The World Around Us

From 31 October to 12 November, the United Kingdom (UK) will host the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland. T...

AROUND LATE April/ early May 2020, the price per barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil had fallen to negative US$40. At the time of writing, WTI...

In my final match as an under 15 cricketer, I had bowling figures of 10 overs, 39 runs and 6 wickets. One of the wickets was the result of a brilliant...

A pandora’s box was opened earlier this week when the financial affairs of some of the most powerful political and business leaders in the world began...

After 16 years in power, Angela Merkel, outgoing Chancellor of Germany, is bringing the curtain down on a stellar career as a German, European and glo...

There was a time when the phrase “when America sneezes, the world catches a cold” was quite common and certainly rang true. This simply meant that wha...

WE LIVE IN AN age of global pandemics, economic shocks, endless wars, a climate crisis, an environmental emergency, extreme income inequality and soci...

POUND FOR POUND, America remains the world’s most powerful country. It has the most powerful military, the largest economy and massive amounts of soft...

The speed with which the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the bulk of American forces caught many by surprise, includi...

THE NOVEL coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has imprinted itself on our consciousness to the extent that it makes it easy to forget that there are other...

AT 1.2 or 1.3 degrees Celsius (?) above preindustrial levels, planet earth is hotter now than it has ever been in the history of human civilisation. W...

In Greek mythology, Pegasus is a winged horse and the servant of the Greek god, Zeus. In late antiquity, Pegasus’ flight was also interpreted as an al...

I have had some robust discussions about the situation in Haiti in recent days. In last week’s article, I suggested that the international community s...

AS I WRITE, I am mindful of the Jura mountains in the background, which demarcate part of the French-Swiss border. These mountains are partly signific...

TO QUESTION whether America is back suggests that it had moved away from a place where it would have ordinarily been found. For many decades, America ...

ON JULY 1st, 2021, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will mark 100 years of existence. Of these 100 years, the CCP has been the sole governing party o...

THE ERA OF LOW TAXES, particularly low corporate taxes, appears to be coming to an end, or at least, it seems to be under even greater scrutiny. As I ...

Leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) held their 47th summit from 11-13 June in Cornwall, United Kingdom (UK). The core members of the G7 are Australia, ...

WRITING FOR THE Brookings Institution in April 2020, Rashawn Ray and Andre Perry, both American academics, referred to reparations as a system of redr...

JULIA KAGAN, former editor of Consumer Reports, defines financial technology (Fintech) as new technology that seeks to improve and automate the delive...

THERE IS A Vincentian calypso which was rendered a few decades ago with the line “No man is free until all men are free everywhere.” By this token, no...

Unrest in Colombia has become the latest trending topic, making international headlines both on social media and in the international press. Steven Os...

THE multi-generational United States (US) War against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan is drawing to a close. The final phase of ending what se...

ON 22-23 APRIL 2021, President Joseph Biden of the United States (US) convened a virtual climate summit of 40 world leaders; among them the Honourable...

IN ITS STRICTEST sense, multilateralism refers to cooperation between three or more countries. However, many readily associate it with cooperation amo...

Roughly one week ago, the World Trade Organization (WTO) confirmed Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as its new Director-General (DG). Dr. Okonjo-Iweala previou...

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), extensive physical distancing measures and movement restrictions, often referred to as ‘lockdowns’, ...

A YEAR AGO, developing a vaccine to combat the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic by the end of 2020 seemed like an impossible task. Afterall, base...

Now that the Biden Administration has begun, one would imagine that just about every country, region and major international organisation is positioni...

GOOD NEWS SEEMS scarce now as the world continues to reel from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Vaccine candidates which were given emergenc...

In 1956, then Senator John F. Kennedy, who eventually became President of the United States (US), was given credit for authoring a volume of short bio...

I recently came across the story of the Choluteca Bridge. The Choluteca Bridge is a suspension bridge located in Choluteca, Honduras. It was first con...

At the time of writing, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, had just hours prior, agreed to e...

Regionalism can be a building block for a better world. When there is cooperation within and across regions in areas such as trade, investment, the en...

Circumstances appear to have conspired to place the United Kingdom (UK) in limbo on many fronts. Like the rest of the world, it is dealing with the gl...

In geopolitics today, as it occurs in nature, the sun rises in the East. Here, I am specifically referring to the East-Asia region which is now one of...

In 1994, the world stood by and did very little as ethnic conflict in Rwanda caused the killing of over 800,000 people, the majority of them innocent ...

The quote “a week is a long time in politics” is often attributed to the former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Looking back at the past week in...

By the end of today, November 3, 2020, barring some unforeseen development, the world is likely to know the outcome of the United States (US) Presiden...

We are living in the age of disruption and many things are no longer what they used to be. Who would have thought that a firm can become the largest t...

VLADIMIR ILYICH ULYANOV, better known by his alias Vladimir Lenin, once said that “There are decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades happe...

