As his first term approached its end, Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou of the Kuomintang Party (KMT) was pitted against Tsai Ing-wen, a member of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the first female presidential candidate in Taiwan. The January election, restoring incumbent Ma as president, captured international attention as many anticipated a resulting shift in the precarious relationship between Taiwan and China.

While these divisions, as evidenced by the racial and xenophobic violence in Libya, are real and destructive, they are not eternal. Rather, they are the result of a particular historical narrative that has constructed Arabs and Africans as intrinsically different and eternally divided.

Last Thursday, as part of an ongoing seminar series organized by Columbia’s Institute for Latin American Studies (ILAS), professor and author Katherine Hite presented some of her findings from her book.

China’s awe-inspiring economic growth over the past three decades has inspired envy, emulation, and animosity all over the world. As I have argued before, I think that China will be a major global player in this century and that its influence will increase over time. But as we learned the hard way in 2008, no matter how smooth an economic course may seem, there are, inevitably, unforeseen problems.

On Sunday, Russians from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok will vote to decide who will be president for the next six years.

In recent months, there has been much talk of the United States’ “strategic pivot” toward East Asia and the Pacific.

Violence in Syria has pursued over the past months since the beginning of the Arab Spring uprising in the nation, and certainly seems unlikely to calm down in the upcoming months if recent unrest is any reliable indicator. President Bashar al-Assad has repeatedly refused to step down from power and has even condoned the use of force against his own citizens by military forces.

The facile idea of a pure dichotomy of America and Israel against its enemies is too simplistic. Recalibrating this perspective is even more urgent now that its power is being applied to drive Israel and Iran toward a potentially disastrous war.

There is a revolution in Kenya that parallels the banking system and the broadband revolution but is something entirely its own: the cellular revolution.

As President Barack Obama put it in a November 2010 speech, the Constitution of India and the United States Constitution “begin with the same revolutionary words.” Those words, of course, are “We the People.”

This past week the now hydra-like Greek debt crisis reared yet another one of its re-growing heads. Anti-austerity protests returned to Athens as Greek ministers attempted to acquiesce to the demands of European Union leaders who thought that the problem had already been dealt with. The continuation of the Greek recession, now entering historic periods of length and severity at five years and a 16 percent decrease from pre-recession GDP, should not be seen as a surprise.

2012, by all accounts, will be a year for the history books.

Last column, I wrote about the events in the Middle East as a sort of “grand game” between Israel and the United States against Iran. Recently, some commentators and writers have gone as far as to insinuate that what we are seeing is an attempt to destabilize and overthrow a regime that is, in some fashion, legitimate.

A Look Inside A Kenyan Landfill

A great deal has been written on President Obama’s continuation of many of the Bush administration’s policies in regards to terrorism. Growth in the size and operational tempo of special warfare units, the extensive use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) against terrorist targets worldwide, and the National Security Agency's (NSA) ongoing warrantless surveillance programs – all of these began with President Bush.

It’s official. The war that has topped headlines for half of my life is officially being drawn down, and within a few more years, it will probably be over. I am talking, of course, about the war in Afghanistan.

You have to admit: The current crop of Latin American socialist leaders is the gift that just keeps on giving.

This month, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev sent a bill to the Duma calling for the reinstatement of direct gubernatorial elections by the people of Russia’s provinces.

The past year has been a most tumultuous one for the nations of the eurozone, from the sunny shores of debt-ridden Greece to her disgruntled northern neighbors. The seventeen-member union has approached the brink of disaster and backed down seemingly several times a day for months, exhausting lenders and spectators, while inciting political unrest throughout the region.