World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Despite the great deal of sound and fury that it has generated, it is perhaps too early to assess the lasting impact of President Donald Trump’s latest fireworks on tariffs. Some things, however, are certain. Contrary to assertions by talking heads on the small screen, we are not heading for a…

A combination of two intertwined tendencies is driving the behavior of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel: absolute exceptionalism and pre-emptive-ness that feeds on assumptions of the worst intentions. Exceptionalism, in this sense, amounts to suspending the ordinary, with its laws and norms, and…

The most dangerous impediment to the Lebanese authorities’ current efforts to restore the state is that the country sits atop a dangerous minefield of “zombie” weapons and “zombie” banks. The camp of illegitimate arms intimidates rivals by clinging to narratives that defend its maintenance. Just 90…

There are several ways to interpret what we saw from the meeting between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. However, one thing we are sure of is that Trump knows exactly what he wants and how to get it, and he pursues it relentlessly. …

European Union officials are taking a two-part approach to President Trump’s unfolding trade war, offering to slash tariffs on American-made cars and industrial products even as they prepare to retaliate imminently with wide-ranging levies. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU’s executive…

Since Israel, and us with it, began to be plagued by the meteoric rise of Benjamin Netanyahu, there has been a consensus around his status as the king of Israel. This is a title that even the state’s founders and its historic leaders were never given. Netanyahu has broken every record in terms…

In the writing genre that falls into the “What if?” category, the author presumes the occurrence of hypothetical past events that never happened, and then infers the implications. This is not a futile literary exercise. These texts point to what had, to this or that degree, once been real…

For the past twenty days, US forces have been heavily bombing Houthi missile systems, drones, air defenses, weapons depots, command centers, training sites, and the homes of militia leaders across several provinces, including Sanaa. If the operations continue with this level of focus and eliminate…

There is now a pressing need to understand what Hezbollah truly wants at this stage. Indeed, the military losses and political defeats it has suffered, as well as those of its allies and backers in the region, will be difficult to overturn in the foreseeable future. What, then, does the party…

When US Deputy Special Envoy for the Middle East Morgan Ortagus was born on July 10, 1982, the scene was as follows: General Ariel Sharon’s tanks were surrounding Beirut from all sides and his jets were bombing the capital without mercy. The general of the city of the time was Yasser Arafat, who…

There are two related theories of what Donald Trump’s dramatic revision of the global trade system is intended to accomplish. First, the goal is to revitalize American manufacturing, our capacity to build at home and export to the world. The global free trade system that took shape in the late…

Sectarianism has a profound role in shaping the consciousness of wide segments of the Middle East’s population. It increases their propensity for violent behavior, both verbal and physical, and can lead to sectarian discrimination. Sectarianism is not born of a single factor. Rather, a set of…