https://www.scmp.com/rss/10605/feed Jonathan Power is a foreign affairs columnist and commentator. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com It should be a long time before the United States can again strut the world stage and lecture us all about the values of democracy and human rights, poking its finger in the eye of every authoritarian or dictatorial government it has the desire to show up. A former president, no less, has used every occasion to tell the world that the election of 2020 was hijacked. The last general election held three years ago has showed up the deficiencies of US “democracy”. We again learned that winning a... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3241612/declining-us-democracy-no-model-world?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3241612/declining-us-democracy-no-model-world?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 15 Nov 2023 21:30:17 +0000 George Orwell, the author of Animal Farm and 1984, was the first person to use the phrase “Cold War” in a 1945 article, written after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He argued that “the surface of the earth is being parcelled off into three great empires, each self-contained and cut off from contact with the outer world, and each ruled, under one disguise or another, by a self-elected oligarchy”. He counted the United States and western Europe as one, the Soviet Union as the... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3224029/new-cold-war-between-west-and-russia-called-definitely-not?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3224029/new-cold-war-between-west-and-russia-called-definitely-not?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 14 Jun 2023 08:30:10 +0000 Looking for a good cause for 2018? Try campaigning against torture. During his bid for the US presidency, Donald Trump said: “Torture works. OK, folks? Believe me, it works ... And waterboarding is your minor form, but we should go much stronger than waterboarding.” At the moment, as far as I know, the US is not torturing anyone. President Barack Obama put a stop to the practice by the administration of president George W. Bush. Even Trump says that since Secretary of Defence General James... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2127601/torture-still-widespread-and-its-time-stand-against-scourge?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2127601/torture-still-widespread-and-its-time-stand-against-scourge?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 10 Jan 2018 06:46:04 +0000 Poets sing the praises of the heavenly Jerusalem, a land without war, envy or hatred. Some of us have long hoped to see whether the work over decades by many imams, rabbis, ministers and priests could make the earthly Jerusalem more like its heavenly counterpart. Secular politicians do the negotiations but teachers of these great religions are charged with teaching compassion, tolerance and brotherhood. With US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, these... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2124139/trumps-jerusalem-decision-sets-peace-prospects-back-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2124139/trumps-jerusalem-decision-sets-peace-prospects-back-and?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 13 Dec 2017 07:36:03 +0000 Cambodia is slipping backwards again. Earlier this month the government asked the Supreme Court to dissolve the main opposition. The English-language Cambodia Daily has been closed and relatively free radio stations leaned on. Prime Minister Hun Sen talks about rebels in the capital plotting to overthrow the government. Yet economic growth nears 7 per cent year after year. Land reform has worked. Health and education of the poor has improved markedly. In other countries, this might mean... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2115900/two-million-reasons-why-cambodias-prime-minister-fears-us?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2115900/two-million-reasons-why-cambodias-prime-minister-fears-us?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 19 Oct 2017 03:17:39 +0000 “What did these vain and presumptuous men intend? How did they expect to raise their lofty mass against God, when they had built it above all the mountains and clouds of the Earth’s atmosphere?” This is St. Augustine writing about Babylon in his City of God. In more modern times, Jonathan Raban has written in Soft City, “The city has always been an embodiment of hope and a source of festering guilt: A dream pursued, and found vain, wanting and destructive.” St. Augustine wrote in a state of... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2110943/high-rises-congestion-and-shanty-towns-are-we-building?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2110943/high-rises-congestion-and-shanty-towns-are-we-building?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 13 Sep 2017 04:42:15 +0000 About half of the US is a “culture of ignorance”, and .they appear to feel no shame about it. In the south, the total probably goes up to around 65 per cent, whereas in the north, including California, it goes down to 35 per cent.   It is a rough and ready way of putting it, but the other 50 per cent voted for Barack Obama for president. Obama types are less religious, more scientifically orientated, less racist, more pro health care for the poor, more aware of the world outside, more convinced... