World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Talk about the tenure of the current Lebanese president, Michel Aoun, coming to an end is often coupled with the phrase “presidential vacuum.” This description is inaccurate in two senses: First, we might be faced with two vacuums, not one, after Aoun’s term ends: a presidential vacuum and a…

Writing a new Constitution strikes many Americans as a transgressive idea. Our Constitution is the oldest in the world, and it has come to seem immutable. The last really substantive change was a 1971 amendment lowering the voting age to 18. Instead of updating a text written more than 200 years…

“Do we confront this moment with honesty,” asked Rishi Sunak, one of the two candidates running to replace Boris Johnson as prime minister of Britain, “or do we tell ourselves comforting fairy tales?” The answer, from the Conservative Party membership, at least, is fairy tales. On Monday the…

So now we know: Pandemic-related restrictions were devastating to the project of educating our kids. The Education Department dropped the news last week that America’s experiment with remote learning has reduced young children’s standardized test scores to levels not seen in two decades. Although…

Walk down any street and it’s a familiar scene: people craning their necks as they look at their phones. But in the not-too-distant future we’ll probably just stare at digital information hovering over the world in front of us, taking in a blend of the digital and real worlds, all thanks to…

When airline passengers watch in horror as their flight status blinks from “delayed” to “canceled,” two competing visions are likely to pop into their heads. One is pitchforks and torches. The other is a couple of hundred other travelers scrambling to get on the next available flight. Linger too…

As US markets were closed to mark the Labor Day holiday, the dollar index surged to a new three-decade high. This is a reminder that the dollar is a relative, rather than an absolute, price — that is, it measures the value of the dollar relative to other currencies. But this also signals that…

China’s economy is faltering and so is its currency. The yuan’s drop to a two-year low has led to hand-wringing that emerging markets have lost an anchor. The slide is regarded with foreboding in Asia and trepidation as far away as Africa and Latin America, where China has sought to extend its…

This September has brought major developments to the fore, with more pivotal events yet looming. The most significant and dangerous of them may be the outcomes of bloody turmoil and violence in the streets of Baghdad between supporters of Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr and his opponents in the Iran…

It was an exciting sight. Communists and allies from Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America filled the Kremlin’s great hall. Present were also NATO generals and their allies. They sensed that this was an important day that would go down in history. Delegations from the vast empire came to swear…

As problematic as the West Balkans may be, the East Balkans is also marred by problems. On August 30, Türkiye celebrated the 100 anniversary of the crushing victory of the Turkish army against the invading Greek army. The Greeks regard this episode of their history as “the Asia Minor disaster”…

With unemployment low, inflation high and interest rates on the rise, the time is right to bring back an old idea: bipartisan talks to reduce the federal budget deficit. I know: Try to contain your excitement. But it wasn’t so long ago — about a decade — that the US was consumed by a mania for…