Jonathan Power

The Barbarians are not at the gate. There is no need for a rush to war as the French president, Francois Hollande, suggests. The Americans did this after 9/11 and raced into Afghanistan with the intention of eliminating al Qaeda. They failed and they are still in Afghanistan, the US’ longest war ever. They have […]

Monday’s news was that China’s annual growth rate has dropped below the red line of seven percent. It is at 6.9 percent and probably falling. These figures were published shortly after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing “solid growth”. Last week the World Bank released its new average annual growth […]

Is Saudi Arabia a house built on sand? If so, are the sands shifting? Even Hillary Clinton, the candidate for US president, until recently a staunch ally of the House of Saud, has publicly criticised the appalling human rights record of Saudi Arabia. Mrs Clinton also made the point that over the years it was […]

US foreign policy makers often wonder aloud why it is that much of the world has such an anti-US reflex. Why the “Ugly American”? Graham Greene would never have written a novel entitled the Ugly Russian or even the Ugly German. It is not just Iran that considers the US to be the ‘Great Satan’. […]

So, Putin on Monday met Obama. They are going to cooperate against Islamic State (IS), the world’s worst problem. President Vladimir Putin says we should not be surprised to see Russian jets working cooperatively — even coordinating — with the US on missile attacks. Even with both powers working in tandem it will be uphill […]

The pope will cause waves in the US during his visit this week. Invited to speak before Congress by the speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, he will arrive right at the time that the Republican candidates for president are touting ideas that are anathema to Pope Francis.He detests the cruder aspects of […]

On the last day of last month, right wing demonstrators, mostly from neo-fascist movements, hurled themselves against the police in Kiev’s Maidan Square, the same place where, in February 2014, a more heterogeneous group of demonstrators effectively ousted President Viktor Yanokovych. A grenade was thrown, three people died and 120 were hospitalised, mostly policemen. In […]

Guatemala on Sunday held a reasonably honest presidential election. But it is probably not the end of the brutal saga of the country: 36 years of continuous murder, mayhem, abductions, disappearances, rapes and genocide that have kept on rolling, chapter after chapter. Labour leaders, villagers and peasants, students and churchmen, journalists and human rights activists […]

It was Charles de Gaulle, France’s Second World War statesman, who said, “Brazil has a great future, and always will”. Under the benign presidency of the ex car metal worker, Luis “Lula” Inacio da Silva, the adage seemed to be banished. But now, under his successor, Dilma Rousseff, the tag has stuck once again. Brazil […]

Mankind got rid of African slave trading. It got rid of dueling. It got rid of torture. In some European countries it was abolished over 200 years ago. Even in the Second World War, the allies did not systematically use torture. Regrettably, when President George W Bush came to power, torture was reinstated, a reminder […]