As Russia completed its takeover of Crimea, The WorldPost brought key voices to bear on the immediate crisis in the region as well as on the broader strategic implications. In an exclusive interview with The WorldPost, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned that the retreat of American leadership in the world was leaving a vacuum being filled by aggressive nationalists and terrorists. Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine's former prime minister and power behind the scenes of the new government in Kiev, passionately defended the unity of Ukraine. Solidarity founder Adam Michnik, writing from Warsaw, worried about the consequences of Putin's "extortion" for the post-Cold War Eastern European states. Mohamed El-Erian predicted that the economic realities of interdependence between Russia and Europe will ultimately de-escalate the crisis. Lord David Owen, a former British foreign minister, argued from his past diplomatic experience with territorial disputes that sanctions never work.
Admiral Harry Harris, Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, wrote from Jakarta that the Asia-Pacific region, especially China and Japan, must avoid Crimea-type territorial disputes leading to open conflict. Eric X. Li, the Shanghai scholar/entrepreneur, suggested that China's leadership welcomed Russia's confrontation with the United States because it diminishes American "hegemony" and bolsters a multi-polar world order. The WorldPost correspondent Matt Sheehan reported on how the Crimea referendum has fostered chatter on China's Weibo about secession of Tibet and other cultural and ethnic enclaves. He also reported on Michelle Obama's goodwill visit to China.
On another national security issue, former NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden discussed the "future of surveillance in a post-Snowden world," noting that the intelligence community will follow any restrictive rules set by American citizens, but they must recognize they will be less safe as a result.
On the cultural front, literary journalist Pico Iyer pondered the "collective unconscious" in our global age. Serpentine Gallery co-director Hans Ulrich Obrist presented his project of collecting handwriting samples of various artists from around the world, including China's Ai Weiwei, through Instagram.
Finally, Malcolm Gladwell discussed his new book "David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants."
MISSION STATEMENT
The WorldPost is a global media bridge that seeks to connect the world and connect the dots. Gathering together top editors and first person contributors from all corners of the planet, we aspire to be the one publication where the whole world meets.
We not only deliver breaking news from the best sources with original reportage on the ground and user-generated content; we bring the best minds and most authoritative as well as fresh and new voices together to make sense of events from a global perspective looking around, not a national perspective looking out.
Admiral Harry Harris, Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, wrote from Jakarta that the Asia-Pacific region, especially China and Japan, must avoid Crimea-type territorial disputes leading to open conflict. Eric X. Li, the Shanghai scholar/entrepreneur, suggested that China's leadership welcomed Russia's confrontation with the United States because it diminishes American "hegemony" and bolsters a multi-polar world order. The WorldPost correspondent Matt Sheehan reported on how the Crimea referendum has fostered chatter on China's Weibo about secession of Tibet and other cultural and ethnic enclaves. He also reported on Michelle Obama's goodwill visit to China.
On another national security issue, former NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden discussed the "future of surveillance in a post-Snowden world," noting that the intelligence community will follow any restrictive rules set by American citizens, but they must recognize they will be less safe as a result.
On the cultural front, literary journalist Pico Iyer pondered the "collective unconscious" in our global age. Serpentine Gallery co-director Hans Ulrich Obrist presented his project of collecting handwriting samples of various artists from around the world, including China's Ai Weiwei, through Instagram.
Finally, Malcolm Gladwell discussed his new book "David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants."
WHO WE ARE
EDITORS: Nathan Gardels, Senior Advisor to the Berggruen Institute on Governance and the long-time editor of NPQ and the Global Viewpoint Network of the Los Angeles Times Syndicate/Tribune Media, is the Editor-in-Chief of The WorldPost. Farah Mohamed is the Managing Editor of The WorldPost. Alex Gardels is the Associate Editor of The WorldPost. Nicholas Sabloff is the Executive International Editor at the Huffington Post, overseeing The WorldPost and HuffPost's 10 international editions. Eline Gordts and Ryan Craggs are HuffPost's World News Editors.
CORRESPONDENTS: Max Rosenthal in Beirut; Sophia Jones in Istanbul; Matt Sheehan in Beijing.
EDITORIAL BOARD: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Arianna Huffington, Eric Schmidt (Google Inc.), Pierre Omidyar (First Look Media) Juan Luis Cebrian (El Pais/PRISA), Walter Isaacson (Aspen Institute/TIME-CNN), John Elkann (Corriere della Sera, La Stampa), Wadah Khanfar (Al Jazeera), Dileep Padgaonkar (Times of India) and Yoichi Funabashi (Asahi Shimbun).
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Moises Naim (former editor of Foreign Policy) and Nayan Chanda (Yale/Global; Far Eastern Economic Review). Katherine Keating (One-On-One) and Jehangir Pocha (NewsX India) .
The Asia Society and its ChinaFile, edited by Orville Schell, will be our primary partner on Asia coverage. Eric X. Li and the Chunqiu Institute/Fudan University in Shanghai and Guancha.cn also provide first person voices from China. We also draw on the content of China Digital Times. Seung-yoon Lee is The WorldPost link in South Korea.
Jared Cohen of Google Ideas provides regular commentary from young thinkers, leaders and activists around the globe. Bruce Mau provides regular columns from Massive Change.org on the "whole mind" way of thinking. Patrick Soon-Shiong is Contributing Editor for Health and Medicine.
ADVISORY COUNCIL: Members of the Berggruen Institute's 21st Century Council and Council for the Future of Europe serve as the Advisory Council -- as well as regular contributors -- to the site. These include, Shaukat Aziz, Gordon Brown, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Juan Luis Cebrian, Jack Dorsey, Mohamed El-Erian, Francis Fukuyama, Felipe Gonzalez, John Gray, Reid Hoffman, Fred Hu, Mo Ibrahim, Alexei Kudrin, Pascal Lamy, Kishore Mahbubani, Alain Minc, Dambisa Moyo, Laura Tyson, Elon Musk, Pierre Omidyar, Raghuram Rajan, Nouriel Roubini, Nicolas Sarkozy, Eric Schmidt, Gerhard Schroeder,Peter Schwartz, Amartya Sen, Jeff Skoll, Michael Spence, Joe Stiglitz, Larry Summers, Wu Jianmin, George Yeo, Fareed Zakaria, Ernesto Zedillo and Zheng Bijian.
From the Europe group, these include: Marek Belka, Tony Blair, Jacques Delors, Niall Ferguson, Anthony Giddens, Otmar Issing, Mario Monti, Robert Mundell, Peter Sutherland and Guy Verhofstadt.
MISSION STATEMENT
The WorldPost is a global media bridge that seeks to connect the world and connect the dots. Gathering together top editors and first person contributors from all corners of the planet, we aspire to be the one publication where the whole world meets.
We not only deliver breaking news from the best sources with original reportage on the ground and user-generated content; we bring the best minds and most authoritative as well as fresh and new voices together to make sense of events from a global perspective looking around, not a national perspective looking out.