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1834438/half-americans-ignorance-bliss?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1834438/half-americans-ignorance-bliss?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 08 Jul 2015 03:12:34 +0000 Were the killings in the church in Charleston terrorism, meant to intimidate the black population of America? Of course they were. Moreover, they were a reflection of the still widespread white hatred for America's first black president, Barack Obama. Indeed, as a commentary in The New York Times put it last week: "The main terrorist threat in the US is not from violent Muslim extremists, but from right-wing extremists. Just ask the police." The number of violent plots carried out by... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1825507/right-wing-violence-terrorising-america-not-muslim-extremism?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1825507/right-wing-violence-terrorising-america-not-muslim-extremism?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 24 Jun 2015 04:13:39 +0000 Who makes the law of the sea as China and Vietnam clash over China moving an oil rig close to an island some 150 nautical miles from the Vietnamese mainland? One would hope that China, which has ratified the UN Law of the Sea treaty, would seek international arbitration. It refuses to. Has this got something to do with the fact that the US has not ratified the treaty? The Chinese don't say so explicitly, but if the world's only superpower refuses to sign up, why should China pay the treaty due... https://www.scmp.com/comment/article/1517208/america-law-unto-itself-when-it-comes-signing-multilateral-treaties?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/article/1517208/america-law-unto-itself-when-it-comes-signing-multilateral-treaties?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 21 May 2014 12:45:45 +0000 The big immigration debate is often the big obscurantism debate. The wool is pulled over our eyes and obtaining clarity is not easy. The vested interests in continued immigration are enormous - first and foremost, the migrants themselves who are seeking an escape from poverty and lack of opportunity at home. The great migration of Mexicans to the US is now a trickle - mainly because of fast-growing work and educational opportunities at home They are supported by governments at home who look at... https://www.scmp.com/comment/article/1446090/governments-are-ignoring-real-costs-migration?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/article/1446090/governments-are-ignoring-real-costs-migration?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 11 Mar 2014 09:00:00 +0000 The West, the US especially, has got itself into a fretful mood over the rise of China. Quite unnecessarily so. The Chinese growth rate is slowing. As a BBC commentator said recently, reviewing this week's government-issued statistics, China will never hit double-digit growth again. Glitzy Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and their like, where growth is still well over 10 per cent a year, make up only part of China's economy. Much of the country has an income per head more akin to Ecuador. Between... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1411136/us-must-be-prepared-see-china-equal-power?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1411136/us-must-be-prepared-see-china-equal-power?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 22 Jan 2014 19:18:00 +0000 In 1776, Adam Smith published his Wealth of Nations, which has guided economists and political thinkers ever since. It marked the start of the Industrial Revolution that began in England and then spread throughout most of the world. That was 237 years ago. It is not that long ago - only four life spans or so. Where will we be 237 years hence? Presumably, just as today, we will listen to Mozart and read Shakespeare - they have survived all changing tastes and spread well outside their original... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1308439/dreaming-future-utopia?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1308439/dreaming-future-utopia?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 11 Sep 2013 16:00:00 +0000 China is a sitting duck. Not so long ago, as far as most of the rest of the world was concerned, it was almost a closed, mysterious, society. Now it is wide open. The bad is there for all to see. And this has allowed an open season on the shooting range. The targets are legion - corruption, nepotism, nationalism, maladministration, growing inequality, environmental degradation, overassertive foreign policy and the military build-up. Western critics enjoy popping off at them. Much of what they... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1237701/china-deserves-more-credit-its-positive-global-contributions?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1237701/china-deserves-more-credit-its-positive-global-contributions?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 14 May 2013 16:00:00 +0000 Go into the casino in Tanzania's largest city, Dar es Salaam, and what strikes you? The fact that the overwhelming number of players are Chinese. If the Chinese are not quite everywhere in Africa, their numbers, investments and trade have mushroomed over the past 10 years. If one compares Chinese and US investment in Tanzania, there is no contest. China has been in Africa before. The first time was also in Tanzania, when it came in 1970, complete with a workforce, to build a new railway. For... