Commentary / World Mar 6, 2022
Russia has unleashed a new age of nuclear proliferation
Even if Vladimir Putin is bluffing on using nuclear weapons, his threat is more frightening than anything since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Commentary / World Feb 11, 2022
‘Sapiens’? Humans aren’t wise, just too smart for our own good.
Perhaps that’s what defines our species — neither wisdom nor folly, but the ability, as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it, to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still function.
Commentary / World Dec 1, 2021
What’s worst about omicron so far is the uncertainty
How should the world respond to omicron? We just have to wait as there is information that we don’t yet have. And for many, the waiting itself is the problem.
Commentary / World Nov 5, 2021
Climate change will kill national sovereignty as we know it
In a world where all countries collectively face the planetary emergency of global warming, sovereignty is simply no longer a tenable concept.
Commentary / World Nov 3, 2021
How Russia and Belarus are weaponizing migration
Belarus has been flying refugees from various points in the Middle East — Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria — then herding them toward neighboring countries that are members of the European Union.
Commentary / World Jul 14, 2021
Nord Stream 2 will overshadow U.S.-German relations for years
Called Nord Stream 2 and more than 90% finished, it doubles the amount of gas Russia can export directly under the Baltic Sea to northwestern Europe.
Commentary / World May 1, 2021
Science shows why simplifying is hard and complicating is easy
Spotting solutions that are simple and elegant, in other words, requires mental effort or what the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman calls slow as opposed to fast thinking.
Commentary / World Apr 5, 2021
What’s better in a pandemic: federalism or a central state?
How, in a pandemic, do you balance regional autonomy and flexible local responses with national coordination and coherence?
Commentary / World Mar 25, 2021
We must start planning for a permanent pandemic
SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), protean and elusive as it is, may become our permanent enemy, like the flu but worse.
Commentary / World Feb 19, 2021
Smell in the time of COVID-19
Smell, as much of the world is discovering in the pandemic, has long been our most underrated sense.