World News Insights: Opinion Articles

When Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, cryptocurrency fans appeared to be trapped in a decadent fantasy. A batch of CryptoPunk NFTs (blockchain collectibles) had just been yanked from auction at Sotheby’s amid fading enthusiasm and a broader market sell-off. The seller tweeted Drake memes to…

As Joe Biden campaigned for the White House in 2020, he knew that the next president of the United States would govern under circumstances significantly more daunting than those that most faced. As he took the oath of office in 2021, he could see very clearly — in the tally of Covid-related…

Hong Kong feels like it’s on the edge of a nervous breakdown, and it’s tempting to ask how much more people can take. With reports circulating that authorities will impose some form of lockdown later this month, supermarket shelves are once again being stripped bare and long lines have formed…

It is not a hasty conclusion or a kind of simplification to consider Russia’s war on Ukraine to be a turning point for Russia’s relations with the West, creating a total rupture and replacing dialogue and cooperation with quiet hostility. In other words, those who thought the Cold War ended with…

The world is watching in horror what Putin and his people still call a “special military operation” and what the vast majority of the world rightly calls military intervention and invasion of an independent and sovereign state. An extraordinary virtual summit of NATO Heads of State and…

The first batch of US sanctions targeting Russia last week included several designed to hamstring the country's space program. The move did not please Dmitry Rogozin, director of the Russian space program. For three decades, the US and Russia have collaborated on the International Space Station,…

As Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine enters its second week, the naughty little law of unintended consequences is lifting its head above the parapet. The most striking illustration of this so far is the debunking of Putin’s brazen claim that there is and has never been a Ukrainian nation and that…

Over the last several years, that famous poem has been quoted countless times: “The center cannot hold,” William Butler Yeats wrote, before adding, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” People cited it so often because it was true. But it was not so…

Keep the airspeed, altitude and course steady: That was the mantra for American pilots who regularly encountered Soviet aircraft during the Cold War. And the Soviets often returned the favor. Off the coast near the Russian port city of Vladivostok, helicopter pilots from US Navy frigates kept an…

The people of the South are aware of “the responsibility Hezbollah bears for leaving the state suspended and the interests of the Lebanese women and men marginalized to the benefit of its interests and commitments.” This phrase is not taken from a closed internal meeting but came at the beginning…

I am reading many analyses of the geostrategic implications of the war in Ukraine and its economic impact around the world. Unfortunately, there is no serious discussion yet about the negative consequences from the Ukraine crisis on refugees and displaced people in the Middle East, especially Syria…

India, the world’s largest democracy, has abstained in yet another United Nations vote to condemn Russia’s brutal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Commentators in the United States are beginning to wonder how reliable an ally India can be. The White House and Congress should handle any…