World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Türkiye’s sharp shift in its Syria policy has become the centerpiece of the recent diplomatic traffic regarding Syria. On December 28, the ministers of defense of Russia, Syria and Türkiye met in Moscow for the first time in 12 years. Afterwards, the highest-level Turkish officials laid down a…

In recent weeks, considerable speculation has focused on whether Türkiye might be on the verge of a game-changing re-engagement and normalization with Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. The summit held in Moscow on December 28, which convened the Syrian and Turkish military and intelligence…

In 1955, Beirut witnessed a debate between “the dean of Arabic literature,” Taha Hussein, and the leftist Lebanese writer Raif Khoury. The debate title was “For whom does the writer write: the elite or the people?” It had been assumed that Taha Hussein would defend the argument for “writing for the…

The West is a massive and provocative force, with its history, progress, prosperity and stability and attempts at imposing its model on others. It can also add technological superiority to its fleet and arsenal. Animosity to the West and its hegemony is nothing new. Depleting the West has long…

At a guest lecture at a military academy when the price of a single Bitcoin neared $60,000, I was asked, as finance professors often are, what I thought about cryptocurrencies. Rather than respond with my usual skepticism, I polled the students. More than half of attendees had traded…

Hassan Nasrallah came out with a televised address in which he tried to incite his followers and Lebanese people against Saudi Arabia by saying Riyadh could pay a sum of money to help Lebanon out of its crisis, the same way it spends on the Saudi national football league or bring in players like…

The Future Minerals Forum, recently held in Riyadh, carries important connotations in a capital that usually hosts energy conferences, as the largest oil exporting country in the world. In addition to being another proof of the seriousness in implementing policies to diversify the economy, this…

The interconnectedness of Libya and Tunisia did not emerge recently. Their link is historical, and Libya’s instability is thus impacted by the economic - and even the political - conditions of Tunisia. They share a 460 km-long border, which is significant for mobility and economic exchange between…

With days to go before the United States bumps up against a technical limit on how much debt it can issue, Wall Street analysts and political prognosticators are warning that a perennial source of partisan brinkmanship could finally tip into outright catastrophe in 2023. Big investors and bank…

The news that consumer prices fell in December from November — yes, monthly inflation was negative — was not as wonderful for the Federal Reserve as you might expect. Fed officials are trying to persuade the financial markets and the public that the fight against high inflation is far from over,…

Not only is the probability of an agreement between Iran and Europe declining day after day, but so is the likelihood of containing escalation between the two, which is hindering their ability to prevent them from making difficult choices. This could lead to strategic changes to the traditional…

When Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine almost a year ago many analysts expected a quick catharsis in line with the prevailing view of war as a short hymn to military power. That view had taken shape over many decades as memories of wars in ancient times through the…