World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Not long ago, Poland was seen as the most successful example of democratic transformation in Central and Eastern Europe, a leader in European integration. It was enjoying, as the longtime European commissioner Gunter Verheugen wrote, a “new golden age.” Today, the country is again ahead of…

The Soviet Union officially ended 30 years ago — if one had to pick a specific date, then on Dec. 25, 1991, with the lowering of the Soviet flag from the roof of the Kremlin’s Senate Palace and the handover of the nuclear button from the last Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev, to the first…

Preparations for the Brazilian elections scheduled for late this year have begun. Brazil’s elections are like no other because the influence the country has on its region is like no other. Its 213 million citizens (the sixth-largest population in the world) and 8.5 million square kilometer surface…

The Libyans are debating over when to hold elections, while the world tries to persuade them that they are the only remedy to their country's fragmentation. The journey will not be smooth, as it is not easy to rebuild maps that were torn between factions, ideologies, foreign media and mercenaries…

On Dec. 25, 1991, at 7:32 p.m., the Soviet flag came down over the Kremlin, and the pre-revolutionary Russian flag of white, blue and red horizontal stripes took its place. It was a momentous moment but was witnessed by only a handful of foreigners and an irate Soviet war veteran on Red Square. …

War is coming — a not-so-great northern war. Don’t be fooled by last Thursday’s conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his American counterpart Joe Biden, with its promise of further negotiations in January. When one party is bent on war, this kind of diplomatic activity…

Early in the pandemic, Americans lined up for hours outside of food banks, awaiting their chance to collect groceries. Many of them had experienced food insecurity before Covid-19. Tens of millions of others were new to such assistance. Only thanks to emergency federal intervention was a serious…

Australian foreign policy was dramatically recast 80 years ago in ways that still reverberate today. It went hand-in-hand with a far-reaching overhaul of economic life, the contours of which lasted long enough to help drive a recovery from the pandemic recession. These wartime military and…

Math fans like me love to find joy in numbers everywhere — and 2021 was a mathematically exciting year however you look at it. The year was full of palindrome days, whose dates read the same forward and backward (at least in the US date convention). There was a string of them in January — 1/20…

The United Nations concluded its 2021 environmental discourse with a resolution, endorsed by a majority of the General Assembly members, deeming climate change a threat to world peace and security. However, the resolution was vetoed by Russia when presented to the UN Security Council. While it had…

Almost exactly one year ago, my colleagues and I buzzed with excitement as we lined up for our first shots of a Covid vaccine. Even as we postponed holiday gatherings, we posted our vaccination photos on social media as promises to ourselves that 2021 would be different. And it has been…

Prices have been increasing at the fastest rate in decades, but we haven’t been having a debate about inflation. We’ve been having five. We might do a better job of thinking through the issues if we distinguish among them. The first debate concerns the magnitude of the current inflation: how…