How Orbán duped the Brexiteers
To the inhabitants of the British Isles, the nations of central Europe have always existed in a semi–mythical space, near enough to be recognised as somehow European, but too distant to be taken...
View ArticleA Warning From Europe: The Worst Is Yet to Come
On December 31, 1999, we threw a party. It was the end of one millennium and the start of a new one; people very much wanted to celebrate, preferably somewhere exotic. Our party fulfilled that...
View ArticleSaudi Arabia’s information war to bury news of Jamal Khashoggi
For the past several days, the Saudi Twittersphere has been awash with patriotism. Saudi accounts have tweeted, in Arabic, a “#message of love for Mohammed bin Salman” and encouraged one another to...
View ArticleIn Poland, another blow to the Catholic Church
Sometimes works of art – books, plays, movies, songs – can change a culture. But sometimes, they epitomize how a culture has changed. Forty years ago, in October 1978, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was named...
View ArticleStop helping demagogues change the subject
In Manila, the traffic is so bad that it isn’t worth driving anywhere during the day, because a couple of miles will take a couple of hours. In other parts of the Philippines, only a third of children...
View ArticleWe must fight harder against homegrown terrorism. But it won’t happen under...
Right now, the threat to ordinary Americans from homegrown terrorists, radicalized by racist and nativist conspiracies they read on the Internet, is significantly higher than the threat from Islamist...
View ArticleWe have learned a lot about online disinformation — and we are doing nothing
In the two years that have passed since the 2016 election, we have learned a lot about malignant disinformation campaigns in Western democracies. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has indicted the...
View ArticleTrump campaigned to protect himself, not help Republicans
The midterms are over, so expect President Trump to adjust accordingly: The “caravan” will now drop out of the news; the troops sent to the border will quietly pass their time drilling in the Texas...
View ArticleA bittersweet commemoration exposes ominous rifts in our new world order
On the 11th day of the 11th month and at the 11th hour — the moment at which the armistice ending World War I was declared a century ago — the leaders of the nations that once murdered one another...
View ArticleA not-so-fond farewell to Dana Rohrabacher, Putin’s best friend in Congress
It took a while for Orange County, Calif., to count all the mail-in votes, but officials there did it. The result: Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) will be leaving Congress after 15 terms in the House....
View ArticleTheresa May’s Brexit deal gives everyone something to hate
Finally, after many months and a million leaks, the 585-page Brexit agreement has been published. It is available and downloadable. Theresa May, the British prime minister, has finished her...
View ArticleIran’s regime could fall apart. What happens then?
We are now more than two weeks into a new sanctions regime on Iran, and it will be a long time before it ends. The secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has listed 12 conditions that Iran needs to meet...
View ArticleRussia’s latest attack on the Ukrainians is a warning to the West
On Saturday evening, three small Ukrainian naval vessels left the Ukrainian port of Odessa and headed for the Ukrainian port of Mariupol. Along the way, they had to pass through the Kerch Strait, a...
View ArticleThe democratic world could feel the heat from Paris
Fire, flares and tear gas scorched Paris on Saturday night; on Sunday morning, the carcasses of burned cars littered the streets, and graffiti covered the Arc de Triomphe. Smaller, and mostly more...
View ArticleHungary is thumbing its nose at the U.S. — by following Trump’s cues
During his first NATO summit in Brussels, President Trump refused to state his support for NATO’s most important treaty obligation. During his first British visit, the president managed to offend...
View ArticleThe Brexiteers have failed — so they blame Theresa May
In almost any field of human endeavor — football, acting, plumbing — failure has a price. If you can’t push the hockey puck into the goal, you get kicked off the team. If your jokes don’t make people...
View ArticleThe lure of chaos is leading Britain straight into the abyss
In the weeks leading up to the declaration of war in 1914, the British were supremely confident. “It will be over by Christmas” said the optimists; pessimists reckoned the war might last two whole...
View ArticleWhy the world should be paying attention to Putin’s plans for Belarus
On Sept 10, 2001, I published a column about Belarus, the former Soviet republic squeezed between Russia and Europe. It described how the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko was stealing...
View ArticleThe Trump-Putin revelations tell us what we knew all along
The brain of Homo sapiens has a fatal attraction to secrets. What we see before our eyes is never sufficient; we want to know what lies behind it, what explains it, what’s the deeper meaning. The...
View ArticleThe anti-Europeans have a plan for crippling the European Union
In theory, the European Union’s parliamentary elections are the most international in the world. The winners serve in a multinational legislature. They speak to one another with the help of hundreds of...
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