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1138006/chinas-influence-africa-will-only-grow?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1138006/chinas-influence-africa-will-only-grow?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 28 Jan 2013 16:00:00 +0000 There has never been a full-scale war between two nuclear-armed states. If Iran does cross the nuclear threshold, the same deterrence will apply. No rational person would want to provoke their own incineration. Kenneth Waltz, the distinguished theorist on the conduct of war, has written in Foreign Affairs that with Israel possessing over 200 nuclear weapons, Iran having a bomb would bring stability. I don't want to go as far as Waltz. The launch of nuclear weapons can always be done by accident... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1117659/iran-nuclear-deal-depends-whats-feasible?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1117659/iran-nuclear-deal-depends-whats-feasible?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 01 Jan 2013 16:00:00 +0000 At last someone has done something sensible in the increasingly bitter fight between Japan and China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands: China has taken the issue to the United Nations. China hasn't gone as far as sending the matter to the International Court of Justice, though if it were brave, it would. China has only asked for a geological survey by independent experts to ascertain where China's continental shelf ends. The commissioning UN organisation is probably The Law of the Sea's chamber of... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1108371/china-deserves-credit-sending-island-dispute-un?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1108371/china-deserves-credit-sending-island-dispute-un?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 19 Dec 2012 16:00:00 +0000 We all know the cliches: Is the glass half full or half empty? Is the light in the tunnel the train coming towards you? But this time, the new World Bank figures on global poverty are absolutely clear. The glass is filling up. The train is not going to crash into us. The doomsayers have been proved wrong. Poverty is on a worldwide decrease - in Asia, the Arab world and in Latin America at a fast clip; in Africa less rapidly. The World Bank calculates its figures on a three-year basis, but... https://www.scmp.com/article/1000663/poverty-beating-slow-sure-retreat?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/1000663/poverty-beating-slow-sure-retreat?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 10 May 2012 16:00:00 +0000 When distinguished foreign policy expert, and former US national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski told me a couple of years ago that he worried about the stability of India, I thought he was way off-track. I was living in Calcutta at the time; democracy seemed to be thriving and most of the country was developing fast. But that was before last year's crises. One financial scandal has followed another. The government has been overwhelmed by its inability to dominate the legislature. Economic... https://www.scmp.com/article/997746/india-progress-matter-perspective?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/997746/india-progress-matter-perspective?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 08 Apr 2012 16:00:00 +0000 Writing in 1751, Voltaire described Europe as 'a kind of great republic, divided into several states, some monarchical, the others mixed ... but all corresponding with one another. They all have the same religious foundation, even if divided into several confessions. They all have the same principles of public law and politics, unknown in other parts of the world.' Ten years ago, this January 1, in a way that Charlemagne, Voltaire, William Penn and Gladstone, the early advocates of European... https://www.scmp.com/article/989360/ideal-union-eludes-europe-10-years?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/989360/ideal-union-eludes-europe-10-years?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 05 Jan 2012 16:00:00 +0000 Some of us believed that, at the end of the cold war in 1991, American and Soviet nuclear rockets would be left to rust and rot in their silos. Former US president George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan before him did quite a lot for nuclear disarmament. Despite all his rhetoric and bear-hugging of Boris Yeltsin, Bill Clinton achieved very little. George W.Bush did only a bit more. Hopes were focused on Barack Obama, who was honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize partly because it was thought he... https://www.scmp.com/article/987717/nuclear-impasse-yesteryear-still-us?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/987717/nuclear-impasse-yesteryear-still-us?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:00:00 +0000 The panic button on Iran is being pressed again. A report by the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), suggests that Iran has taken more significant steps towards developing a nuclear weapon. At the same time, the warnings from Israel are coming thick and fast, reminding us that, if necessary, it will bomb Iran's nuclear research facilities. All this is grist for the mill for the doomsayers who believe it won't be long before countries such as Saudi Arabia and... https://www.scmp.com/article/984510/transfer-nuclear-technology-time-bomb?