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The Boomerang Effect of the Russia - Ukraine Conflict on the Wheat Supply Chain
One of the most significant shockwaves to be felt outside of Ukraine since the Russian invasion is not in Europe, but in Africa. With an export of $14.75 billion, Russia stood in 8th position of total exports to Africa in 2021. Even though the import statistics of Africa decreased by 35.4% YoY, the import from Russia saw an increase of 19% YoY. More
The Triad Nature - Nurture - Culture and the Social Justice in the Context of the Current Crises
Discussions about the trinomial nature - nurture - culture back in topically in situations where our living conditions are threatened. Whenever our minimal comfort is threatened, we turn to values such as personal identity, self-respect, ethics, morality, equity etc. and call for measures of justice (global, climate, energy, social etc.), trying to find solutions, again starting from the analysis of the main values that govern our existence. A brief discussion of the elements of the triad will help us understand its implication in today’s reality of economic change. More
The Romanian Electoral Spleen
The European and presidential elections to be held this year in Romania will be heralded as a turning point, but despite their importance – particularly for the broader European context, where populist parties might tip the political balance – they fall into a familiar post-communist pattern: a battle between a corrupt, populist, but highly effective governmental force and a fragmented, noisy, but often equally tarnished, incompetent and amateurish opposition, not very capable to govern either. Although Romania is usually classified as a relatively new democracy in international political analyses, because of the totalitarian and authoritarian interlude, this pattern runs deep in the country’s history, sociology and institutional make-up, encompassing pre-communist as well as post-communist elements, despite the superficial novelties of one-time electoral contests. More
Leadership à la CEE: Values & Approaches
Another book review? Of yet another leadership book? There are and continue to appear so many books on leadership from so many angles, including innovation, creativity and artificial intelligence. And yet, what makes this particular book special and entices readers to pick it up and read it are first of all the authors and the region they chose to deal with. The book in discussion is “Leading in the Age of Innovations: Change of Values and Approaches” by Lenka Theodoulides, Gabriela Kormancova and David Cole, published by Routledge, 2019, in the Routledge Studies in Leadership Research Series. You can find it here. More
Reiwa – Bright New Beginning or Small Step Forward, in Kaizen Style
Spring 2019 came brought with it a new Era in Japan, Reiwa (“beautiful harmony” – the name was inspired from the ancient Japanese collection of poems “Manyoshu”). For the first time in recent history, a Japanese Emperor abdicated.The new Emperor, Naruhito, is a symbol of things that are supposed to be changed in the Japanese society in the years to come. He is a graduate of one of the most prestigious universities in the world, University of Oxford, he speaks fluent English and during his first official meeting with a foreign Head of State, President Trump, he did not use the services of the officially designated interpreter. But, despite the modern attitude, the whole world was able to enjoy the official ceremony of crowning on May 1st, which reminded us of the period when Manyoshu was written, the Heian period. More
Relations with East Asia – A View from Romania
The situation of the world today makes it difficult to even agree on whether we, as humanity, are going towards the right or the wrong direction. This is indeed a time of increasing fluidity, fake news, rapidly rising populism, which all makes vision and clarity of decision very uncertain for even the most educated and informed persons. Are democracy and advanced capitalism failing or are they being following various routes all heading eventually towards progress? And what does progress mean nowadays when artificial intelligence (AI) is offering blurred visions of some utopias and clearly lots of dystopias for a large number of people? More
The War Economy: Of Bits and Bobs
There are some key assertions which are axiomatic for the pureblood moralists and demonstrable for utilitarians, such as – “war means defeat even for the victors”, “war is the health of the state”, “peace between nations is inconceivable without limiting the power of states over their own nations”, “a durable order cannot be maintained by the sword”, “in a world of free trade and democracy, there are fewer temptations for war and conquest”. These do not exclude the need for an answer to the following question: “if we are to inevitably have war, how can it be waged rationally from an economic standpoint?”. War is the supreme immorality, - indisputable when it is a war of aggression, but also when it constitutes a hasty rejoinder -, but isn’t it also an immorality, of a lower degree, when it is waged with means that delay or hinder winning it in the most efficient/efficacious way for society? More
The European Union’s New Strategic Agenda for 2019-2024 and the Economic and Monetary Union
The future of Europe is the major concern of the European institutions, mainly in the context of increasing nationalism and populism around the continent that culminated in Brexit. Long debates and many comments were had, but not so many new ideas. The problems with which our continent is struggling are not new and the quest for pragmatic solution is not at an end. More
The Market Liberalization of Space Odysseys
Towards the end of 2019, a software issue during launch meant that Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft was unable to perform its first mission to supply the International Space Station as intended. It might by counted as merely one of the many problems often faced in cosmic exploration, yet this one was of particular interest because the spacecraft was created and operated by Boeing, a private business, as opposed to a public body such as National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), such as we have been widely acquainted to. In fact, NASA abandoned the manned spacecraft program in 2011 (the space shuttle fleet), due to the high maintenance costs, as well as the significant and politically unpalatable dangers. Instead, what it has done since then has been to rent berths in Russian Soyuz spacecrafts or to encourage private businesses to come up with replacements. That is how SpaceX, Orbital Sciences Corporation and United Launch Alliance jumped onto the bandwagon of a game that, for the better part of the last century, was played by governments moved by Cold War logic. More
The New Liliput’s Warlord
The Munich Conference of 1938 marked a turning point in World War II. Leading European politicians in Britain and France then succumbed to the demands of the Nazi regime in Germany, while offering them resources to engage in a possible war. After Nazi Germany annexed Austria in early 1938, the Sudetenland, which was inhabited mainly by ethnic Germans, was added to its territorial claims. The pretext for the desire to annex this region was the “reunion of Germans”. The annexation would have been even more likely, as the people of the Sudetenland had the same desire for unification. But, being in the minority in the Czechoslovak state, they were not the only decision-makers in this matter. More
The Road to Sibiu, the Road to Wisdom
2018 found Romania celebrating a century of nation-state unity. 2019 finds Romania as the home of the European unity. A freely and firmly committed community of nations is one of the most delicate enterprises of mankind, one that up to now no empire has succeeded in preserving. The nation seemed the ultimate aggregate. But ration is the ultimate aggregator. More
The Future of Cars: Reinventing Transportation
The automobile industry’s cycle-race to embrace electric and autonomous vehicles did not include all its factories and workers. Neither did softening global auto sales help the market situation. And a change in the downward slope of the number of available job positions is unlikely, with Bloomberg predicting at least 80,000 more automobile jobs to be cut in the coming years. Still, what is certain is that the disruptive future of transportation has already hit the road. More
