Showing 1 - 9 of 9
The year of the woeful world leaders
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 28/12/2018
» The dictionaries have decided on their 2018 words of the year. Oxford picked "toxic". Merriam-Webster went for "justice". Collins chose "single-use". However, I'd zero in on "misgovernment". Surely, 2018 saw a number of countries misruled by the worst crop of world leaders in recent memory.
Digital currencies can hurt the US
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 06/12/2017
» Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's announcement that the Latin American country will issue a cryptocurrency called the petro to overcome a "financial blockade" by the US probably mirrors the thinking of other maverick regimes. The possibility of sanctions-busting, and generally finding a way to work outside the Western-dominated global financial system, makes cryptocurrencies attractive to non-Western nations, and the more so to rogue regimes.
The key to tackling North Korea is Vladimir Putin
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 19/05/2017
» The idea of a grand bargain between the United States and Russia is less popular in Washington than ever before. And yet one of the biggest foreign policy problems for the US -- that of North Korea -- cannot be resolved without Russia's participation. In recent years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has made sure to rebuild a close relationship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, and it's no longer enough to talk to China to mitigate the Stalinist state's aggressiveness.
Putin sees himself as world's 'chess grandmaster'
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 09/01/2017
» Russian President Vladimir Putin is on a roll. The catalog of his alarming moves is well-known: aggression in Ukraine, interference in Syria on the side of President Bashar al-Assad, stepped-up intelligence efforts that may include a hybrid operation to discredit Hillary Clinton, a slick, prolific propaganda machine, support for nationalist and populist movements in Europe. But why is Mr Putin doing all this?
A new Russia policy requires Exxon CEO's skills
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 14/12/2016
» If Donald Trump chooses Exxon Mobil Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson as his secretary of state, it will be proof that his administration will take a new approach to US policy toward Russia, as he hinted during the campaign. The dismay about that shift in the expert and intelligence community may be a good sign: The same experts and spies have led the Obama administration into a series of missteps that have embarrassed the US and helped advance President Vladimir Putin's agenda.
There is no rule book for doing away with corruption
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 16/05/2016
» UK Prime Minister David Cameron's anti-corruption summit coincided with the release of an International Monetary Fund staff paper that explains why corruption is bad for economies and suggests ways to eradicate it. But neither these recommendations nor those expressed at the forum will do much to fix the developing world's problems. That would require much more than better anti-graft laws and dogged enforcement.
Emissions lawsuit tipped to scare VW out of US market
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 07/01/2016
» The US government's lawsuit against Volkswagen threatens the German automaker with such heavy penalties that, in hindsight, it may not have been worth it for VW to be present in the US market at all.
Putin waging war on too many fronts
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 26/11/2015
» Has Vladimir Putin finally overreached? The Russian president is confronting several simultaneous crises. Over the weekend, Ukrainian activists blew up high-voltage transmission towers and cut off electricity supplies to Russian-held Crimea. In St Petersburg, his home city, on Tuesday a column of 600 heavy trucks was crawling toward the city government building to protest tolls on Russian roads (a son of a close friend of Mr Putin has a financial interest in the system). And on the Turkey-Syria border, the Turkish air force downed a Russian bomber.
MH17 probe shows no side blameless
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 15/10/2015
» The Dutch report on the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was not supposed to apportion blame. Yet the report released on Tuesday by the Dutch Safety Board clearly shows that no side is innocent in eastern Ukraine's now-frozen conflict.