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/984510/transfer-nuclear-technology-time-bomb?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:00:00 +0000 Pakistan is in the hole of all holes. Telling its rulers, generals and fundamentalist agitators that the first law of holes is to stop digging goes unheard. It makes one almost wish for a return to the calm, measured ways of the military quasi-dictator Pervez Musharraf, ousted in 2008. Once president, Musharraf cast aside his macho character that once had nearly led to nuclear war with India. He dropped many of Pakistan's conditions for making peace with India. Diplomats thought that India... https://www.scmp.com/article/983835/pakistan-edge-disintegration?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/983835/pakistan-edge-disintegration?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 03 Nov 2011 16:00:00 +0000 I wonder how many journalists covering Libya are aware that the African continent is the world's most peaceful when it comes to interstate wars. Moreover, its number of civil, ethnic and tribal wars has been on the decline for some time. Levels of conflict in Africa have never been so low in all the centuries African history has been written. We are brainwashed by headlines and the television news to think otherwise, not just about Africa but about the world at large. During the US presidency... https://www.scmp.com/article/977873/best-times?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/977873/best-times?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:00:00 +0000 There we go again. Riots and mayhem in London. The mob takes to the streets, breaks and burns and then retreats. The press magnify it. Our discernment wanes. Perspective is non-existent. A poll says that a large majority of the gentlemanly British with their deep attachment to law, due process and human rights think live bullets should have been used against the rioters. Are we mentally back in the times of the Peterloo Massacre when in 1819 the cavalry with drawn swords charged on... https://www.scmp.com/article/976576/lets-not-lose-our-head-over-english-mob?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/976576/lets-not-lose-our-head-over-english-mob?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:00:00 +0000 Lately there has been a lot of anguish about the rise in world food prices and how this has affected the nutrition of the poorest. A number of things are to blame for the price rise. In some regions it is bad weather, in particular in the Horn of Africa where there is now a famine. As long ago as 1974, when grain prices had just quadrupled, the nations of the world promised that by the end of the century 'no child would go to bed hungry'. After a number of years of steady increases in aid for... https://www.scmp.com/article/975055/starving-right-kinds-nutrition?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/975055/starving-right-kinds-nutrition?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 31 Jul 2011 16:00:00 +0000 In some important ways, perhaps a majority of the people in the developing world live a better life than did the rich of 400 or even 200 years ago in Europe and North America. According to Charles Kenny in his new book, Getting Better, all but a handful of poorer countries are concerned about improving the quality of life of their citizens: 'Even the most corrupt and inefficient governments of Africa are providing services of a quality and extent far in advance of any country in the world... https://www.scmp.com/article/969264/whole-people-are-leading-healthier-lives?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/969264/whole-people-are-leading-healthier-lives?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 30 May 2011 16:00:00 +0000 We may not know for some time how bad were the nuclear accident and the devastation of the tsunami on Japan, but it has been serious enough to make Japanese wonder: 'Why us?' Why us, when this super-organised society had taken such precautions against earthquakes and their consequences? How could it be, to quote German Chancellor Dr Angela Merkel, that 'the impossible became possible'? The physical repairing will take a long time. The mental healing perhaps longer. It is more than many people... https://www.scmp.com/article/741829/hiroshimas-pall?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/741829/hiroshimas-pall?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 23 Mar 2011 16:00:00 +0000 Why the worry about China's growing military power? It is still minuscule compared with the US, which spends as much as all the other countries in the world combined. The worry over China's homemade Stealth bomber, its building of aircraft carriers and destroyers and its deployment of more submarines have become, in some quarters, emotionally charged. In October 1964, China exploded its first nuclear weapon. Then China went on to build a small, unsophisticated and highly vulnerable nuclear... https://www.scmp.com/article/739416/undue-worry-over-chinas-nuclear-policy?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/739416/undue-worry-over-chinas-nuclear-policy?