NEW DELHI – The American pharmaceutical company Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech have announced that the COVID-19 vaccine they are jointly developing was more than 90% effective in early clinical trials. The news raised hopes around the world that life may soon return to pre-pandemic normal. Those hopes may not last long. The …
Read More »America’s Alliances After Trump
ATLANTA – America’s allies should be forgiven if they are confused about where American foreign policy is headed. Who isn’t, given the go-it-alone recklessness of Donald Trump’s presidency? Over the past three years, Trump has sowed strategic chaos, and his foreign policy, if one can call it that, brought new …
Read More »Why America Must Lead Again
Rescuing U.S. Foreign Policy After Trump By nearly every measure, the credibility and influence of the United States in the world have diminished since President Barack Obama and I left office on January 20, 2017. President Donald Trump has belittled, undermined, and in some cases abandoned U.S. allies and partners. …
Read More »Post-Pandemic Geopolitics
CAMBRIDGE – There is no single future until it happens, and any effort to envision geopolitics in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic must include a range of possible futures. I suggest five plausible futures in 2030, but obviously others can be imagined. The end of the globalized liberal order. The …
Read More »The Vise Tightens on the Dollar
NEW HAVEN – The US dollar has now entered the early stages of what looks to be a sharp descent. The dollar’s real effective exchange rate (REER) fell 4.3% in the four months ending in August. The decline has been even steeper as measured by other indexes, but the REER is what matters …
Read More »Something is not right with the Multi Level Car Parking project
The Bhutanese paper in numerous stories from 2014 to 2019 has been covering the two multi-parking structures built by KCR under a Public Private Partnership arrangement with the Thimphu Thromde where KCR would build the two Multi Level Car Parking (MLCP) structures and Thromde would provide it on lease for …
Read More »Transforming Africa’s Agriculture
LONDON – Over the next 30 years, Sub-Saharan Africa’s population will double to over two billion, and its economies will industrialize. Africa’s development will therefore be critical to the world’s future stability, prosperity, and health. Given this, the continent should be receiving much more international attention. The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted a …
Read More »The Parties Must Go On
BERLIN – The recent Republican National Convention was scandalous for many reasons – from the misuse of the White House as a campaign prop (in violation of the Hatch Act and longstanding norms) and the brazen mendacity of its speakers, to the parade of Trump family members. Amid the tawdry spectacle of …
Read More »To the Brink with China
NEW YORK – Observers of US-China relations increasingly talk of a new cold war. On top of a long-running trade war, the two countries now find themselves in a destructive cycle of mutual sanctions, consulate closings, and increasingly bellicose official speeches. Efforts to decouple the US economy from China’s are …
Read More »How Cash Transfers Prevent Lockdown Tragedies
ISLAMABAD – In 2017, I was a candidate to become the next Director-General of the World Health Organization. At the 70th World Health Assembly, I stood before health ministers from around the world and warned that three things could destroy the planet: a celestial event, a third world war, or …
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The Bhutanese Leading the way.