World News Insights: Opinion Articles

The results of the recent Lebanese elections point to an uprising that begins in Iran and passes through Iraq, to Lebanon, against the Iranian project and its supporters in the region. They also show us that the region is not enduring a conflict by proxy, as reported by Western media, Western…

Just as Britain and the European Union had found unity in helping Ukraine repel Vladimir Putin’s invasion, the UK government decided to pick a fight with Brussels over Northern Ireland. In theory, the messy politics of Northern Ireland can be kept separate from the broader mission of “Global…

Where to Shelter? Risk assets are falling, and have ample reasons to fall. What to do about this? In the short term there are decent arguments that it’s time for a rally within the bear market. But how best to deploy assets for the longer term? We now have three central scenarios ahead of us…

President Joe Biden spoke in Buffalo on Tuesday after visiting the families of victims of a racist mass shooting in a supermarket there on Saturday. It was a speech that’s likely to get lost in the current-events shuffle, but it shouldn’t. It was a good one, well written and well delivered, and…

The celestial algorithm that keeps the moon in its orbit around the earth clearly works a lot better than the one that governed Luna and Terra. The cryptocurrency pair’s collapse last week has put a question mark on the very premise of stablecoins: stability. TerraUSD, or UST, was pegged to the…

Elon Musk has a suggestion for entrepreneurs: Get into lithium mining for juicy margins. It’s a pithy recommendation, but it fails to grasp the complicated challenges for producing more of the metal. Soaring lithium prices have dampened the excitement around electric vehicles. Musk noted that…

In last week’s newsletter, I had a conversation with the philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò about the nature of dissent in an era when almost every message, however revolutionary in origin, gets processed and then ultimately defanged through the practice of “elite capture.” We touched on the question…

During a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee a few days ago, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said that “China is working hard to effectively put themselves into a position in which their military is capable of taking Taiwan over our intervention” and that pressure on…

A diplomat asked me if I saw similarities between the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. I was surprised and answered that both events took place in a different world and a different region. Russia is not Iraq. Vladimir Putin is not the same as Saddam Hussein. The…

The notion of “Great Power Competition “was introduced by the Trump administration in its 2017 National Security Strategy NNS and subsequently confirmed by its 2018 National Defense Strategy NDS. China was considered the main threat to US interests. Influenced by the crisis in Ukraine, the new NNS…

When it comes to inflation, President Joe Biden gets two big things right — and a lot of little things wrong. Unfortunately, for both his administration and Americans adversely affected by higher prices, the little things add up. The administration’s message on inflation is broadly correct on…

The war in Ukraine has entered a new phase. It is no secret that the initial invasion went badly for Russia. Expecting easy victories, the Russian Army inflicted terrible destruction — especially in its shelling of cities — but for the most part failed to take territory outside the southeast of…