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 27 Feb 2011 16:00:00 +0000 The late Walter Lippmann, the greatest of all American newspaper columnists, mocked America's efforts to broadcast overseas. The broadcasts, he wrote, 'were no more than singing songs, cracking jokes, entertaining the kiddies'. No influential voice, to my knowledge, has made such a criticism of the BBC's World Service. It has evolved over the years as an institution that, while not promoting an official ideology, has been able to project to the outside world the best of British journalistic... https://www.scmp.com/article/737570/chipping-away-nations-influence?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/737570/chipping-away-nations-influence?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 06 Feb 2011 16:00:00 +0000 A person born in the African country of Niger can expect to live 26 fewer years, to have nine fewer years of education and to consume 54 times fewer goods than a person born in Denmark. For many of us, this is our image of Africa and, indeed, much of the Third World. Why is it that the press only report the trains that arrive late and the planes that crash? Bad news is their daily diet. The truth is that an overwhelming majority of poor Third World countries are on an upward trajectory. In... https://www.scmp.com/article/736203/narrowing-gap?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/736203/narrowing-gap?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 19 Jan 2011 16:00:00 +0000 Recently, I went to bed feeling like a frozen corpse. I was up in the Himalayas, not dressed for the occasion. Fortunately, the little hotel in which I lodged provided its guests with duvets almost half a metre thick. Once awake in the morning, all was forgiven. I was in the Ganges valley in the foothills of the Himalayas. From where I stood, it was a mighty drop to the river. I was spellbound. I came to see a project run by the UN agency the International Fund for Agricultural Development, ... https://www.scmp.com/article/733928/microcredit-still-sowing-seeds-success?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/733928/microcredit-still-sowing-seeds-success?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 20 Dec 2010 16:00:00 +0000 During the difficult years that preceded the British handover of Hong Kong to China, the Chinese government's intense antipathy to opium and the still fresh memories of the evil that buccaneering 18th-century Britain inflicted on China and Hong Kong added an extra emotional charge to what, anyway, was a most complicated transition. Without opium there would have been no Hong Kong. The British only acquired it because of the Opium wars, and the city's early economic success was built on the... https://www.scmp.com/article/722111/out-open?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/722111/out-open?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 13 Aug 2010 16:00:00 +0000 We live in exciting times and, by this, I am talking about the dramatic drop in child mortality, the birth rate and the death rate in the poorest countries - a drop that appears to be accelerating. We should give thanks for all the energy and sweat that have been poured into the problem by local governments, the George W. Bush administration's programme to fight Aids and malaria, and organisations such as the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Bill and Linda Gates... https://www.scmp.com/article/721716/where-theres-will-theres-great-progress?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/721716/where-theres-will-theres-great-progress?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 08 Aug 2010 16:00:00 +0000 Lies and misrepresentations by British ex-prime minister Tony Blair led the nation into the long and destructive war with Iraq. That unnecessary carnage is on many British people's minds as they vote in a general election today. Even so, the state of the economy is the No 1 issue, according to the polls. Prime Minister Gordon Brown is convincing when he argues that the great recession wasn't his fault and Britain was one of the two important countries that led the fight to mitigate it. (The... https://www.scmp.com/article/713474/election-master-plan-liberal-democrats?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/713474/election-master-plan-liberal-democrats?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 05 May 2010 16:00:00 +0000 We appear to have been battered to a submissive intellectual pulp by the climate change lobby, although it was only 35 years ago, when I interviewed the world's principal climate experts for The Washington Post, that the consensus was the earth was cooling. Within a few decades, they have fundamentally changed their minds. How could this happen so quickly? Has everyone already forgotten how the computer boffins told us that the world's computers would crash at midnight at the start of the... https://www.scmp.com/article/708206/storm-clouds-over-climate-change-lobby?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/708206/storm-clouds-over-climate-change-lobby?