Shared Interests or Competing Actions: What Drives Energy Security Cooperation Between Asia and Europe?

Was führt zur Kooperation im Bereich Energiesicherheit zwischen Asien und Europa?

The European Union’s external policies are based on the firm belief that multilateralism is the only way to solve the future challenges and that it needs to speak with one voice in order to level its strength. This attitude is also increasingly reflected in the EU’s external energy policy as will become obvious from the following paragraphs.

What Has Become of the Fight Against Poverty and of Participation in Germany’s Development Cooperation?

Concept of the participatory fight against poverty

Back to Europe? – Czechia and its European Integration After 1989

Together with another seven central and east European countries as well as Malta and Cyprus, the Czech Republic joined the EU on May 1, 2004. Five years later, there should be reason enough to celebrate: two decades ago, the communist regime in what was then Czechoslovakia was ousted, giving the country a chance to turn to Europe and the West once again.

Objectifying the Discussion About the Sharia?

Versachlichung der Diskussion über die Scharia

There are too many non-Muslims who regard Islamic law as regressive and even threatening. The laws regulating the legal status of women and the family, inheritances, and criminal matters appear hardly reconcilable with Western ideas about human rights and the rule of law in a secular state. But do those who think that way really know the Sharia?

Presidential Elections in Afghanistan: A Curse or a Blessing for Democratization?

The recent presidential election and its attendant circumstances appear to have put paid to the endeavours to democratize and reconstruct Afghanistan. Massive vote rigging, the resurgence of the Taliban, and the conflict between the incumbent, Hamid Karzai, and his challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, are reviving the question of whether it makes sense for Germany to go on with its engagement in Afghanistan.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) – A New Approach in Donor Aid

Early in 2004, the US Congress passed a law designed to boost a new approach in donor aid. Its implementation was entrusted to the semi-governmental Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). It pays to take a look at the principles, intentions, and methodology of the new approach as well as at its process of implementation and the objections that have been raised so far.

Three and a Half Years of Government by Evo Morales. The Campaign Atmosphere in Bolivia

People are Disillusioned with the Government, Disappointed with the Opposition

On December 6 of this year, Bolivia’s next parliament and president will be elected, with the incumbent, Evo Morales, aiming at re-election. The opposition will be fielding seven candidates, having failed to forge an alliance against Mr Morales and his party, the MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo). Traditional parties no longer play a part, and the population is divided.

Africa and the ’Post-American Century’

Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall there can be no doubt that the global financial and economic crisis, the most sustained ever since the ’great depression’, represents a historical hiatus. In the first half of the 19th century, John Maynard Keynes had argued in favour of interventionism in economic policy, but when Richard Nixon governed the USA, the maxim ’We are all Keynesians’ was abandoned. More recently, Paul Krugmann postulated that ’financial globalization’ was more dangerous ’than we assumed’.

Editorial

Ausgabe 9/2009 der Auslandsinformationen der Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung

From the American to the Asian-Pacific Century?

About one hundred years ago, Theodor Roosevelt thought that the Atlantic era had reached the zenith of its development, that its resources were exhausted, and that it would be replaced by a greater, a Pacific era. Today, it is forecast that this era will not be Pacific, as the late US president believed, but Chinese.