World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

I’ve been away, giving a speech at SUNY-Geneseo on American foreign policy.   SUNY-Geneseo is a great school and the students were wonderful: they asked great questions and were quite knowledgeable.  But I wasn’t able to post any blogs while I was away.  My apologies.

The standoff with North Korea continues to escalate and it’s hard to figure out where the crisis is heading.  Obviously North Korea is looking for some sort of recognition as a nuclear power, but its rhetoric makes it difficult to treat it with respect.  The US’s attempts to signal its commitment to South Korea seem only to inflame the North Koreans even more, but it is difficult for the US to do nothing while an ally is being threatened.   In the meantime, we can only hope that there aren’t some unforeseen accidents that might precipitate an outbreak of hostilities.

Regular readers of this blog know that I have been worried about the rise of right wing movements in the world.  This fear dates back to the onset of the Great Recession in 2007, and has only grown stronger in my mind.  Other scholars have picked up on this worrisome trend and have written about the phenomenon.  Here is an interview with Joshua Kurlantzick, author of the book, Democracy in Retreat: The Revolt of the Middle Class and the Worldwide Decline of Representative Government, which I have on my reading list for this summer.

We are all going to be hearing about Bitcoins an awful lot in the near future.  Bitcoins are a virtual currency issued by no government and governed by a mysterious set of algorithms that no one has been able to hack.  Weirdly, people are attaching values to the Bitcoins and using them as “normal” currency.  We should become better informed about this new currency.