World News Insights: Opinion Articles

In a recent investigative report, the US Defense Department’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) concluded that “the single most important factor” behind the Taliban’s swift takeover in August 2021 was “the US decision to withdraw military forces and contractors from…

In debate halls, salons, forums, and even decision-making centers, several questions are being posed without a decisive answer emerging. Who is responsible for this war? Who is perpetuating it, and who can help the world overcome it? Is it Putin who launched a military invasion starting with the…

Rumors of an Apple Inc. mixed-reality headset have swirled for years. Now, they’re getting very real. Last week, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that Apple demonstrated an AR/VR (augmented and virtual reality) device to its board of directors and has a “consumer release planned for 2023.”…

India’s monetary boss is so certain he will be raising interest rates again soon, he called it a “no-brainer.” The only things missing from the forecast were the dates and magnitude. That’s how specific the prescriptions from policy makers around the world have become. Long caricatured as dour…

The only thing India can possibly do during this year’s global food crisis is to not make it any worse for its own poor. As the cost of basic nutrition balloons everywhere, the second-most-populous nation’s best bet is to fall back on its extensive system of state procurement and public…

Who Remembers the Decades that Preceded the Two Years War (1975- 1976) in Lebanon? The forces calling for political and social change at the time were neither few nor unpopular, regardless of the sort of change they were advocating. Those forces left the shell of a single sect and region. That…

The riskiest time in a low-level conflict is when the balance of power changes and new red lines must be determined. In Syria now, as Russia reduces its forces, Iranian Revolution Guard forces are increasing their presence and Israel perceives a gradually increasing Iranian threat from both its…

Winning or losing in armed conflicts is a relative and dynamic proposition. Relative because it is dependent on how the opposing side defines victory and defeat. Dynamic because the goals of the protagonists usually shift to accommodate either all or some of the following factors: evolving…

The tension between Saudi Arabia and the United States is no secret, as are the recent features of rapprochement. It seems that the detente in relations between Riyadh and Washington is taking a different shape and is being prepared slowly. All this is happening through the remarkable and…

When someone like Boris Bondarev, a Russian counselor to the United Nations in Geneva, slams the door on his employer, the Russian Foreign Ministry, and on his home country, it’s only natural to wonder if Vladimir Putin’s system is showing cracks three months into the dictator’s disgraceful Ukraine…

We have always asked a persistent question: Who leads the other... politics or the economy? Through rapid developments and data, many tend to consider the economy as a leader. Personally, when I went through many files, I had a tendency to draw the same conclusion. However, what I have seen…

Prices of gasoline and diesel fuel are crazy high and oil refiners are earning stupendous profits. But the refiners, who convert crude oil into consumable products, aren’t price gouging — that is, they aren’t deliberately charging an unfairly high price. Highlighting that combination of facts…