World News Insights: Opinion Articles

The rapid fall of Afghanistan to Taliban control presents the UK and its NATO allies with two primary dilemmas — the first is immediately pressing, the second has longer-term implications. The urgent task is to determine a policy for Afghans seeking refuge. Although there are many calls, from…

For all the recriminations and finger-pointing about how the Taliban gained control of Afghanistan so rapidly, there is a hard truth that needs to be reckoned with: The Taliban have spent years preparing for the eventual US withdrawal. Despite numerous military surges, relentless airstrikes and…

With the tensions that emerged in Lebanon in 1969, began flaring in 1973 and then to a greater extent in 1975, a theory that the source of the crisis could be traced back to 1966 was born. Why 1966? Because Intra Bank’s collapse that year indicated that Lebanese capitalism had been suffocating,…

Internal problems, as well as regional dynamics, converged to bring about the Syrian tragedy. Foremost amongst the domestic reasons is the nature of the regime that has ruled Damascus for decades. A regime caught in a time warp refusing to exhibit the flexibility and imagination required to deal…

Many of the questions raised today about the major developments taking place in Afghanistan can only be answered after the Taliban rule is effectively enshrined and the movement engages in political activity. Until then, all expectations and forecasts are mere assumptions. The first question…

Hong Kong has decided to live with the fear of the virus, instead of the virus itself. If the territory wants to survive in a post-pandemic world, then the false bubble of security it has created can’t last. Last week, a 38-year-old vaccinated woman tested positive with the L452R mutant strain,…

CoVix-19 Volatility is back. Monday saw the VIX index, which tracks how investors spend to hedge against volatility in options markets, jump above 30 for the first time since the brief but violent correction for FANG stocks in early September. That correction was very much internally generated, as…

In the last month, the Delta variant has driven up the number of new Covid cases by tens of thousands, thrown America’s pandemic response back into chaos and jeopardized the nation’s fragile economic recovery. In light of this, you might think that all of us — Republicans and Democrats alike —…

I don’t know much about Afghanistan and there are people with more knowledge who can explain reasons for the sudden collapse of the Afghan government. I can say that the picture of an American military helicopter evacuating employees from the American embassy in Kabul immediately reminded me and…

When we talk about workers going back to their offices, the goal for most people is to return to the normal routines of life. But there's at least one group of former office-dwellers who are viewing the return as uncharted territory: parents who had their first child during the past 18 months. …

As the Taliban seize control of Kabul and indeed all of Afghanistan, it is worth pondering the less obvious lessons of this 20-year episode. It is a reminder of why I cannot bring myself to be a foreign policy hawk, even though I largely accept the hawks’ worldview and underlying values. Let’s…

In 2006, as a Navy vice admiral, I was in Iraq traveling with Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld. At a town hall with US troops, he famously answered a question about the US Army’s lack of armored vehicles by saying, “You go to war with the army you have — not the army you might want or wish to have…