It has been excruciating to watch the Taliban roll across Afghanistan, undoing in a matter of months two decades of efforts by the Afghan people and the international community to build a decent, secure and functioning state. The Taliban effectively wrapped up its stunning sweep of the country on Sunday, moving into Kabul and prompting President Ashraf Ghani to flee. The Taliban’s virtually uncontested takeover over Afghanistan raises obvious questions about the wisdom of US President Joe

One of the saddest stories of the year has gone largely unreported: the slowdown of political and economic progress in sub-Saharan Africa. There is no longer a clear path to be seen, or a simple story to be told, about how the world’s poorest continent might claw its way up to middle-income status. Africa has amazing human talent and brilliant cultural heritages, but its major political centers are, to put it bluntly, falling apart. Three countries are more geopolitically central than the

Could climate alarm bells be ringing in the Kremlin? Official pronouncements and a newfound urgency suggest the reality of greener global demand may finally force a fossil fuel behemoth to accept the inevitable. Last week, in a ministerial meeting that touched on environmental monitoring, President Vladimir Putin warned officials that over the past four decades or so, temperatures increased in Russia nearly three times faster than the global average. He noted climate change was behind wildfires

The Group of Twenty has become a pillar of multilateralism. Although the world has many high-level talk shops, the G-20 represents the best kind, actively supporting global dialogue, debate and -- most importantly -- economic problem solving. Fortunately, its biggest limitation -- that it leaves out 96 percent of Africa’s population -- can be easily remedied by including the African Union. To be sure, since the early post-World War II era, multilateralism has worked mainly through the Uni

The world is facing two disasters that are making the COVID-19 crisis doubly worse than it ought to be. The first is the rise of the delta variant, which is twice as contagious and 1.5-2 times deadlier than the original coronavirus. The second disaster is that global north governments have not committed the resources to increase vaccine production to the scale needed to immunize the global population by the end of this year. Worse, the longer we drag our feet, the more likely that the immunity f

In response to the surging delta variant of COVID-19 around the world, more countries are requiring proof of vaccination for employment and access to public places. A range of institutions in the US is now requiring employees to get vaccinated. France and Italy require proof of vaccination to enter businesses and public places. These measures have produced vocal resistance, but a strong social consensus has emerged to support them. Amid the flurry of news about vaccination requirements, I thoug

In South Korean political terminology, the “North Wind” means the North Korean factor in major political events in the South, such as general elections. Just as northwesterly winds thrash the Korean Peninsula and make its winters harsher, North Korea can influence the South’s social climate by affecting people’s sense of security, hence the North Wind. Past military-backed administrations used to play up signs of North Korea’s aggressiveness, like shootings along

The past is something from which we should learn valuable lessons, not something to have a grudge about or to misuse for the sake of personal vendettas. Regrettably, however, our left-wing politicians are hopelessly obsessed with past resentments, thereby preventing South Korea from soaring into the future. Consequently, they have dragged the nation’s people into the labyrinth of the past for the last few years. In today’s South Korea, therefore, the future is nebulous and history

The European project has always had its fault lines, but they have rarely caused earthquakes. That is thanks largely to Germany, which has proved to be a skilled arbitrator of disputes among European Union member states, especially during Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 16-year tenure. With Merkel’s final term ending in September, is the EU in for a tremor -- or worse? When Europe was focused exclusively on consolidating the single market, its fault lines were primarily economic. During

A grim 10-year anniversary last month did not go unmarked. On July 22, commentators around the world duly commemorated the 77 victims of a Norwegian far-right terrorist who detonated a bomb outside the prime minister’s office in downtown Oslo and then massacred teenagers attending a Labour Party summer camp on the island of Utoya. Most of these analyses aimed to understand the horror by way of the perpetrator’s “closely intertwined anti-Muslim and anti-social democratic sentim

Can the safety and health of the athletes be guaranteed? What is the point of having world-class athletes perform to an empty stadium? In a city where COVID-19 is raging out of control, would not the thousands who will descend upon it exacerbate the situation?　 These questions and more bothered me as countries debated whether to send their national teams to the once-delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics. For someone who has never played competitive sports and is not a great sports fan, participating in t

How weird is the future going to be? Just a little bit -- or plain flat-out radically unthinkably weird? And is this future 1,000 years from now -- or 100? The notion that the future will be weirder than we think, and come sooner, is a possibility raised by Holden Karnofsky, the co-chief executive officer of Open Philanthropy. It’s an intriguing and provocative idea. One complicating factor will be different forms of genetic engineering. As genomics progresses, we will be able to alter t

On a day of deepening COVID blues, I came across a heartwarming essay. Recalling our tumultuous days in middle and high school, the leader of my class wrote that she regretted not perceiving the undisclosed emotional pains of her cohorts. “Friends, forgive me!” she implored in an alumni newsletter. My friend and classmate recounted two episodes. The first was from April 19, 1960, when thousands of students marched to the presidential residence, claiming the election of President Syn

Experts argue that artificial intelligence will bring a revolutionary change to our future lives. Of course, AI has its upsides and downsides: The good news is that AI will make our lives incredibly convenient, but the bad news is that it will replace humans in many jobs, such as cashiers, bank tellers, and even factory workers. Indeed, it is happening already. For example, if you go to a self-checkout lane at a store, AI will greet you and instruct you to complete the checkout process. If you

For decades, communist China has been wielding its influence in African countries, establishing strong financial interests and working to convince growing nations that its authoritarian communism is a better form of government than democratic models of individual liberty and economic freedom. While not a typical kitchen-table issue for Americans, China’s stronghold on Africa poses serious national security and economic problems for the American people and human rights issues for many Afri