In May 2007 I met with academicians, local experts and researchers in the UAE. I hoped to gain an informed insight into the efforts being made in the region that would facilitate an Arab renaissance Gitanjali Bakshi (Strategic Foresight Group)

We live in an increasingly integrating global economy but we do not have a global polity. The Security Council is dysfunctional on crucial issues. The United Nations has made excellent contribution to positive transformation in the world, but most of it has been through its specialised agencies in the field of development, health, population control, among others.

Exactly 500 years ago, Niccolo Machiavelli served the court of Cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentinois and Romagna, son of Pope Alexander VI, and the military general of the papacy. Machiavelli was so impressed by Borgia's crude pursuit of power that a decade and half later, he wrote a treatise, The Prince, as an offering to the Medici princes. Machiavelli was particularly impressed by Borgia's assassination of rivals on the new year's eve of 1503 in Sinigaglia. He advocated that princes should use crude use of force to acquire and retain power at any cost.

Following months of political ambiguity and turmoil which oversaw the complete subversion of the constitution, political stability currently being enjoyed in Bangladesh, has been ushered in, not by a democratically elected government with the backing of popular mandate, but by a caretaker government having the tacit support of the armed forces. It is these developments that merit a closer view of the events that have led to present day Bangladesh and assess what the future portends for the fledgling nation state.

Nikolay Paunov is the President of the Liberal Politological Institute (LPI) in Bulgaria. In this short interview, he explores his concerns about the 21st century, the complex dynamic that is terrorism and the ways in which to address the West-Islam discord.

After the peaceful end to the conflict between the NATO and Warsaw Treaty groups in the last decade of the last century, a hope was kindled that the new world order might adopt non-violent ways of preventing and resolving conflicts. This hope did not last for long. The twenty first century was inaugurated with an attack on Pentagon and the World Trade Centre by Al Qaeda. In its first half decade, it has seen new wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon. There is a talk of a war in Iran. If wars are launched at this pace, the twenty first century might prove to be the most devastating of all.