Xi Jinping’s military show in Beijing and his alliance of autocrats may look like the dawn of a new world order, yet the economic, scientific, and military balance still tilts toward the democracies of the West.
Tag: East
Approaching the world as a simple opposition between East and West falls short. An emerging “tripolar” geopolitics requires we establish new ways of thinking and managing both conflict and opportunity.
The war in Ukraine has set off the dynamics of a new Cold War: a standoff between democracy and authoritarianism, whatever the ideological stripe. Faraway parts of the world will be affected by what happens on the ground in Ukraine.
The fall of the Afghan national government may be a calamity for the Afghans but not for the world’s big-money interests, which prefer to deal with ruthless, incompetent regimes that will sell out their countries.
The Iranian regime’s plans to be the power broker in three Middle Eastern states have withered since the United States killed its key regional operative Qasem Soleimani.
Whenever Iran’s revolutionary regime feels the heat, it stirs more trouble in the Middle East. It has even brought the exasperated Arabs closer to Israel.
The longstanding peace accord between Israel and Jordan ensures stability in the region, but King Abdullah II’s domestic troubles could change everything.
A determined architect continues to pursue her dream of opening a civil war museum in Beirut, where people are still rattled by the bloody events of the Lebanese civil war of 1975-1990.
The boom from Gulf countries is the direct result of a promotional campaign that features halal menus, Arabic speakers and prayer mat in front of hotels.
WASHINGTON — President Trump arrived in Jerusalem this week with a most curious bit of information for Israeli President Reuven Rivlin. “We just got back from the Middle East,” Trump announced. “We just got back from Saudi Arabia.” At this, the Israeli ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, put his forehead in his palm. Did Trump not know Israel is in the Middle East? Did he not know he was in Israel? There was little time to contemplate this mystery, because Trump was moving on to generate more puzzlement at his meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. Americans by […]
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Syrian Water Wheels Keep On Turning
Like much of the rest of the country, Syria’s fourth-largest city, Hama, has been left victim of the brutal civil war repeatedly over the past six years. Still, its most prized antiquities, these big Byzantine-era norias that keep water turning, are still standing. The same, sadly, cannot be said in Palmyra. See more slides from […]
-Essay- BETHLEHEM — Some journeys begin with a sigh. An old acquaintance of mine, an artist, wrote on Facebook this week about a Banksy exhibition that was about to open in a shopping mall in the Sharon area, north of Tel Aviv. She complained that the cost of an entry ticket was 90 shekels (about […]
CAIRO — When one woman was sexually harassed this month in Cairo, she made an unusual move: she came to an informal agreement with her attacker’s family and juvenile prosecutors to drop charges on condition that the boy get therapy and do community service. Having caught the boy who groped her hard from behind, after […]
Nestled in between Poland, Lithuania and the Baltic Sea, far from mainland Russia, Kaliningrad feels much more like Europe, and its residents are proud of its Western-like values.
BERLIN — It looked as if a great moment might be in the making: German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his Polish colleague Radoslaw Sikorski had teamed up with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, and the trio flew to Kiev for joint talks with the then-Ukrainian government and opposition. At the time violence on Maidan […]
Out of the Cold War archives, a chilling family tale from a divided Germany.
BERLIN – Despite considerable efforts, the economic gap between eastern and western Germany is not shrinking fast enough. While the East is indeed becoming more dynamic, it still lags far behind the West, according to the 2012 statistics compiled by the Initiative for a New Social Market Economy (INSM), which ranks German states for dynamism […]