Here we are, the summer of 2014, and the remembrances have begun.  One hundred years ago this week, Austria declared war on Serbia, ending a month of inchoate diplomacy that followed the June 28 assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, by a nationalist Serb. What began in a Balkan backwater cascaded, through a series of overlapping treaties, miscalculations, and misplaced loyalties, to sweep much of the world into war. Germany and its imperial allies were pitted against the British, French, and other empires – joined late in the game by the United States.

The idea that World War I can be viewed as something that happened between 1914-1918 is absurd: It is the war that has never ended. A few weeks ago in what used to be Mesopotamia, a group called ISIS cited the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement as a source of their many twisted grievances. A year earlier, Syria’s use of chemical weapons broke bans instituted after greater horrors during World War I.  The Israelis and Palestinians, trading rockets and missiles anew, trace much of their dispute to the war. [Read more…]

International crises are like London buses, it seems. You wait ages for one and then a whole load arrives all at once.

The last few months have seen a dizzying succession of problems that have grabbed international attention. We have seen the proliferation of al-Qaida franchises in North and East Africa, the military take-over in Egypt, political chaos and violence in Libya, the annexation of Crimea by Russia, the mass kidnapping of school girls in northern Nigeria, rising tensions between China and its neighbours in the South China Sea, the use of chemical weapons in Syria and now the rapid territorial expansion in Iraq by ISIS and the proclamation of a self-declared caliphate straddling the Iraqi-Syrian border. No wonder that a recent survey by Barclays Bank rated geo-politics as the number one concern for international investors. [Read more…]

The past few weeks have pushed Nigeria’s capacity for stark juxtaposition to new heights. Just as its economy leapfrogged South Africa’s to become the largest in Africa and the World Economic Forum gathered in Abuja, more than 200 school girls are kidnapped by Boko Haram, whose leader then posted a distressing video laughing at their likely and grisly fate. [Read more…]

I distinctly remember packing up my small apartment in Kemang, doing one final, weekend yoga retreat in the hills outside Jakarta and leaving Indonesia to move back to New York. Back then, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, or “SBY” as he’s known, was a newly elected, popular reformist president leading a strong anti-corruption drive. His top economic and development priorities were improving infrastructure, tackling corruption and attracting Western FDI.

That was then. Now with a husband and toddler twins, and much less time for yoga, I am packing up an even smaller apartment in Manhattan and preparing to move back to Asia –  this time to Singapore – to lead AnnaPurna Consulting’ account management team in the Southeast Asia region. [Read more…]

It is reported that the young Vladimir Putin was described by his KGB trainers as having “a reduced sense of danger.” It is hard to know if this is a genuine verbatim quote from his mentors alarmed at the apparent reckless potential of the young Soviet spy or if it has been retro-fitted into his biography by modern-day Kremlin spin doctors to reinforce the image of President Putin as the hard man of international politics.

Either way, it—usefully for the Russian leadership—implies a character that is cut from a different cloth than his adversaries in the West and one not to be underestimated when it comes to the brutal business of bringing Ukraine back into the fold.

What is apparent from the drama over Ukraine is how little U.S. and European leaders seem to have a clear sense of President Putin. Is he a master tactician with a powerful determination to restore Russian power and pride or is he more a superb improviser with deft crisis management skills? He evidently enjoys and excels at this type of raw knuckle politics but beyond the nationalist rhetoric does he have a coherent plan to fulfil a restoration of Russia’s status? And how far will he go to in defending what he sees as the legitimate right of Russia to defend its interests? [Read more…]