World News Insights: Opinion Articles

The final James Bond outing for Daniel Craig, “No Time to Die,” also marks a notable milestone for Bondian geopolitics: The franchise just completed a five-movie arc with a single lead actor, and amid all the globe-trotting and intrigue you would barely know that China existed. Shanghai and Macau…

Ross Douthat

Hong Kong is intent on keeping its 7.5 million residents in and blocking almost everyone else out. In doing so, it’s moving further away from a Covid-19 exit strategy. As most of the world opens up, Hong Kong’s quarantine policy has made it close to impossible for residents to leave and reenter…

Anjani Trivedi

Covid-19 is not the only respiratory infection the globe has been fighting, especially in the colder months. Last winter, the flu nearly disappeared worldwide because precautions taken against Covid-19, including masks and social distancing, also worked to prevent it. These precautions may have…

Linsey Marr

The messaging on vaccine boosters is muddled and confusing, yet the science is pretty straightforward and reassuring. Your vaccine is still cutting your risk of getting a severe case or dying from Covid-19, even if it has been a number of months since you got it. Whenever they received the first…

Faye Flam

One of the biggest economic development arms races in decades is beginning to take shape. A flurry of multi-billion dollar investment decisions from major automakers has combined with growth in consumer sales to make 2021 feel like the inflection point for electric vehicle adoption. And while…

Conor Sen

“Spy.” “Foreign agent.” “Traitor.” “Conspirator.” “Criminal.” “Fifth column...” These are some of the bricks of the building that is constructed, time after time, by closed regimes and parties. One of these epithets applies to anyone who does not think like them or share their opinion, and usually,…

Hazem Saghieh

The Riyadh initiatives do not only concern Saudi Arabia. When a country with such economic, political and religious influence witnesses a comprehensive renaissance and a deep modernization process, it impacts its surroundings and provides a model for the ability to join the train of progress and to…

Ghassan Charbel

The US-China rivalry can be seen through many lenses. It is, as President Joe Biden has said, a competition between democracy and autocracy. It is a contest between an established power and the upstart seeking to claim its place. It is a race to master advanced technologies that will drive economic…

Hal Brands

The Asian Development Bank and a handful of financial institutions will take an ambitious proposal to end Southeast Asia’s coal addiction to the COP26 climate talks. They want to speed up the shift away from the dirtiest fossil fuel by buying out coal-fired power plants and closing them early,…

Clara Ferreira Marques

As a US diplomat managing our relations with China, I often was asked, “What is our leverage over China?” Beijing was always either doing something we didn’t like — buying oil from Iran, building a port in Cambodia, locking up dissidents — or not doing something that we thought it should, like…

Susan Thornton

The world’s activists and delegates soon on their way to Glasgow have reason to be anxious. After all, they are gathering for a climate summit with exceptionally high stakes. Known as COP26 and running from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12, the conference is perhaps one of the world’s last chances to keep the…

Eleanor Salter

Fifty years on from the foundation of the United Arab Emirates, during which its achievements have exceeded all limits and expectations, the country has begun working, over the past years, on strengthening its national Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter Terrorism Financing (CTF) regimes to…

Ahmed Al Sayegh