I HAVE LONG BEEN a fan of superhero movies because often, they represent the triumph of good over evil. Superheroes tend to have a keen sense of moral...

Switzerland is a relatively small, mountainous, landlocked country in Central Europe. Zurich and Geneva are two of its most internationally known citi...

Courage is one of the traits that we often look for in a good leader. A courageous leader tends to have the ability to confront problems and move thin...

ABRAHAM IS A figure who is given a place of prominence among three of the world’s major religions - Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Each of these thr...

This week’s article is a continuation of last week’s reflections which focused on the past and present of the UN. This week, I will focus on the futur...

IF THE UNITED NATIONS (UN) did not exist, global conditions now and for much of the past seven decades suggest that it would have needed to be created...

For decades, the Middle East has been mired in conflict. From the year 1900 to now, there have been close to 100 major conflicts ranging from civil wa...

A few weeks ago, I wrote about democracy’s receding trend. At the time, I was writing against the backdrop of what appeared to be politically tinged c...

In the aftermath of a deadly explosion in Beirut, Lebanon on August 4, 2020, things fell apart swiftly. Mass protests erupted and the government, led ...

We often think of geopolitics exactly as the term suggests – the interplay between geographic factors and politics and how these define the relationsh...

In sport, particularly tennis, an unforced error is a mistake made by a player that is attributed to his or her own failure or sloppiness. In everyday...

John Robert Lewis, United States (US) civil rights icon and a member of the House of Representatives for 33 years, passed away on July 17, 2020. Also ...

The general economic impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) is well documented. For example, according to the Organisation for Economic C...

Within the past week, Caribbean Community (CARICOM) nationals got wind of the imminent liquidation of LIAT, a process which if carried out, would brin...

We are halfway through what has been a chaotic year that many people can hardly wait to see end. To even describe 2020 as chaotic might come across as...

The name Maria Ressa may not mean anything to most people. However, she is a Filipino, a former CNN bureau chief, 2018 Time person of the year, and co...

My last article was written against the backdrop of racial tensions in the United States (US) and America’s increasing impatience with or disregard fo...

“The Emperor’s New Clothes” is a cautionary tale of an emperor whose vanity caused him to believe that he was adorned in the finest fabric, when in ac...

Amid the global novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, one consolation is that this too shall pass. For some of us, we are hoping that newer and bette...

In my last article, I quoted former Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who recently expressed concern about “a continued slow but steady drift tow...

The default meaning of anarchy in the context of international affairs is that there is no world government or no organising principle (or sets of pri...

Just over two weeks ago, the price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil crashed to negative US$40 per barrel. At the time of writing, the price had in...

I HAVE written previously that the current novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has exposed and reinforced vulnerabilities in the economies of many C...

In February 1989, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama gave a talk on International Relations at the University of Chicago. Fukuyama’s ta...

ONE OF THE SEMINAL global developments of the last three decades has been the phenomenal rise of China as an economic and military power. In terms of ...

GOOD NEWS is scarce right now as the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to wreak havoc and fear across the globe. However, amid the global respons...

AS I AM writing this article, there is an eerie calmness resting over Geneva which belies the panic and sense of helplessness currently enveloping oth...

WITHOUT A DOUBT, the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is a global public health crisis of grave concern. At the time of writing, the virus...

The digital economy might still be at an adolescent stage, but it is already huge, and it will continue to grow rapidly. Twenty years ago, Amazon was ...

After more than two years of trade tensions which threatened the entire global economy, the United States (US) and China announced a phase one trade d...

Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, was set to meet with Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders at the convening of the the 31st Intersessional Co...

In many societies around the world, the representation of women in both political leadership and corporate governance is still in the minority. Accord...

In a world of hyper-globalization, people, goods, services and capital are moving across borders with a kind of speed and ease not witnessed by previo...

In my last article, I shed some light on some of the developments that are likely to emerge as the 2020s progress. Two of the developments I spoke abo...

It is difficult to develop an exhaustive list of the major trends that will define the 2020s because frankly speaking, no one has a crystal ball to pr...

The threat of a full-scale war between the United States (US) and Iran appears to have dwindled, at least for now. Without a doubt, the world must hav...

I was hoping to start off 2020 on a positive note. However, the new year has started in chaotic fashion with the threat of conflict looming over the w...

The 2010’s begun amidst chaos in many parts of the world and generally ended the way it started. One of the most chaotic episodes of this decade was t...

In my last article, I made the point that the general election in the United Kingdom (UK) on December 12, 2019 was fundamentally about Brexit. In esse...

On December 12, 2019, voters in the United Kingdom (UK) will go to the polls for the third time in five years. However, of the two previous elections ...

The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and International Men’s Day were celebrated a mere six days apart. Why men, histor...

On November 21, many fishing communities around the world celebrated World Fisheries Day. According to WorldFish, an international non-profit research...

In October 2019, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released its World Economic Outlook (WEO) which serves as an integral element of the Fund’s sur...