Paul Krugman
2/7/2011

The world is in the midst of a food crisis, and this has triggered rage in the Middle East, causing inflation (though not yet in the US) and impacting the world’s poor, Krugman says. The American right and the Chinese blame easy-money policies at the Federal Reserve and France blames speculators for the high prices, but Krugman says severe weather has disrupted agricultural production and could be attributed to greenhouse gases. He says if climate change is to blame, this is just the beginning.

Krugman is a New York Times columnist.

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Robert Wright
1/19/2011

Wright says if America wants to actually cut defense spending it should correct the disproportionate role America plays as the world’s police. We not only foot the monetary bill for this role, but we also pay for the ill will as a result of playing this role. The United Nations Security Council is the mechanism through which threats to peace should be recognized, the military action necessary to deal with them authorized, and the burdens of that military action shared. Wright also suggests non-military ways for global governance to share peace. As our days of global hegemony are passing, we should craft instruments of global governance to assure security in a world we don’t dominate that will equitably distribute the costs of that security.

Wright blogs on culture, politics and world affairs for The New York Times.

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Yang Jianli
1/19/2011

The author makes an appeal to President Obama to consider human rights and the democratization of China when he meets with Chinese President Hu Jintao this week. He suggests that President Obama politely but pointedly ask President Hu about his father’s denunciation by the Communist Party and draw the parallel between Hu’s father and political prisoners like Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. Obama could ask why Liu Xia, wife of Liu Xiaobo, remains under house arrest without being accused of any crime (Chinese law makes no provision for imprisonment without cause). Obama could then press Hu toward a more democratic approach to government, which would be in the best interest of the United States, China, and “all humanity,” says Yang Jianli. While the writer understands the potential awkwardness of such an encounter between Obama and Hu, he also recognizes the opportunity.

The writer is president of Initiatives for China and a Harvard fellow. He served a five-year prison term in China, from 2002 to 2007, for attempting to observe labor unrest. He is the liaison to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee on behalf of Liu Xia, the wife of Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, who is serving 11 years in prison for his writings.

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Douglas Murray
12/15/2010

It’s a story that is becoming as familiar as the traditional nativity: ordinary young man goes to Britain, most likely to study, and comes out an Islamic extremist. While Sweden may change after its first suicide bombing, it is more urgent that things change in Britain. One-third of British Muslim students polled believe that killing in the name of their religion could be justified. Yet the government’s minister for higher education dismissed the findings. Murray concludes that if you had told Britons 20 years ago that this occurrence would become routine they would have laughed at you. But Britain is no longer the country it was.

Murray is the director of London’s Center for Social Cohesion.

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Thomas L. Friedman
12/15/2010

We have only one America so we have to make this work. If it fails, our children will grow up in a different world and we will not like who picks up the pieces. Friedman looks at the role of China in the future–a country that tried to intimidate its trading partners from sending representatives to attend the Nobel award ceremony at Oslo’s City Hall after it rejected the Nobel Peace Prize given to one of its citizens, a democracy advocate who has been imprisoned. On the other end of the spectrum, Friedman wonders what the world would be like if individuals feel empowered to change the world by dumping state secrets at any time. He says a stable world requires that we get the best from both extremes while limiting the worst; it will require smart legal and technological responses. That job requires a strong America.

Friedman is a New York Times columnist.

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Robert Wright
12/14/2010

If there is no two-state solution to the situation between Israel and Palestine, Israel has two poor choices: give Palestinians the vote in occupied territories while the Arab birth rate makes Israeli Jews a minority or continue to deny the vote to Arabs, moving Israel toward global pariah status and giving terrorists propaganda to feed their calls for war. Wright says there is a third solution: have the United Nations create a Palestinian state now as it did a Jewish state. Although it would be tricky, it is better than the current state of affairs between Israel and Palestine.

Wright blogs for The New York Times on culture, politics, and world affairs.

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David B. Rivkin Jr. and Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky
12/9/2010

International law classifies pirates as “enemies” of all mankind, but developed countries have been reticent to try and convict pirates, choosing instead to funnel suspects to Kenya for legal action. But the Kenyan government is running out of funding for the large number of prosecutions, and the international community needs to develop a comprehensive framework for dealing with piracy. The authors suggest an international tribunal by the United Nations as a long-term solution, and they believe that Washington should be a legal and military leader in the effort to secure the freedom of the seas.

Rivkin, a Washington lawyer, served in the Justice Department and the White House counsel’s office in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. Ramos-Mrosovsky is a New York-based attorney whose practice focuses on international and federal litigation.

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John H. Cochrane
12/2/2010

Cochrane considers the lessons to be learned from Europe’s recent bailouts. He argues that restructuring short-term debt as long-term debt would hardly be the end of the world. Our governments have also guaranteed trillions of dollars of debt–everything from mortgages to student loans, to say nothing of implicit guarantees to banks and state and local governments. These guarantees don’t show up anywhere on the books, but investors could start adding them up very quickly. Remember that Ireland got into trouble by guaranteeing bank debt. US government debt is also remarkably tilted to short maturities, with the majority being rolled over every year. The Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing will tilt us further to shorter debt.

Cochrane is a professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

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