World News Insights: Opinion Articles

The price of oil, which was extremely low during the worst of the pandemic — it actually went below $0 for a brief, weird period — has spiked as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This price spike is adding to already high inflation, and it is inhibiting the Western response to Vladimir…

Late one night in 1995, in a cramped airplane cabin high over the Pacific, Madeleine Albright put down a draft of a speech I was set to deliver in Beijing at the upcoming United Nations conference on women, fixed me with the firm stare that had made fearsome dictators shudder, and asked what I was…

Capitalism and free enterprise might seem synonymous, but Americans don’t view them the same way. According to Gallup, only about 60 percent of Americans have a positive image of “capitalism,” while 84 percent view “free enterprise” positively. That distinction makes sense to Clifford Winston, a…

China’s refusal to condemn Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has caused consternation in Europe and threatens to sour relations with one of its biggest trading partners. Even as Beijing portrays itself as a neutral party and potential mediator, the government has declined to join US sanctions…

Today, as his military fights a bloody war, President Putin has not ceased to give speeches that mix political and cultural criticism of the West. In one angry speech, Putin said the West was an empire of lies and vowed that the Russians would not bow their heads. However, this is not the first…

As Ukrainian forces continued to hold off Russian advances on Kyiv, President Biden traveled to Brussels on Wednesday for an emergency meeting with other NATO leaders to discuss how to respond to Russia’s assault and help the 3 million Ukrainians who have fled the country. Almost a month in, the…

Rising prices will get worse before they get better. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused the prices of oil, wheat and other commodities to soar. Official measures of the cost of shelter don’t yet fully reflect last year’s surge in the cost of newly rented apartments. So there’s still a lot of…

Whatever the outcome of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the crisis it triggered may have one lasting effect: the return of war as a routine instrument of politics on a global scale. Before the invasion there was an implicit consensus that war was something that happened in the so-called …

What does President Biden think he will get out of a new nuclear deal with Iran? A year ago, the answer seemed reasonably clear to the administration: Tehran had responded to Donald Trump’s decision to walk away from the original 2015 deal — known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or J…

The presidential elections in Iraq come following a difficult reform path, which was undertaken by the political and social actors since the start of the largest protest movement in the country, the early parliamentary elections, and the convening of Parliament. We are witnessing a new Iraqi…

The world has been transfixed by Ukraine’s fight for survival. As the war drags on, we’d better start considering what will become of Russia, as well. President Vladimir Putin’s nation has now been subjected to an isolation more sudden and total than that experienced by any major power in recent…

The dual crises of the global pandemic and the war in Ukraine have been testing our governments, our institutions, our diplomacy — and our collective sense of time. In part because of social media, both events already seem intolerably long, even though the Russian invasion of Ukraine is less than a…