The West should seek to mollify Russia on core strategic questions like NATO expansion. But that will not help Putin to overcome the source of Russia s weakness, which lies in his inability or unwillingness to see the Soviet Union for the failure that it was.

These people include many of the world's poorest, most marginalized, and politically weak citizens.

Great distances far too large for only 800 thousand people who still live on the most rude agriculture on fishing, on diluted indigenous crafts

There's the weak brain. And then there's my weak brain, which is too too absolutely too weak to understand what the fuck she was talking about.

Eric Chaisse said Instead of having very long plant ears with a number of large flowers, we have smaller ones, underdeveloped and either missing or weakened.

Giving Europeans the time and space to choose more Europe would reinforce the core values upon which integration has rested for more than six decades. Continuing to stumble forward, however, would inevitably lead to a debilitating, if not fatal, fall.

Given these intractable grievances and, more important, the weakness and corruption of the Kenyan state the cycle of violence will be very difficult to break. That is why the attack on the Westgate mall is unlikely to be the last such tragedy.

They are weak, failing or collapsed States that are potential targets for intervention including military intervention to be reconstructed by the international community, with the support of the United States, among others, in blatant violation of the right of peoples to self determination.

Most of its people are politically impotent and poor in terms of both wealth and prospects. Islam never experienced something akin to the Reformation in Europe the lines between the sacred and the secular are unclear and contested.

The conventional wisdom is that the United States government would not have gone after JPM had these setbacks and errors become salient during the financial crisis. The London Whale trades, for example, were from early 2012 had they occurred in 2008, when the financial system was fragile, JPM, it is said, would have gotten a legal pass.

The National Council for Women has been restructured, there is a new Egyptian Feminist Union, and a number of coalitions made up of feminist NGOs have been created. But they are far from being sufficiently organized to work together effectively.

But it is likely to have a weaker president at the helm. Hollande now has three years to prove that, animated by the right ideas, he can transform his image and that of France with economic results, if not by his personal behavior.

When Libya s Muammar el Qaddafi threatened to kill his rebellious detractors like rats, a UN coalition intervened under an emerging global doctrine the responsibility to protect. But three years after Qaddafi s ouster, Libya remains hobbled by weak national institutions and roiled by factional fighting.

Last but not least, Hollande is not likely to call into question Sarkozy s decision in 2009 to reintegrate France into NATO s military command. That decision remains controversial in France, including among Socialists, but Hollande is well aware of the weaknesses of a European defense policy that simply cannot compete with NATO.

This sort of economic nationalism in Germany and Italy briefly produced coalitions of interests that supported the drive to national unification under Bismarck and Cavour. But the credibility of the national project seemed to crumble when growth faltered, leading to the emergence of movements that championed the aggressive, confrontational, and violent assertion of cultural identity.

A weak civil society. While observers believe that further harassment of NGOs is constrained by the administration s wariness of international reaction, particularly from the EU, the operating environment for civil society organizations remains extremely difficult, and they have no opportunities for genuine inclusion in policymaking.

Iraqi police and recruitment centres have received particular attention, and indiscriminate attacks against civilians continue to cause growing numbers of casualties, with the apparent intent of demonstrating the weakness and inability of the new Government to control the security situation and of exacerbating sectarian tensions.

To go from middle income to high income status, countries have to redeploy resources to high productivity, knowledge and skill intensive sectors. That is a transition that Greece and Argentina, with their financial instability, poor infrastructure, and weak education systems, have never made.

Although animal advocates implored Ratzinger to reiterate his views on animal welfare after he became Pope, he never did so. Francis, by contrast, appears to have been referring to factory farmed animals when he spoke, in The Joy of the Gospel, of weak and defenseless beings who are frequently at the mercy of economic interests or indiscriminate exploitation.

In some countries, the presence of oil and gas discourages the emergence of a diversified economy and, with it, a middle class. Education emphasizes rote learning over critical thinking.

On the contrary, British withdrawal would likely inspire similar moves in other countries, with the risk that the EU, already weakened, might begin to fragment. And, given his current efforts to divide Europe, one can be sure that Russian President Vladimir Putin would do all that he can to encourage, and finance, such a split.

The result can be seen in the rise of foreign competition in the international arms market. American manufacturers are finding themselves increasingly vulnerable in areas that they once dominated including unmanned aerial platforms, intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance, missiles, and satellites as low cost competitors gain market share.

