World News Insights: Opinion Articles

In his most recent address to the United Nations General Assembly, in which he outlined his priorities for 2024, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that “the world is entering an era of chaos." He pointed to the deep divisions in the Security Council, which have left it incapable of…

If, hypothetically, an American National Security Council meeting were to end with a high-ranking American spokesperson announcing that “earlier today, the last American soldier was evacuated from Iraq as part of the US withdrawal from the global coalition against terrorism. The president had…

In the past few weeks European farmers have taken to the streets of their capitals to advertise a rebellious mood that few expected to see. Having enjoyed a comfortable life for decades, thanks to subsidies from their respective governments and the European Union’s Common agricultural Policy …

Last fall I found myself at a dinner party that included a former Biden administration official and a Democratic donor, and the conversation turned, naturally, to President Biden’s age and his prospects for re-election. The ex-official said that from inside the White House, where people…

I did not come from a Lebanese background. My family supported neither the Kataeb, nor Chamoun. A relative of mine uprooted a cedar tree to protest what he saw as the bigotry of Lebanism. Our north star did not point to Beirut or Mount Lebanon, but Tripoli and, behind it, Homs in Syria. We did not…

The region has not witnessed this degree of tension since the revolutions of the year of chaos in 2011. The present and future of all its countries are now under threat, and the specter of crisis looms larger with every day that the Gaza war continues. Internationally, reactions to the scenes in…

The scale and ferocity of the conflict in Gaza and the unspeakable suffering of its civilians have rightly provoked the world’s outrage. But in Syria, a steep escalation of violence that has forced the flight of tens of thousands more people in what remains the world’s largest displacement crisis…

The Lebanese are in between two dramatically different states: a restrained war is raging on the southern front, while things are normal in other areas of the country. We see the villages on the border paying dearly on behalf of the entire country. The residents are being killed and their homes and…

The late British leader Winston Churchill made one of the most eloquent political claims of the contemporary era when he said that "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." If this iconic leader of the so-called "free world" and Western…

Decades of occupation, oppression, and conflict over land and victimhood are the background to the heart-wrenching scenes in Gaza. However, so are other elements that have resulted from occupation, and resistance to it, to the same extent that they have shaped them. Fear, one of those…

I tried to run away from the small corpses. We have grown tired of laments. We have spent a lifetime going from one funeral to another. Anger and tears do nothing to heal the wounds. No sooner do we send off a victim than we are confronted with an uglier massacre. It is as though this terrible…

As of early 2024, there were million and three hundred thousand documents tied to the Syrian struggle. Although this is a massive number, it could be considered small given the significance and scale of what has happened in Syria and all the foreign interventions it has witnessed over the past…