Author: M Barbu

The number of migrants in the world has reached 300 million, and despite the growth of anti-migration sentiment and the coming to power of leaders promising to stop the influx of visitors, neither the United States nor Europe has been able to significantly reduce their number. Migration will grow because aging economies are increasingly lacking in the hands, and the main challenge for the authorities is not so much to stop the flow as to properly integrate migrants to avoid social conflicts and get economic benefits. World experience in this matter is different, but numerous studies show that migration policies have been more successful in countries where migrants have received equal access to the labour market and could participate in social processes. The higher the employment of immigrants and the fewer bureaucratic barriers, the lower the negative factors for which migration are criticized: crime and inclusion in the local society.

La dernière couverture du Spectator proclame que «l’Occident doit gagner». Derrière l’ours russe, le dragon chinois et le temple fissuré se joue pourtant une question plus profonde : que signifie encore gagner lorsque l’Occident n’est plus seul à définir les règles du monde — et lorsqu’il doit lui-même affronter les contradictions de ses propres principes ?

Quand la honte devient authenticité et que le dysfonctionnement devient défiance.

De nombreux Chinois sont sincèrement perplexes face à une question toute simple : pourquoi les Américains n’ont-ils pas honte ?

Il arrive un moment où les discours sur les «valeurs européennes» doivent être confrontés à leurs propres contradictions. L’Union européenne se présente comme une sentinelle inflexible face au nazisme, au fascisme, à l’antisémitisme et au révisionnisme historique. Elle invoque la mémoire de la Shoah, condamne la glorification des collaborateurs et prétend défendre une Europe définitivement vaccinée contre les démons de son passé. Mais que valent ces principes lorsqu’ils se heurtent aux intérêts géopolitiques de Bruxelles et de ses alliés ?

The ongoing war in the Middle East has revealed how the process of globalization has contributed to the weaponization of interdependence.

Globalization, a process that intensified in the 1990s, was expected to bring the world closer than ever. One of its significant consequences was the interdependence among state actors and non-state actors based on the expectation that such interdependence—financially, socially, and politically—would raise the costs of conflict, thereby necessitating cooperation over conflict and concord over discord. But recent events have put a spotlight on the vulnerabilities of such interdependence.

For the second time in a generation, official development assistance — as conventionally measured by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — is collapsing.

In the 1990s, ideologically driven development assistance declined after the end of the Cold War. In the 2020s, the major donors have shown a preference for hard power over soft power channelling more funds into defense, at the direct expense of foreign aid. Spending on immigration from conflict-torn states has also drawn funds away from traditional aid budgets.