In these circumstances, a no fly zone would not only clear the skies of Syrian warplanes and missiles, thereby reducing the scale of the slaughter it would also show Assad and his supporters that he truly is vulnerable. Generals ordered to use chemical weapons would have to reckon with the prospect that the regime could, actually, fall, and that they then might find themselves on trial for war crimes.

Its history has seen many coups, tens of thousands of people missing, a war with Great Britain, bouts of hyperinflation, a brutal economic crisis, default on foreign debt, and its most vulnerable citizens going hungry. But there is also a theatrical intensity about the Argentine character we are dramatic like the tango and somber like the novels of Ernesto Sábato.

In democracies, repeated elections lead to short term policy choices. In autocracies like China and Russia, leaders resist the radical reforms that would reduce the power of entrenched lobbies and interests, thereby fueling social unrest as resentment against corruption and rent seeking boils over into protest.

More important, Western leaders must comprehend the danger of picking sides. And that means that they must stop ignoring the lessons of the campaign in Afghanistan in the 1980 s, which facilitated the Taliban s rise to power, and the intervention in Libya in 2011, which produced a weak and divided government that remains locked in a power struggle with Islamist militias.

On monetary policy, the European Central Bank s forward guidance the commitment to keep interest rates at a low level for a long time is too little too late and has not prevented a rise in short and long term borrowing costs, which could stifle the eurozone s already anemic economic recovery. Whether the ECB will ease policy more aggressively is also uncertain.

These children have joined the ranks of 25 million displaced boys and girls worldwide a number equivalent to the population of a midsize European country and the largest in the 70 years since the end of World War II. Images of vulnerable, desolate refugee children likely to be displaced for a decade or more have become so common that the world seems unable to comprehend what it is seeing.

Today's great powers have relied on similar methods, also heavy with rhetoric, against puny opponents, but with far less convincing results. The United States put 500,000 troops into Vietnam in the 1960 s, but withdrew before North Vietnam overran the South in 1975.

With the crucial exception of energy rich Azerbaijan, they have few natural resources or high value manufactures, and have large agricultural sectors. They also depend on economic rents or Russian derivatives rather than adding value themselves Ukraine makes profits from gas transit, Belarus from oil refining.

Christine Lagarde chose to make it her first campaign as Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. And conventional analyses of the financial crisis focus on the weak capital base of many banks, which left them with insufficient reserves to absorb the losses they incurred when asset prices fell sharply in 2007 2008.

NEW YORK Why are French, British, and American warships, but not Chinese or Malaysian warships, sitting near the Burmese coast loaded with food and other necessities for the victims of Cyclone Nargis? Why has the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) been so slow and weak in its response to a natural calamity that ravaged one of its own members?

Industrial production is 7 below its pre crisis peak in 2008. This, together with the decline in manufactured goods as a share of total exports, from 54 a decade ago to 37 today, points to a substantial loss of competitiveness.

Millions die each year, either of outright starvation or from infectious diseases that their weakened bodies cannot withstand. And still, after twenty years of preaching that private markets would pick up the slack, these impoverished communities are further away than ever from using improved seeds, fertilizers, and small scale water management technologies.

These countries now require painful, far reaching reforms to attain economic prosperity, a goal that presupposes cultural change as well. In Christianity, the Reformation was essential to forging democracy and capitalism.

Recession will hit banks and governments already weak balance sheets, increasing pressure for faster deleveraging. But, while gradual adjustment is essential, faster and deeper cuts are largely self defeating big reductions in private credit and government spending will cause a sharper slowdown and thus a vicious downward spiral.

After the Vietnam War, Jimmy Carter hoped to make a break with established US policy. But his administration s actions including serious blunders in Iran and Afghanistan made the US appear weak and indecisive.

But his administration s actions including serious blunders in Iran and Afghanistan made the US appear weak and indecisive. While Obama s policies have not weakened America s international standing, they also have not led to achievements comparable to Richard Nixon s rapprochement with China, largely owing to what might be described as the dogmatic pragmatism that underlies them an emphasis on avoiding the worst, rather than on striving for the best.

Although a realist in his thinking, he could be Wilsonian in his tactics. Bush s termination of the ground war in Iraq after only four days was motivated in part by humanitarian concerns about the slaughter of Iraqi troops, as well as by an interest in not leaving Iraq so weakened that it could not balance the power of neighboring Iran.

Bush was also respectful of institutions and norms at home and abroad, going to the US Congress for authorization of the Gulf War, and to the United Nations for a resolution under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. Although a realist in his thinking, he could be Wilsonian in his tactics.