Recently, I wrote an article posted here about the protests in Italy against the "undemocratic" government of meritocrats in Italy led by Prime Minister Mario Monti. Many responders, following the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, worry that Europe is entering a "post-democratic" phase, not just because of a government like Monti's,...

ROME -- Making my way from Milan to Rome in recent days, I experienced firsthand the rancorous process under way to deleverage Italy's sovereign debt and impose more competitive habits on the languorous rhythms of this Mediterranean culture.

Angry truckers blocked the main highways, drivers left their taxis standing...

Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of America's leading strategists, was national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter. His just-published book is Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power. He spoke on Friday with Global Viewpoint Network editor Nathan Gardels.

Nathan Gardels: The core of your strategic vision...

More than 20 years after the end of the Cold War, a sense of déjà vu is raising anew issues once thought settled. In Moscow, demonstrators are once again filling the streets, calling for an end to authoritarian rule -- this time aimed at Vladimir Putin instead of the Communist...

A dispiriting gridlock continues to grip Washington and Sacramento, undermining the public's faith that democracy can solve our problems. As we write, the so-called "super committee" of Congress, convened to figure a way out of the nation's fiscal crisis, remains hopelessly paralyzed along the familiar partisan lines. Everyone knows the...

With the new UN report on how Iran is inching closer to nuclear weapons and saber-rattling in Israel about a preemptive strike, the mullah's regime is back in the global spotlight.

Henry Kissinger is a former US secretary of state. His most recent book is On China. He spoke with me for the Global Viewpoint Network on November 3.

Nathan Gardels: Senior Chinese strategist Zheng Bijian has recently moved on from his doctrine of "peaceful rise" -a defensive posture which he...

Eric X. Li is one of the most interesting global thinkers to emerge from China in recent years.

He is a Shanghai-based venture capitalist and CEO of Chengwei Capital, which owns YouKu, the Chinese version of YouTube, as well as the publisher of Zheng Wei Wei's "The China Wave," a...

PARIS -- Once again the world economy is on the brink. Only three years ago America was the epicenter of crisis. Today it is Europe. An enormous insecurity about the future has gripped ordinary citizens and investors around the world. Frustration and anger are spilling into the streets.

Once again...

Few strategists or thinkers are as influential with China's senior leadership as Zheng Bijian who for many years was the Executive Vice-Chairman of the Central Party School in Beijing.

As the world became wary of China's growing role as a major power, Zheng proposed the doctrine of "China's peaceful rise."...

As the world economy falters, the manifold dislocations of globalization that had been eclipsed by the roaring growth of the past three decades have been fully exposed. In response, a nationalist and populist rebellion -- ranging form the Tea Party in the United States to the True Finns in Europe...

BEIJING -- When the now 88-year-old Henry Kissinger sat down with Chairman Mao to discuss opening up China back in the 1970s, America was at the peak of its power. It surely never entered Kissinger's mind at the time that less than half a century later, as the Communist...

Two of the world's most provocative intellectuals on all matters Islamic -- Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Tariq Ramadan -- offered their views this week for the Global Viewpoint Network on the death of Osama bin Laden and what it means for the Arab Spring.

Here, first, is Ayaan Hirsi...

On April 3, the Chinese authorities secretly nabbed the artist Ai Weiwei. Now, in the dark of night, they've taken away Confucius.

Last January, an imposing 31 foot-high statue of Confucius was erected with great fanfare right on Chang'an Avenue in the heart of Beijing. In a part...

The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and Bernard Kouchner, founder of Doctors Without Borders and until last year President Sarkozy's foreign minister, have long been champions of "the right to protect" -- that is, the right of the international community to intervene if a sovereign is committing crimes against his own...

Rebuilding will stimulate domestic growth and global demand while helping integrate East Asia

No one -- least of all someone like myself who has experienced the existential terror of California's regular tremors and knows the big one is coming here next -- would minimize the grief, suffering and disruption caused...

LOS ANGELES -- California has long been the bellwether for the United States as a whole. Indeed, as the world's eighth-largest economy that is home to Hollywood and Google, this outpost of creativity and innovation has continent-size influence with a cultural resonance that looms large in the global imagination.

Unfortunately,...

Welcome to the geo-information age. Along with cyberprobes and computer worms like Stuxnet, which at least temporarily disabled Iran's centrifuges without a missile being fired or a bomb dropped, WikiLeaks is redefining national security as we've known it.

As with personal privacy, the new challenge is to keep secrets...

For all the frenzy around the latest Wikileaks disclosures, few have tried to think through all the implications -- including Julian Assange. In this conversation with Evgeny Morozov, a visiting scholar at Stanford University and author of the forthcoming Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World, we attempt to...