For most of the last 30 years China’s leaders have been kept awake at night worrying about their country’s poverty. But as the country approaches its once-in-a decade leadership transition this fall, it is China’s affluence, rather than its poverty, that is causing sleepless nights.
As civil war engulfs Syria talk of politics and diplomacy has fallen silent. But the West should be redoubling its political and diplomatic efforts, even as it offers indirect support for the arming of the rebels in Syria.
Granting a banking licence to the European Stability Mechanism, rather than using the European Central Bank, would be a more democratic fix.
In its attempts to rescue the euro, Germany is often seen as the odd country out. However, what is seldom understood abroad is that the German position is about more than limiting its own fiscal exposure.
Four years after Barack Obama's landmark speech in front of a crowd of 200,000 in Berlin, the transatlantic alliance is fading fast. What went wrong?
Relations between the EU and Turkey have hit such lows over the past few years that even marginal improvements look like big breakthroughs. However, positive momentum is building up thanks to the new French President Francois Hollande and a pragmatic Cypriot EU Council presidency.
Although Mariano Rajoy is distancing himself from the latest package of austerity measures being imposed upon Spain, they are the ultimate aim of a collective failure that must be explained to the Spanish people.
If the EU has any real aspiration to be a normative power it must rethink its 'strategic partnerships' with the world's other powers, reflecting the importance of values like democracy, rather than ignoring them.
Putting the promotion of human rights at the centre of the EU's foreign policy is something I have focused on since I took up office. But to champion the kind of people that deserve our support requires that the EU overcome two key challenges, each one of which can undermine the struggle to build a better world.
The British debate on Germany and the euro should focus on understanding Merkel's technocratic ideas without invoking Hitler and the Second World War. The best way to get Germany to abandon its counterproductive economic reforms is to talk about a compelling European future, rather than dwelling on the past.