World News Insights: Opinion Articles

There are two clashing arguments about whether the threat of economic sanctions can be effective now in deterring Russian aggression in Ukraine. One is that sanctions against Russia following the 2014 invasion of Ukraine didn’t prompt any improvement in behavior, nor did sanctions promote good…

Back in December the Chinese government notified the United Nations that its new space station had twice maneuvered out of the way of satellites belonging to Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technology Corp., or SpaceX, in 2021. Yet rather than phone SpaceX, NASA or even the White House, China leaned…

“Who lost China?” According to legend, this phrase tipped off the great foreign-policy blame game of the 1950s. 1 But in retrospect, the correct answer is pretty clear: Nobody. Because Mao Zedong and his comrades won it, fair and square. So fast forward 70 years, and maybe the question is “Who…

The judicial system was intended to be a refuge where the persecuted could seek recourse when their rights are violated and when they are slandered since it came into being in what is now a bygone era. All kinds of governance systems task their judicial institutions with presiding over disputes and…

Facebook has always been good at telling a story. After a whistle-blower revealed astonishing harm caused by the company’s products to the mental health of teens and others across the world, the company changed its name and got everyone talking about the metaverse instead. Now Mark Zuckerberg has…

China’s leaders could be forgiven for gloating a little next week, the 50th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to Beijing. Their nation was arguably the biggest winner from Sino-American rapprochement. But it’s in danger of forgetting what made that victory possible. In…

A great and mostly unknown prophet of our time is Michael Young, whose book “The Rise of the Meritocracy,” published way back in 1958, both coined the term in its title and predicted, in its fictional vision of the 21st century, meritocracy’s unhappy destination: not the serene rule of the…

On Aug. 10, 2021, days before the collapse of Afghanistan’s government, Fawad Khan Safi arrived in the United States to begin his new life. Mr. Safi, who previously worked as a contractor for the United States Agency for International Development in Afghanistan, had waited an agonizing 12 months…

I have a problem. Nothing matters to the short-term future of markets more than the situation in Ukraine. Another “risk-off” exodus from stocks to bonds as the news bleakened in Thursday’s trading makes that clear. My problem is that I don’t know what’s going to happen next there. Neither does…

This week’s announcement that India’s Vedanta Group has tied up with Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group to make chips is being lauded as proof that New Delhi is gaining traction with its plans to build a semiconductor industry. That’s hardly the case. Those hopeful that India can establish a…

The two developing tech dramas of early 2022 — the struggle of Meta Platform Inc.’s Facebook to retain users as surveillance-based advertising becomes more difficult and Spotify Technology SA’s Joe Rogan controversy — are really about one thing: Finding the right balance between ad-based and…

One of the unintended consequences of Russia’s troop build-up on the border with Ukraine — which, according to NATO, has yet to be dialed back — has been to create a sense of unity among European Union members that are more often at each other’s throats on security issues. How long this will…