Media Interventions

For the past two years, French experts on terrorism have felt anxious. They often emphasized: “The question is not whether France will be targeted by a terrorist attack, but when.” The dreaded attack took place on January 7th, 2015. That evening, various speakers across the media expressed their solidarity with the victims, but also criticized intelligence agencies for their failure, and asked for the implementation of a completely different strategy or the adoption of a new antiterrorist law. Never mind that the last one was only voted on a couple of months ago — the mere occurrence of the attacks shows that something went wrong somewhere. The French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, didn’t hide this fact and asked for a thorough report. But let’s face it: No antiterrorist scheme is foolproof. The attack against Charlie Hebdo should not lead to an entire rethink of a French system that had become stronger over the years and now seems solid.

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The speakers from the Annual Conference on the United States summarize their talks in short videos. Here, Françoise Nicolas considers what is at stake for Asia-Pacific countries, notably China, in the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Lancées début 2013 pour tirer l’Archipel de la déflation, les « Abenomics » sont d’ambitieux programme de relance du premier ministre, Shinzo Abe. 

Invité: l’économiste Claude Meyer spécialiste de la zone Asie.

Dans 3D dimanche, partout la Chine, désormais 1ère puissance économique mondiale devant les Etats-Unis selon le FMI (Fonds Monétaire International). Or, l'Histoire démontre que pouvoir politique et militaire ont toujours dépendu de la puissance économique.

Pour la première fois depuis 1872, les États-Unis ne sont plus, en 2014, la première puissance économique mondiale. La Chine les a dépassé et représente aujourd'hui 16,5 % de l'économie mondiale, en terme de pouvoir d'achat réel, devant les 16,3 % américains. Mais que signifient ces chiffres ? Induisent-ils la fin de près de deux siècles de suprématie économique américaine ? Surtout, ce rapport de force est-il parti pour durer ?

The weekend meeting between the French and Russian presidents has given France a chance to become "the new Germany" for Russia, which lost its last Western ally after a falling-out with official Berlin, analysts say.

French mediation "is aimed at preventing Russia-EU relations from going to the dogs," said Tatiana Kastueva-Jean of the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) in Paris.

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Oil’s decline is proving to be the worst since the collapse of the financial system in 2008 and threatening to have the same global impact of falling prices three decades ago that led to the Mexican debt crisis and the end of the Soviet Union.

We all wanted to believe that Barack Obama's dazzling election in 2008 would accelerate history's forward trajectory in a good way for once.  Barack Obama, would lead the United States into a post-racial era and serve as an example for all democracies. Six years later we see that we were wrong: the American president did not perform any of the expected miracles. 

Last August in Missouri, a white police officer shot Michael Brown, a young African-American male. After courts found the officer not guilty, riots broke out in Ferguson and a number of large American cities. This anger demonstrates that 50 years after civil rights legislation race continues to deeply divide the United States. Are events in Ferguson emblematic of a larger problem? What impact will racial tensions have on American politics just two years from the next presidential election?