August was busy for Russia this year. While dealing with growing popular protests in the east, Moscow has sought to distract attention by engaging in nefarious activities, both at home and abroad. It’s prepared to intervene in neighboring Belarus, confronted US military forces on land, at sea and in the air, stepped up its interference in the US presidential elections and poisoned yet another opposition figure. None of these activities have gone unnoticed in Europe or the United States. B

Anyone observing President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in the US would have good reason to wonder if his administration ever had much of a strategy for handling it. Last week the press accused one of his medical advisers, Scott Atlas, of promoting a “herd immunity strategy” amounting to letting COVID-19 run rampant. Atlas denies this, but a more important issue is what our strategy is, or should be, and what Joe Biden’s strategy would be if he&rsqu

After years of slow deterioration, diplomatic relations between China and Australia have taken a sharp turn for the worse. The disputes range from pressure on journalists, to spying allegations, to an investigation of Australia’s wine exports. Beijing holds most of the cards, but Australia does have one doomsday weapon at its disposal. It’s better not used. The conflict echoes China’s widening disputes with other countries. Two journalists working for Australian Broadcasting C

In politics, language is a reliable indicator of the direction of travel. Today, rhetoric from the Republican Party convention in the US to India, and from Poland to Brazil, points away from liberal democracy. The change has rarely been swifter than in Hong Kong. The markers of autocratic speech are globally apparent. There’s the divisive “us versus them” rhetoric, the ad hominem attacks, the inflammatory comments on dissenters and the fetishization of law and order, feeding o

When technology advances and related gadgets become widely available, what tends to happen is a steady decrease in hardware prices. Mainstream smartphones are getting pricier each year, putting a strain on limited household budgets. Of course, Korean consumers can get popular smartphones from Samsung Electronics and Apple at a discount by signing up for data plans with mobile carriers. But even with such deals, the prices for the latest Galaxy and iPhone series are easily above 1 million won

Nineteen years ago today, terrorists hijacked two planes and flew them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing thousands. George W. Bush, the US president at the time declared a “War on Terror” that led to the US military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. At home, wide-reaching reforms were adopted to secure air travel and prevent another terrorist attack. Shortly after the attacks, the media was full of stories about how the attacks would “chang

The European Central Bank’s governing council meets this week amid a less optimistic mood than before the summer break. The recovery in Europe is losing speed and there are early signs of divergence, with some euro-zone countries rebounding faster than others. ECB President Christine Lagarde still has several tricks up her sleeve to help the monetary union respond to the pandemic’s economic shock. But, unlike previous crises in Europe, governments will have to take the lead this tim

What is prosecution reform? They say it is to ensure that our prosecutors respect human rights in every stage of a criminal investigation and that they maintain independence from outside interference while their power is restricted to establishing justice. Regrettably, we witnessed over the past three years no evidence of the above being realized. Instead, signs are that politics creeps into the process of law enforcement and, worst of all, favoritism rules the posting of prosecutors. Adding a

President Donald Trump poses an unusual problem for his opposition. He’s “a target-rich environment,” said Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress. “He has befuddled his opponents by giving them too much to react to. It keeps the Democrats from having a disciplined message about why Trump sucks.” Depending on the news cycle, the anti-Trump message may be that he is a tool of Russian President Vladimir Putin, or a racist, or a threa

Recently I came across “Snows of Kilimanjaro,” a collection of English poems by a Korean-American poet, Yearn Hong Choi. The title intrigued me because I very much admire Ernest Hemingway’s short story, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” In the epitaph of the celebrated story, Hemingway wrote, “Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai “Ngàje Ngà

The US Government programs to blunt the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic will make the federal budget deficit much wider in 2020 than at any point in the last 75 years. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s new forecasts, released this week, predict that the deficit will be over $3.3 trillion this year, or 16 percent of annual economic output. Measured as a share of GDP, the annual US budget deficit hasn’t hit double digits since 1945. The CBO forecasts that the 20

The recent Republican National Convention in the US was scandalous for many reasons -- from the misuse of the White House as a campaign prop (in violation of the Hatch Act and long-standing norms) and the brazen mendacity of its speakers to the parade of Trump family members. Amid the tawdry spectacle of the GOP being transformed into a subsidiary of the Trump Organization, one shocking aspect stood out: The party offered no platform. The Republicans’ only purpose, apparently, is “to

A month before he ended his first stint as Japan’s prime minister in 2007, Shinzo Abe addressed the Indian Parliament in New Delhi. Quoting the Mughal scholar-prince Dara Shikoh, Abe spoke of the “confluence of the two seas” -- the Indian and Pacific Oceans -- that were undergoing a “dynamic coupling as seas of freedom and of prosperity.” India and Japan, said Abe, shared an interest in and responsibility for securing these seas “by joining forces with like-mi

A frightening 70 percent of millennials say they would back a socialist candidate for office. And today, we are seeing many socialist ideas gaining traction, such as “free” college tuition for all, government-run health care and a guaranteed income even for able-bodied people who don’t work. While we can blame some of the attraction to socialism on its false promises of fixing every social ill, the nearly inescapable indoctrination present in our schools and universities, and