Rajiv Shah

Images of destruction can overshadow the grievances that brought people onto the streets. France has seen hundreds of thousands take to the streets. While most protests have been peaceful, some groups have engaged in arson, vandalism and looting. Belgium has seen its own confrontations, while grievances over housing, education, wages, energy prices and public services are surfacing across Europe. What links these protests is the convergence of different grievances. In France, student anger...

From colonial-era control of trade routes to today’s contest over satellites, data and digital infrastructure, India’s confrontation with American tech power exposes the growing tension between global connectivity, corporate dominance and national sovereignty. The historical memory of colonialism is long, deeply etched into the collective consciousness of the Global South. For centuries, foreign powers arrived on distant shores under the banner of trade, infrastructure, and philanthropy, only...

Trump’s combative diplomacy projects American power abroad even as the country wrestles with deepening social and economic strains at home. The United Nations General Assembly in New York recently offered an extraordinary tableau of American power and of the limits of diplomatic restraint. U.S. President Donald Trump delivered an address defined not by deliberate statecraft, but by unfiltered hostility. Brandishing public threats against Iran and launching personal attacks on Cuba (denouncing...