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:00:00 +0000 Jharkhand is one of the poorest states in India and has become a test for the ability of Indian democracy to serve the poor. The jungles of its many mountains are home to 7 million indigenous people who speak their tribal languages, worship the sun rather than Hindu gods and live in dire poverty. Three generations ago, these hunters and gatherers were forcibly settled, but agriculture was foreign to them. Perhaps it is not surprising that they produced Maoists guerillas who initiated a... https://www.scmp.com/article/707505/fight-maoists-aiming-rural-poverty?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/707505/fight-maoists-aiming-rural-poverty?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:00:00 +0000 If in 2010 the big nuclear weapons powers and UN Security Council permanent members - the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France - don't make significant reductions with their nuclear weapons then an important opportunity will be lost. US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev appear to be of a mind on this. One has to go back to the US presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson to get the full picture on the dismal progress on nuclear disarmament. Their... https://www.scmp.com/article/702471/bombs-away?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/702471/bombs-away?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:00:00 +0000 What India wants India will get. As Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh told me a couple of years ago, India wants to overtake China while putting its own runaway capitalism under tighter social control. At the time, he seemed downbeat about realising these goals. But, as India emerges faster than China from the great recession, and as its huge anti-poverty programmes begin to bite, his pessimism seems unwarranted. I first went to Calcutta 35 years ago. It was then literally a 'black hole'. I... https://www.scmp.com/article/701838/great-social-tide-has-lifted-all-boats?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/701838/great-social-tide-has-lifted-all-boats?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 20 Dec 2009 16:00:00 +0000 To describe the Bhopal disaster of 25 years ago - when a chemical plant owned by the Indian subsidiary of Union Carbide sprang a leak and killed around 4,000 people instantly and some 15,000 later, in an agonising Hiroshima-like death - as 'the unacceptable face of capitalism' does not do it justice. It was malevolence beyond belief. Union Carbide made only the most modest of efforts to compensate victims and, when it was bought out by the American Dow Chemical Company, the same insouciance was... https://www.scmp.com/article/700795/unacceptable-horror-capitalism?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/700795/unacceptable-horror-capitalism?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:00:00 +0000 A census released in Beijing reported that there is now an extraordinary imbalance in the birth rate - 117 boys are being born for every 100 girls. In Hainan province, the gap widens to an astonishing 135:100 ratio. In mainland China today, about 97 per cent of all unmarried people aged between 28 and 49 are male. China probably leads the world in using cheap scans that let parents know the sex of their child in the womb and, despite breaking the law, find a doctor who will abort a fetus... https://www.scmp.com/article/699508/mans-world?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/699508/mans-world?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:00:00 +0000 High moments aside, do we know what happiness is? Is the world becoming a happier place? Are we happier than our parent's or grandparent's generation? What could give us a little more happiness? I recall an article on the subject published 25 years ago by Geraldine Norman, the art saleroom correspondent of the London Times. I haven't seen it bettered. She had just been to Africa for her honeymoon and, being a rather bookish sort of girl, took with her the Penguin introduction to psychology and... https://www.scmp.com/article/694911/smile-curve?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/694911/smile-curve?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:00:00 +0000 The last century found that, willy-nilly, it had goals aplenty. There was always the social goal of ending unemployment, a purpose that fired people as varied as John Maynard Keynes and Adolf Hitler. There was the goal of spreading capitalism or building socialism, depending on which side of the fence you were on. Later, there was the goal of defeating fascism and, later still, communism. Then there was the goal of ending war and the creation of a United Nations. Not least, there was the goal... https://www.scmp.com/article/694488/can-we-end-poverty-if-it-cant-even-be-defined?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/694488/can-we-end-poverty-if-it-cant-even-be-defined?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Will historians 100 years hence look at the beginning of the 21st century, much as we look at the end of the 19th, and say: 'Unfortunately the peace and prosperity of the moment was but an interlude before the bloodiest century in mankind's history?' Will they conclude, as Aldous Huxley did, that 'every road towards a better society is blocked, sooner or later, by war, by threats of war and preparations for war? This is the truth, the odious and unacceptable truth.' Pessimists have grist for... https://www.scmp.com/article/691291/history-world-wars-unlikely-repeat-itself?