World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Through the latter decades of the Cold War, there was little cooperation or alignment between the Soviet Union and China. The Russians had a far more developed global military presence, a higher level of ambition to impose their ideology on others, and a much bigger economy. China was primarily…

Joe Biden was Barack Obama’s vice president. His Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, was Obama’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve. The director of Biden’s National Economic Council, Brian Deese, was deputy director of Obama’s National Economic Council. His chief of staff, Ron Klain, was his chief of…

At the heart of the current crisis between Washington and Moscow is this: Vladimir Putin has massed troops on Russia’s border with Ukraine and implied that he may invade unless he receives a guarantee that Ukraine will never join NATO. The Biden administration rejects that demand out of hand…

The Omicron variant is spreading widely and infecting large numbers of people, including the vaccinated and those previously infected with the virus. While spikes in cases have been the norm for the past two years, there are clear indications this wave will differ substantially from previous ones. …

With the US war on Iraq in 2003, an argument opposed to the war out of concern for Iraq, democracy and international law emerged. Democracy is not something illegally imposed by force. Doing so undermines both democracy and the law, as well as harming the Iraqis themselves. The argument was…

In 2022 we face not a new world order but a return to the world of 1941-1991. During that period the US led a global collective security order whose core goal (beyond various monetary, trade, human rights and other objectives) was to defeat efforts by first Germany and Japan, then the Soviet Union…

With only a few months to go before France votes, President Emmanuel Macron has taken out his check book to counter anger over post-Covid inflation. The negative ripple effects on financial markets suggest more than just one-off pain, though. Macron’s government will force utility Electricite de…

TIME and again throughout history, perpetrators of injustice have absolved themselves and justified miserliness and inaction by blaming the victim. Amid allegations of African culpability for the Omicron outbreak and the complaints from the Global North about vaccine hesitancy and low take-up in…

Afghanistan is in free fall. Since the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, the economy has imploded and people are being crushed in the collapse. Cash for basic transactions has dried up, the Afghani currency is plummeting, and trade is wrecked by lack of confidence in the financial sector. A…

Those who were under the illusion that the transition to a green economy and cleaner production would be a simple matter, discovered upon implementation that the issue is complex, tantamount to fixing a problem only for a new one to arise. This is because addressing the accumulated environmental…

The year 2021 ended, with all its upheaval, as a new year began with hopes that it would not be like its predecessor, and that it would provide people in all four parts of the world and in its five (or six) continents an opportunity to return to a normal life. The “new normal” is an expression…

The crises, wars and conflicts, which are undermining peace and stability in the world, are also threatening the Middle East and Arab world that are hotbeds for tensions and constant confrontations. The tensions are expected to deepen given the series of conflicts that have accumulated over the…