World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Are pipelines built to threaten democracies, or befriend authoritarians? Judging by the responses to Russia’s two biggest gas export projects, it depends where you are. In Europe, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, intended to double Moscow’s direct export capacity into Germany to 110 billion cubic…

To envision the future of crypto, I keep trying different analytical tools. This time around the concept of relevance is focality, by which I mean the part of the system at which consumers direct their attention. Focality could determine whether crypto ushers in an era of dystopian inequality, or…

As a shortage for electric car batteries looms, one thing has become increasingly clear: Outside China, the powerpack supply chain is scattered and incomplete. Technologies are at various stages, there’s money backing a host of different materials across a broad array of geographies and production…

Countries cannot rise and grow without a civilized and modern vision and modernized thought and behavior. That is what determines whether societies progress or lag behind, and modernity thus precisely means progress, development, keeping pace with the new world and being in harmony with it, without…

We live in a world where the monsters have either disappeared or are domesticated and not in the slightest bit scary. The savage beasts and cruel dragons, even the werewolves and vampires, are no longer violators of damsels and devourers of children; they are tragic, wounded, misunderstood…

Last week, I promised a bit of optimism about US democracy given the very real threats the republic is facing. I’ll repeat that no one should dismiss those threats. But the defeat of democracy is hardly a done deal. To begin with, imperfect democracy survived 2020, and as serious as the setbacks…

A Q&A with author Rajika Bhandari on why outdated immigration policies are harming America’s ability to attract and retain foreign students. Virginia Postrel: You came to the United States as a graduate student in psychology in 1992 and have worked for many years at the Institute for…

On Dec. 25, 1991, unable to overcome the blow dealt by a hardline coup months earlier and by independence movements in Soviet republics, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned. The last Soviet leader wanted to reform communism, not replace it, but he was unable to contain the centrifugal forces his reforms had…

One of cryptocurrency’s spiritual forebears, Timothy C. May, predicted in the 1990s that untraceable digital cash would allow online casinos, bank secrecy and money laundering to flourish. Although laws would be dodged, he said, the individual anonymity and freedom would be worth it — at least,…

As terrifying as the rapidly spreading omicron variant is, fewer Americans should have to spend the holidays alone this year out of fear of contracting Covid-19. Not only do we have life-saving vaccines. For many people, rapid tests can effectively flag those who are likely to be infectious,…

Is the world on the eve of a new arms race that could spread nuclear weapons to a dozen or more countries within the next few years? This is one of the questions that haunt the next Review Conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Twice postponed because of the Covid-19 crisis…

Speaking to a panel of scholars, French Envoy Dukan described the manner in which the Lebanese political class has dealt with the great financial, as well as economic and social, collapse as being apathetic, as though it were happening in another country. He warned his interlocutors that the…