World News Insights: Opinion Articles

In May 1990, I was one of the journalists who covered the Arab Summit conference in Baghdad. I remember what then-President Saddam Hussein said during that summit, holding his pen between his fingers as if lecturing the attending leaders and chiefs of states. He spoke about changes in the region…

Crypto is seemingly everywhere in 2022. The total market cap of all cryptocurrencies is still above $2 trillion despite some recent losses. In 2021, people spent more than $44 billion on non-fungible tokens, or virtual ownership rights on digital objects — an amount that approached the total size…

The New York Times reports that President Joe Biden: “Will retreat from the tangle of day-to-day negotiations with members of his own party that have made him seem powerless to advance key priorities, according to senior White House advisers. The change is part of an intentional reset in how he…

Lots of readers responded to my Jan. 5 newsletter discussing a new book, “Money Magic: An Economist’s Secrets to More Money, Less Risk, and a Better Life,” by the Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff. I’ve already responded to many of you by email but nothing beats hearing from Kotlikoff…

“How Civil Wars Start,” a new book by the political scientist Barbara F. Walter, was cited all over the place in the days around the anniversary of last winter’s riot at the Capitol. The New Yorker’s David Remnick, Vox’s Zack Beauchamp and my colleague Michelle Goldberg all invoked Walter’s work in…

Empires often dress themselves in lavish garments whose burdens they, at some point, cannot bear, failing to find a way to pay the steep costs required to expand, maintain or defend them. These empires lose their minds when those garments are ripped apart, behaving as though they are totally…

“Cautiously optimistic!” This is how European Union’s foreign policy spokesman Josep Borrel sees the current talks in Vienna centered on the “nuke deal” concocted by then US President Barack Obama six years ago. Whether or not Borrel, who has no meaningful role in the talks, is relevant, is…

Inflation isn’t just a domestic problem. Sure, year-on-year inflation hitting 7%, the highest rate in four decades, is threatening to derail Joe Biden’s presidency. As my Bloomberg colleague John Authers has written, the inflationary trend appears broad and durable. Yet now as before, inflation…

You don’t see them, but they’re there: hundreds of thousands of people sitting at keyboards for hours on end to keep online services humming along seamlessly. It can seem like the Internet operates entirely automatically, but it doesn’t. Humans are often hidden behind the scenes, working in real…

Before Jack Ma got into trouble with Beijing for his free-wheeling ways, there was Wang Jianlin. Once China’s richest man, the founder of commercial real estate giant Dalian Wanda Group Co. was forced to unload trophy assets by the government after an acquisition spree that hit an estimated $16…

A question that often preoccupied political thought: ought non-democrats be allowed to take part in the democratic process? A more glaring question faces countries like Iraq and Lebanon today: Ought armed organizations that can impose their will by force be allowed to take part in the…

The omicron variant spreads so rapidly that sometimes it feels as if resistance is futile. It’s disheartening to hear of omicron infecting people who are up-to-date on their shots and wear an N95 mask every time they leave home. Even some well-known public-health experts are getting infected. But…