Analyses
Ramin Jahanbegloo, one of Iran’s preeminent intellectual figures, attends the conference ‘Peace, Democracy and Human Rights in Asia’ held under the auspices of former Czech president Vaclav Havel on September 11, 2009, in Prague. Other guests of this conference are Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, former President of South Africa and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Frederik Willem de Klerk, Rabiya Kadeer, head of the World Uighur Congress, Robert Menard of France, former Secretary-General of Reporters Without Bord and others philosophers and disidents.AFP PHOTO MICHAL CIZEK (Photo by MICHAL CIZEK / AFP)
  • Alessandro Volpi 31 October 2025
    Given the current context of financial conflicts, it is essential to distinguish between the market—conceived as a mechanism for the fair and efficient allocation of resources—and capitalism, which, defined by its relentless pursuit of profit, has generated significant distortions in the “normal” functioning of the market and triggered a multi-level global tension, most notably in the financial sphere. The emergence of this new world, in which the two concepts have become entirely decoupled, began in December 2001. Twenty years after the Reagan administration’s decision to steer the world toward the liberalization of capital flows, Bill Clinton’s long-pursued project to integrate China into the international market—through its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO)—was finally realized.
  • Carlo Galli 31 October 2025
    Liberal democracy is a Western affair, not a global one. It was born and evolved in the West during the late modern era, grounded in cultural, economic, and social preconditions that cannot be reproduced elsewhere. Its export has often been an element of neocolonial ambition. The world knows well how to distinguish good governance from oppression, order from violent chaos, yet it neither thinks nor organizes itself democratically. Nor does it admire the democratic West or aspire to emulate it—except in the production of goods and services. Today, liberal democracy concerns scarcely one-eighth of the world’s population. Europe, the West (which are not the same thing, or at least have not always been), and democracy have long since been provincialized. The West is the rest.
  • Fulvia Giachetti 31 October 2025
    What is liberté? Freedom. What kind of freedom? The freedom to do whatever one wants within the limits of the law. When can one do whatever one wants? When one possesses a million. Does freedom allow everyone to have a million? No, it doesn’t. What is a person without a million? A person without a million is not someone who does whatever they want, but someone to whom others do whatever they want.” Thus wrote Fyodor Dostoevsky in 1862, upon returning from his first trip to Europe. In just a few lines, the Russian writer grasped a contradiction that would come to define all modern political thought: the promise of universal freedom versus the reality of a freedom distributed according to wealth. What at the time sounded like a moral provocation now returns as a historical diagnosis of the increasingly worn-out relationship between capitalism and democracy, one that fully embraces the crisis of liberalism and that of freedom.
  • Donald Trump insists he wants no “new wars.” In Latin America, however, that line is wearing thin. His administration has revived the language and logic of forceful intervention even as he maintains that the era of U.S. adventurism abroad is over. The result is a foreign policy that races to prop up allies like Argentina’s Javier Milei and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro while threatening adversaries like Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro.
  • Claudia De Martino 3 October 2025
    In the peak of summer, as Operation Gideon’s Chariots (launched in May 2025) entered its second month, news emerged that the Israeli army had bombed Gaza’s only Catholic church, the Church of the Holy Family, on July 17. The strike killed three people—a relatively small number in a territory where daily fatalities range between 40 and 70—but it drew attention across, where many governments had assumed that Christian sites and communities would be spared the violence by religious or diplomatic convention.
  • Andre Diniz Pagliarini 30 September 2025
    Earlier this month, Brazil did something the United States couldn’t: it punished a president who tried to overturn an election. Jair Bolsonaro lost in 2022, claimed fraud, encouraged his supporters to storm Brasília, and is now serving a 27-year sentence for subverting democracy. Donald Trump lost in 2020, made nearly identical false claims, watched as his most fervent supporters sacked the U.S. Capitol—and he’s back in the White House. That contrast is telling. It goes to the heart of whether democracies can enforce the rules that make them democracies in the first place. Brazil’s message is clear: accountability is possible, even in a deeply polarized society. The United States’ is equally stark: polarization can become an alibi for impunity.
  • Alessandra Tommasi 26 September 2025
    After almost two years of war in Gaza and at least 65,000 Palestinians killed, recognition of Palestine as a state has become an urgent issue internationally. France and the United Kingdom recently recognized Palestine, joining other Western countries and bringing the tally to four of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council whose recommendation is required for recognition at the United Nations. Meanwhile, calls for a Palestinian state are multiplying. Among them is a petition by 60 Israeli NGOs, united under It’s Time, a coalition supporting a two-state solution that organized a peace summit in May. Reset DOC spoke with Raluca Ganea—co-founder and executive director of Zazim, a civic movement of Arabs and Jews working together for democracy and equality, and a member of It’s Time—about what is required to turn the vision of a two-state solution into a political reality.
  • Gianni Del Panta 25 September 2025
    Alaa Abd al-Fattah, one of the most iconic figures of Egypt’s 2011 revolution and the country’s most prominent political prisoner under President al-Sisi, was released last Monday, September 22, by presidential decree. The news, confirmed by family lawyer and former presidential candidate Khaled Ali, was met with jubilation among relatives and political activists alike. Alaa’s sister, longtime activist Mona Seif, posted a brief message on X: “My heart is about to stop.” Their mother, Laila Soueif—who had waged a prolonged hunger strike that left her in fragile health and sparked fears for her life—reacted from her home in Giza, where she sat beside her son, surrounded by family and friends. Alongside her joy, she insisted the struggle would not be over until Egypt is free of political prisoners.
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