Moisés Naím / The Huffington Post

Despite all its defects, a minimum income guarantee may well become an inevitable policy.

Moisés Naím / The Huffington Post

The United States has never exported much crude oil — but that is likely about to change because congressional leaders recently lifted the country’s 40-year-old ban on crude oil exports.

Moisés Naím / The Huffington Post

They used to be between tribes. Or city-states. Or one empire against another. Or between countries. Today, who wages war?

Moisés Naím / The Huffington Post

In an ironic twist of fate, the Keystone XL Pipeline — which would transport some of the heaviest, carbon-laden, and water intensive oils from Alberta, Canada to the United States — also traverses through regions that are being plagued by rising temperatures, persistent drought conditions, and depleting aquifers. As detailed in Scientific American, the stage is being set for a climate disaster in Colorado, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and Kansas similar to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

Moisés Naím and Uri Dadush / The Huffington Post

Economic growth or income redistribution? To alleviate poverty, which of the two should be given priority? Should governments invest in expanding the electricity grid to power new, job-producing private companies or use the money to subsidize health and education for the poor? It is an old, sterile, and ideologically charged debate -- one too often immune to evidence.

Moisés Naím / The Huffington Post

The main cause of coming conflicts will not be clashes between civilizations, but the anger generated by the unfulfilled expectations of a middle class, which is declining in rich countries and booming in poor countries.

Moisés Naím / The Huffington Post

I've just got back from China. Like most other regular visitors, I am amazed at the lightning speed of the changes in that country. My last visit was not that long ago and yet this time I noticed further enormous changes. This is what happens when a giant economy grows by 10 percent every year.

Moisés Naím / The Huffington Post

There's one good thing to be said about earthquakes -- they reveal otherwise inaccessible information about the deepest geological contours of our planet. The International Monetary Fund has just been shaken by two strong earthquakes: the arrest of its director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and the controversy over who should replace him. This second earthquake has provided interesting data about the messy workings of the system that governs today's world. Some of the data confirms things we already knew and the rest clarifies some of the new realities of global power today.

Moisés Naím / The Huffington Post

Why are the United States and Europe attacking Tripoli with bombs and Damascus with words? Why are they putting so much effort into bringing down Libya's brutal tyrant and so timid in their dealings with his equally cruel Syrian counterpart?

Moisés Naím / The Huffington Post

Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda he led are both so last century. The current al Qaeda, and whoever becomes bin Laden's successor, will have a hard time adapting to the twenty-first century. Today's al Qaeda has different capabilities and constraints and also faces different strategic challenges from the organization bin Laden founded in 1988.

Moisés Naím / The Huffington Post

Not too long ago Mexico was regarded as the Latin American nation most likely to become a developed country. Now it is commonly seen, if not as a failed state, at least as a nation where some of the most powerful and ruthless criminals on the planet control important parts of the territory and critical public institutions.

Moisés Naím / The Huffington Post

What would have happened if during World War II the allies had bombed the gas chambers or the railway lines that transported millions of innocent people to their deaths in Auschwitz and other camps? It could not be done. We didn't know. We could not divert resources from other fronts. It was not a strategic priority. These are some of the answers commonly given to this thorny question. More than a million men, women and children died at Auschwitz. Something similar could have happened in Benghazi.