It has long since become cliché to wax poetic about the momentous changes that are now sweeping the Middle East.

The United States and the other members of the P5+1 group (the permanent five members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany) are entering “last chance” negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program in Istanbul this week.

In a report from The Economist on Saturday discussing the massive buildup and modernization of China’s army, known as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), one particular passage caught my eye.

This April marks the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the conflict in Bosnia, which carried on for three and a half years from 1992 until the Dayton Peace Agreement in late 1995.

Of the most controversial topics in Latin America today, few are as divisive as the politics of dam building.

Earlier this year at the summit of the African Union in Ethiopia, United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-Moon made a practically unprecedented speech in favor of LGBT rights, a speech that fomented much unrest among delegates in the room.

On Sunday, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in Egypt announced that it would nominate Khairat el-Shater as its nominee for the presidential elections in May.

It has now been over one year since northeastern Japan was devastated by what has been dubbed by many as the “triple disaster” – consisting of an earthquake, a deadly tsunami, and the nuclear meltdown of the now-infamous Fukushima nuclear power plant.

As predicted, Vladimir Putin won the March 4 Russian presidential elections with over 60 percent of the vote. What followed were the expected accusations of illegitimacy from members of the opposition.

"If you do that then you will lose the people of the community, and then you will lose the organization.”

A multitude of reasons exist why Americans are monolingual. That’s not the point: What is exasperating is the idea that everyone south of the border is brown and sólo habla español.

Over the weekend, Coptic Christians all over the world mourned the death of their Church’s leader, known as Shenouda III, Pope of Alexandria.

As he officially announced the 2014 vote for an independent Scotland, First Minister Alex Salmond looked and sounded as earnest as ever.

In allying with the tribal militants that dominate poorly governed Pakistani border regions, the Pakistani government gives itself a greater measure of control over these areas and creates an effective buffer against two of its biggest fears: a hostile India and an unraveling Afghanistan.

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.