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/691291/history-world-wars-unlikely-repeat-itself?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:00:00 +0000 It goes back to the French revolution of 1789. At the Revolutionary Convention the most radical of the insurgents decided to seat themselves on the left side. 'Why not on the other side, the right side, the place of rectitude, where law and the higher right resided, when man's best hand could be raised in righteous honour?' wrote Melvin Lasky in Encounter. 'Anyway they went left, and man's political passions have never been the same.' When Oskar Lafontaine, the German finance minister, ... https://www.scmp.com/article/689337/whos-right-can-often-depend-whos-left?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/689337/whos-right-can-often-depend-whos-left?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 09 Aug 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Read it for yourself, and don't dismiss it, as most Western commentators have. The Pan-European Security Treaty, proposed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is worth a look. Yes, it can be modified and improved, and ambiguities removed. But it makes a lot of sense, and it would be another step towards what the last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, urged - the creation of a 'European house' that contains Russia as one of its inhabitants. Only those 'with one foot in the cold war', to... https://www.scmp.com/article/687584/europe-should-keep-spare-key-russia?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/687584/europe-should-keep-spare-key-russia?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 22 Jul 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Not a moment too soon, the Europeans have been going through a bout of navel gazing and introspection following the recent parliamentary elections. What is the European Parliament for, when every country has its own legislatures, both national and local? Why did so few people vote, less than ever before? Why did the East Europeans, only recently liberated from the yolk of dictatorship which denied them the vote, vote less than anyone else (with a couple of exceptions)? Why are the British... https://www.scmp.com/article/683941/religion-glue-holds-europe-together?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/683941/religion-glue-holds-europe-together?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:00:00 +0000 With the election behind it, India should move forward in its quest to settle the divisive issue of Kashmir that has led to three wars with Pakistan and, once, to the brink of nuclear war. India missed a great opportunity to settle the dispute when Pervez Musharraf was in power in Pakistan. The military president ruled until his overthrow last year. According to US and British diplomats I talked to 18 months ago, a deal was tantalisingly close. One British ambassador said that the main... https://www.scmp.com/article/681676/india-must-step-and-seek-deal-kashmir?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/681676/india-must-step-and-seek-deal-kashmir?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 27 May 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Igor Yurgens is probably as close to Dmitry Medvedev as one can get without interviewing the Russian president himself. His influence is regarded by those who follow the inner workings of the Kremlin as immense. A liberal academic committed to the rule of law, he runs his own think-tank which gives him the research and intellectual firepower to influence his close friend. Dr Yurgens had something to do with clearing the path for the president to give his first on-the-record interview to the... https://www.scmp.com/article/679304/inside-mind-man-closest-medvedev?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/679304/inside-mind-man-closest-medvedev?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 06 May 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Of all the words said and written about torture in the current debate, very few looked at the history of the birth, in 1984, of the UN's Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Much of the groundwork was done by Amnesty International. Among countries which put their shoulder to the wheel, the Scandinavians and the Dutch worked hardest. But, not far behind them, were the US and Britain. 'Those were the days,' you might say. No one in the... https://www.scmp.com/article/678993/ticking-bomb?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/678993/ticking-bomb?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 03 May 2009 16:00:00 +0000 A 50 per cent reduction in the nuclear arsenals of Russia and the US was proposed by US President Barack Obama recently. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev seems to be receptive. What neither have mentioned is that we have been here before - with presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. But that plan was undermined by a key adviser on the American side and short sightedness on the Soviet side. Although Russia and the US keep their missiles on hair-trigger alert, almost nobody in the... https://www.scmp.com/article/676619/can-obama-avoid-reaganesque-folly?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/676619/can-obama-avoid-reaganesque-folly?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 12 Apr 2009 16:00:00 +0000