World News Insights: Opinion Articles

The talk about “Arab Liberalism” and “Arab Liberals” continues to pose far more questions than provide answers. Since John Locke in the seventeenth century, Liberal consciousness has been tied to the presence and role of the individual. The primary tenet of any definition of Liberalism was the…

The strong ruler digs into history, searching for a spring, a sword, or a cover. Vladimir Putin is searching for a legitimate reason for the great coup he unleashed through the Ukrainian fire. It’s a coup against the unipolar world, its only superpower, its fleets… It’s a coup against its dollar -…

Every modern presidency eventually hits bumps in the road, at which point the call will come from someone somewhere to “let the president be himself.” Many of my friends are familiar with the “Let Bartlet be Bartlet” episode of “The West Wing,” but the modern version of the cliché dates to the…

Covid-19 has killed mostly old people. But since the pandemic began, the rate of death from all causes for younger adults has risen by a bigger percentage than has the rate of death from all causes for old people. When I heard that stat I thought it had to be a mistake. If Covid is ravaging the…

The war in Ukraine is a never-ending catastrophe. Russian forces, concentrated in the east, continue to inflict terrible damage on Ukrainian soldiers and civilians alike. Countless lives have been lost and upended. Once again, the world must confront the possibility of nuclear war and grapple with…

As much as we have justly criticized the United States, we are now faced with a new step, which if taken, would allow us to say that it has returned to thinking according to its strength and from a strategic position, away from the delusions of the left. The step we are talking about is the…

We’re now in a very weird pandemic phase. On Twitter, doctors such as Eric Topol sound five-alarm warnings about the latest subvariants of omicron. Offline, even in blue states, people are back to parties, bars and restaurants — and will soon be flying around the world with no testing requirements…

Economic sanctions have a bad reputation as a weapon that promises plenty — “something more tremendous than war,” as US President Woodrow Wilson put it in 1919 — but delivers comparatively little. Unprecedented measures aimed at isolating Russia have not stopped the fighting in Ukraine, or forced…

In the words of Noel Coward’s chirpy song of doom, “there are bad times just around the corner” for Boris Johnson. The prime minister ends the week as walking wounded, having narrowly survived a no-confidence vote on his Conservative party leadership on Monday. If such a test was long in the…

The global trade in the cheapest foods is grinding to a halt. In April, Indonesia temporarily banned exports of palm oil, cutting off India from one of its biggest sources of imported nutrition. India, in its turn last month, set a ceiling on exports of sugar, helping to keep more calories in…

The summer travel season is picking up — and so are the airport horror stories. Long lines, delays and cancellations have been particularly rampant in the UK, Europe and Canada in recent weeks, but the US has certainly seen its fair share of travel blowups. So far this year, about 20% of the…

All of a sudden, the hawks in the Chinese government are loosening the grip on their prey. The big tech companies that suffered the most from a yearlong crackdown might soon see light at the end of the tunnel. In recent days, China accelerated the approval of new video game titles, ending an…