Once considered a rising Asian giant, Japan today is a cautionary tale about the perils of stagnation and economic mismanagement. Among other problems, a once robust industrial sector is falling prey to foreign competition and automation, forcing many plants to lay off workers. Japanese analysts now worry that over-reliance on an industrial base may be strangling […]

When North Korea’s dramatic missile launch last week ended ignominiously after just 90 seconds, much of the world—including Via Meadia—couldn’t help indulging in a sly chuckle. But there may be a more serious upside to the North’s humiliation. As the Financial Times reports, Pyongyang’s renewed commitment to missile development could provide the Obama administration with […]

New York City’s hyper-competitive public schools are infamous for the stress they inspire in parents, who spend thousands of dollars and lose months of sleep to ensure that their children win acceptance to the top schools. Clever entrepreneurs in New York are taking advantage of this situation by providing expanded tutoring programs geared specifically towards […]

The latest from the BBC brings welcome climate news—unless, that is, you’re one of those hysterical green activists who have been peddling predictions of global apocalypse. Richard Black, the BBC’s environment correspondent, reports: Some glaciers on Asia’s Karakoram mountains are defying the global trend and getting thicker, say researchers.A French team used satellite data to […]

The United Nations is being flouted and ignored more often than usual these days — and the consequences are, as usual, nil.In Syria, arriving UN ceasefire monitors are greeted with artillery barrages. Iran continues to ignore resolutions on opening its nuclear facilities to inspectors. And North Korea merrily flouts UN resolutions as it fires rockets […]

The Afghans and the Americans don’t agree on much these days, but both sides are pointing their fingers toward the Pakistan-backed Haqqani network as the force behind the coordinated barrage of attacks in Kabul over the weekend.This news pours cold water on hopes for an improved relationship after Pakistan agreed to allow NATO forces to […]

One of the greats of the blogging world, Mickey Kaus, warns that a factory explosion in Germany could bring the world’s automobile industry to its knees. The explosion in Germany killed two people, and knocked out a factory that makes Cyclododecatriene.Why should you care? Cyclododecatriene is a key ingredient in the chemical used to make […]

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s trip to China was the first story on foreign affairs in several weeks to garner more coverage by the Turkish press than the ongoing conflict in Syria. On the China-leg of Erdoğan’s multi-state trip, the Prime Minister was accompanied by a 300-person delegation that included nearly half of his cabinet. […]

Poverty alleviation, we argue in an essay this week,  is one of the signature accomplishments that the blue social model claims — and defending this progress is one of the chief reasons that blue partisans advance for keeping the model. But many blue policies aren’t sustainable or even desirable going forward, and as the model […]

[iframe src=”https://apps.the-american-interest.com/campaign/index-embed-magic-415.php”]The 2012 presidential race tightened significantly during the first two weeks of April, with former Governor Romney now needing only a swing of about two percent in national polls to give him an Electoral College majority. At the end of March, the Republican challenger’s magic number was 3.12; a swing of that magnitude away […]