World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Thanks to Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, Russia is now more isolated than it has ever been. The economy is under sanctions and international businesses are withdrawing. The news media has been even further restricted; what remains spouts paranoia, nationalism and falsehoods. The…

On the second day of a the two-month ceasefire declared between Houthi militias in Yemen and the coalition led by Saudi Arabia, Iran and the US have welcomed the ceasefire. Mediated by the United Nations, the ceasefire will allow sending of humanitarian aid to a country that’s experiencing a human…

Many traits have been attributed to Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, with views on the man ranging between extremely positive, deep appreciation to deeply negative, sharp condemnation. One thing, however, is beyond doubt. He has put and continues to put exceptional effort into winning the…

President Biden’s gaffe about Vladimir Putin and Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony were demonstrations of a single phenomenon. Let me explain. Saturday, in Warsaw, addressing Putin’s war in Ukraine, Biden departed from his prepared remarks with this coda: “For…

Right now Vladimir Putin is losing the battle for Ukraine. His maximal goals have been abandoned (for now), his troops around Kyiv are in retreat, his imperial dreams are being disavowed. He has more modest goals to fall back on, resources and territories that he may be able to hold — but a month…

There is a dangerous censoriousness pulsing through American society. In small towns and big cities alike, would-be commissars are fighting, in the name of a distinct minority of Americans, to stifle open discussion and impose their views on the community at large. Dissenters, when they speak out,…

On Friday, Sayyid Ahmed Abdulwahhab, Al Haram’s deputy, passed away. May Allah have mercy on his soul. He left this world after a long battle with illness and was a true Sayyid in every sense of the word, lineage, deed, and station. I have known him since my childhood, as a brother and a…

Globalization felt like it wGlobalization felt like it was going into reverse long before Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine. Donald Trump’s election, Brexit and Covid-19 were all flagged as milestones on the path back toward more protectionism and higher costs for multinationals. Yet the speed…

There are many ways a Chinese company might sidestep US sanctions and provide technology products to Russia. It could hide American imports behind third-party suppliers, implement layers of shell companies to obfuscate source and destination, or create elaborate schemes to hide data from forensic…

Let’s talk a bit about ambition. Once upon a time, I taught a course called “The Politican,” which was about … you guessed it: politicians. It was an unusual course because there is no real study of politicians as a group — there are scholars of US politics who specialize in Congress, in the…

India wants to go on trading with Russia for reasons that are more practical than to swipe at the West. For one thing, New Delhi relies heavily on Moscow for defense procurement, a dependency that will be hard to shed overnight with new suppliers. For another, Russia is reportedly offering India a …

Visibly grinning despite having their masks on, the foreign ministers of China and Russia greeted one another with an elbow bump when they met in Beijing a few days ago. Despite the apparent harmony between the two countries, they neither think the same way nor sing to the same tune. Lavrov…