World News Insights: Opinion Articles

If China were to attack Taiwan, it wouldn’t just have to face a hostile superpower. It would also likely have to confront its longstanding regional rival, Japan. For centuries, Japan and China have vied for hegemony in East Asia; at times, they have threatened each other’s survival. Today, as I…

Hal Brands

If you bought a new phone, computer, game console or some other such device in the past few years, there’s a good chance that you’ve been charging it using a cable with at least one end that looks something like a squashed Tic Tac — a rectangular plug with rounded corners, about a tenth of an inch…

Farhad Manjoo

President Biden will be one of the losers in the November 8 elections. He and his Democratic party had hoped that the issue of legal abortion would attract most voters, but the Republican Party found that inflation in the economy is the stronger political issue. Most political analysts here agree…

Robert Ford

Baghdad was writhing with the sound of explosions and the scenes of blood and rubble. An Iraqi official accused the media of amplifying the number of victims, and controversy erupted on the matter. I was overwhelmed by journalistic curiosity, so I asked an Iraqi friend to find me the contact number…

Ghassan Charbel

The war in Ukraine led to a very serious risk of a food crisis at a global level when Ukraine, one of the world’s top producers and exporters of grain was no longer able to export its products because of Russia’s blockade. Before the war, Ukraine exported five million metric tones of grain…

Omer Onhon

The bursting of social media’s ad-funded bubble is creating big market waves. Meta Platforms Inc. is less valuable than Home Depot Inc., Snap Inc. is worth less than Deutsche Bank AG (which underwrote its IPO), and Twitter is now privately owned by Elon Musk after almost a decade of cumulative…

Lionel Laurent

In February 2020, in the midst of a vitriolic presidential election, an idealistic group of donors from across the ideological spectrum met to plan an ambitious new project. They called themselves the New Pluralists and pledged to spend a whopping $100 million over the next decade to fight…

Farah Stockman

While the protests in Iran have no open leadership, they do have remarkable symbolism. This symbolism speaks to the protesters’ awareness and focus, which is seen in the slogans raised by the young Iranian women, as well as men, taking to the streets. Indeed, their symbolism has become a…

Tariq Al-Homayed

The Aounist “philosophy of strength” has run its course, ending up powerless and lying flat on a haystack. Anger and bluster were not enough to conceal this terrible fact. The “strong president,” his “strong rule,” “the ascension of the candidate who is strongest within his sect to the…

Hazem Saghieh

Since Elon Musk became the owner of Twitter last week, there’s been a brouhaha over his plans for it, especially the possibility of various fees, like one for verification badges. Those are the blue check marks that let people know an account belongs to whom it says it belongs. They have mostly…

Zeynep Tufekci

After long rounds of negotiations following the Climate Summit in Glasgow last year, world leaders will meet tomorrow in Sharm El-Sheikh at the 27th summit (COP27). After two days of speeches, in which states present their visions and set their conditions, with leaders setting the stage for…

Najib Saab

Tesla Inc. would have delivered more cars in the most recent quarter but for a shortage of boats. It’s having problems finding vessel capacity out of Shanghai. No wonder: China recently overtook Germany as the world’s second-largest auto exporter. China’s auto exports rose over 50% in the first…

Anjani Trivedi