly

According to newspaper reports, today’s young people in Korea feel lucky and proud to be born in South Korea. There is a plethora of reasons. For example, recently, the United Nations dubbed South Korea as a developed country, which suits the country in every sense. Indeed, South Korea has now become a fully developed, advanced country both economically and technologically. South Korea’s economy is the 4th largest in Asia and 13th in the world. Its military power, too, ranks 6th out

March 22, 2023

[Jeffrey Frankel] Fifty years of floating currencies

Fifty years ago this month, in March 1973, the Bretton Woods arrangement of fixed exchange rates was abandoned, and the world’s major currencies -- including the US dollar, pound, yen, and Deutsche Mark -- were allowed to float. At the time, the system’s demise was generally considered a policy failure. But the shift from fixed to flexible exchange rates was probably inevitable. The international monetary system that was designed at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944, helped lay t

March 22, 2023

[Daniel DePetris] China brokers Iran-Saudi deal but the US benefits

There was a time, only a few short years ago, when Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman thought Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was worse than Adolf Hitler. “I believe that the Iranian supreme leader makes Hitler look good,” Prince Mohammed told The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg in a 2018 interview. Hitler may have tried to conquer Europe, he said, but Iran is “trying to conquer the world.” Contrast those alarmist words with a dip

March 21, 2023

[LZ Granderson] Don't blame Mexico on gun, drug

Ken Salazar, the US ambassador to Mexico, met with the Los Angeles Tiems for more than an hour while visiting California in November. Her was eager to talk up the celebrations surrounding the US-Mexico diplomacy bicentennial. We were eager to talk about the border. The pas de deuk featured a lot of platitudes, a couple of tense moments, and a number I can't shake: 13,000. That was the estimate Salazar gave for the number of Mexicans who were studying at our universities at the time. Many of

March 21, 2023

[George Soros] Updating my Munich predictions

It is exactly one month ago that I gave a speech on the eve of the Munich Security Conference. Since then, so many remarkable things have happened -- and have happened so fast -- that it is worth comparing my predictions of a month ago with the actual developments. The biggest changes have occurred in the global climate system. By this, I mean actual climate events and climate scientists’ understanding of those events. The main message I wanted to convey in Munich was that the global clima

March 20, 2023

[Yoon Young-kwan] How China lost Asia to the US

Since the dawn of international politics, smaller states have faced the formidable challenge of navigating great-power rivalries. Today, it is the geopolitical contest between the United States and China that has compelled countries to balance their competing national interests. Toward which side they gravitate depends on domestic and external circumstances. Consider the Philippines, which has an interest in maintaining both its growing economic ties with neighboring China as well as its half-

March 17, 2023

[Lee Kyong-hee] Forgive but not forget a lasting solution

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s controversial speech on the 104th anniversary of the March 1 Independence Movement prompted me to watch two movies: “A Resistance” and “Anarchist from Colony.” Both are based on the heart-wrenching fate of courageous Koreans who as teenagers joined the massive anti-Japanese protests of March 1, 1919. A presidential speech customarily marks the watershed event. Yoon, no stranger to delivering fuzzy logic, kept his first March 1 address so

March 16, 2023

[Jan-Werner Mueller] The dilemma of anti-populism

Following a year of halting negotiations, six of Turkey’s opposition parties have finally united behind a single presidential candidate in the election this May, with the hope of ending Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasingly autocratic and repressive two-decade rule. This month, the so-called Table of Six converged on Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the social democratic and secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP), after having sidelined younger, more charismatic contenders s

March 15, 2023

[Kim Seong-kon] Doing the opposite of foreigners’ observations

In the late 19th and early 20th century, foreign adventurers, reporters and missionaries visited Joseon, which is now Korea. During their stay in the “Land of the Morning Calm,” they wrote some penetrating accounts describing pre-modern Korea. Some of them were favorable remarks, and others were somewhat negative observations, though amusing. For example, they unanimously praised the Korean people’s exquisite handcrafts such as pottery, and their superb skills at archery. They

March 15, 2023

[Josep Borrell] Honesty can advance the Middle East peace process

Too many people are dying every week in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, and millions are living in fear and hopelessness. The world’s response has been characterized by too many statements and too little action. That must change. We in the European Union and the wider international community need to do more. We know that people around the world expect us to work for peace, justice and international law everywhere. But to act successfully, we first must be honest with each

March 14, 2023

[Anastassia Fedyk, James Hodson, Ilona Sologoub] Russian opposition’s irrelevant demands

A year ago, two of us (Fedyk and Hodson) co-authored a commentary arguing that Russians would not rise up to stop President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine. There was too much suppression of dissent in Putin’s Russia, we noted, and too much real support for the war among the public. That assessment proved correct. Still, there is a lingering question: What role are Russian “opposition” parties playing in the conflict? While Russian opposition figures like the jailed

March 14, 2023

[James Stavridis] US needs to create a Cyber Force

Two disturbing incidents roiled the cyber seas last week, one foreign and one domestic. They both strengthen the case -- which was already convincing, and which I have been making for almost a decade now -- for the creation of a US Cyber Force. The first incident was yet another cyberattack on a NATO member, Albania, by Iran. It was part of an ongoing Iranian campaign to attack Albania, a small Muslim nation of only about 3 million in the Balkans. The attacks have included zeroing out personal b

March 13, 2023

[Nicholas Goldberg] How I became a tool of China's propaganda machine

When I write critical columns about US policies and politics, I occasionally strike a nerve and get enraged letters from readers denouncing me as a traitor or suggesting I am providing grist for our nation's enemies. I've been told, for instance, that I should move to China because I'm anti-American. And when I raised the possibility of negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, I was accused of being Vladimir Putin's lapdog. I've never taken such accusations seriously beca

March 13, 2023