Mexico’s ongoing manufacturing revolution and booming international investment have been ushered along in no small part by its car industry. An article in the WSJ shows how far it has come: Six years ago, Mexico was the world’s ninth largest exporter of cars. Today the country is ranked fourth—behind Germany, Japan and South Korea—with exports expected to […]

The conflict between IDF forces and Hamas in Gaza is now well into its second week with no immediate end in sight. Last weekend we offered our own take on the situation, and today fellow AI blogger Adam Garfinkle chimes in. Here’s his take on Israel’s strategic dilemma: Everyone who really understands the underlying strategic realities of the […]

The Diplomat interviewed Joe Nye, who served in various intelligence and defense roles back in the Clinton years. Nye says: China’s ability to get what it wants through attraction and persuasion rests on a number of factors: its culture (witness the Confucius Institutes it promotes); its values (particularly a successful growth model); and its foreign […]

Somehow, Detroit always manages to find new forms of self-sabotage, even as it’s set to run out of funds before the end of the year. The state government has promised to send the city $30 million in installments over the next few months, but only if Detroit agrees to take steps to get its finances in […]

A huge solar energy project in North Africa, intended to transmit electricity to Europe, is now in serious jeopardy. Germany’s Spiegel reports on Desertec’s imminent demise: The project has failed to break ground on a single power plant. Spain recently balked at signing a declaration of intent to connect high-voltage lines between Morocco and the […]

The Syrian Opposition got a boost from the UK today: William Hague announced that Downing Street recognizes the opposition council as the “sole legitimate representative” of the Syrian people and a “credible” alternative to the Assad regime. The BBC has the story: In a statement to Parliament, Mr Hague said the Syrian opposition would be […]

On All Saints Day in 1755 a powerful earthquake destroyed most of the city of Lisbon. The earthquake, which was followed by a huge tsunami, devastated large areas of Portugal, Spain and Morocco, claiming tens of thousands of lives. As such natural disorders always do, it raised religious questions in many minds—in supposedly Christian Europe […]

As we pointed out yesterday, Moody’s downgrade of France was notable for its singling out of France’s structural problems and weak reform efforts as a cause for concern rather than the broader eurozone climate the country finds itself in.Today, Paris pushed back, with finance minister Pierre Moscovici claiming the downgrade was mostly due to “the […]

I read with great interest Jeffrey Gedmin’s article on the state of U.S. international broadcasting (“Turn Your Radio On”, September/October 2012). The article reminds us of the powerful contributions made by the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty during World War II and the long Cold War that followed. In those days, VOA and […]

Again I come late to the gabfest, this time about the Hamas-IDF confrontation in and around Gaza. So much has already been said, and it falls in the usual categories: the thinly didactic, the fatuous, the banal, the shrewd and, especially, the emotional. The usual irrational Jewcentric crap, of all four sorts, too, can be […]