Jose Cardenas, Washington Times
As the Obama administration enters its waning days, the president's âÂÂhistoricâ decision to normalize relations with the Castro dictatorship in Cuba is ending not with a bang, but a whimper.
David Gardner, Financial Times
Donald Trump has his admirers in the Middle East, in spite of his stigmatisation of Muslims and ostensible tolerance of anti-Semites. Yet the burning question is whether he plans to douse a region already in flames with more petrol. Local citizens find it no easier than anyone else to deduceà Trumpian policyà from bullet points that are all bullet. But many sense that, even if the next US president turns out to be a blip and most of his rhetoric bluster, he could do real damage in the Middle East.
David Ignatius, Washington Post
Behind the scenes, the Obama administration has worked to check Vladimir Putin's cyber-meddling in U.S. affairs.
Pierpaolo Barbieri, Foreign Affairs
The Brexit vote and Donald Trump's election suggest that the world may be entering a period of deglobalization. History suggests that is worth worrying about: when hegemonic states scrap their commitments to an open economic order, the consequences can be dangerous.
Reva Goujon, Stratfor
Rather than focusing on what should happen, perhaps we would do better to turn our attention to what will happen. And in this, geopolitics can come in handy. It is a deceptively simple tool, one that won't bury you in academic pretension or require a fancy algorithm to model. But its simplicity doesn't make it any less powerful. When you boil down the frothy mixture of ideas, personalities and emotions that have bubbled up over the past year, what is left are some fairly obvious answers on how we got to this point and... Читать дальше...