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Marc Champion
An anti-government protest in Tel Aviv in January. In a TV interview on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the terms of a U.S.-led cease-fire deal and said he was prepared to open a second front against Hezbollah, in Lebanon.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 25, 2024
Netanyahu's strategy is war, war and more war
The Israeli prime minister gave a rare and revealing interview to a domestic TV channel on the weekend that confirmed that he has a plan for Gaza. And that is war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Summit on Peace in Ukraine in Switzerland on Sunday. The gathering brought together over 50 heads of state and government, excluding Russia, to work out a way toward a peace process for Ukraine.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 17, 2024
Why Ukraine isn’t ready for peace talks
It's no exaggeration to say that what happens in Ukraine matters to the world order. A rushed peace would stop the fighting, but by compromising the country's future.
Ukrainian soldiers patrol a heavily war-damaged area of the town of Orikhiv in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine on May 20.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 4, 2024
Ukraine and its allies need a new strategy. Here’s a start.
With the war in Ukraine, stop talking about ‘liberal’ democracy and the ‘rules-based international order.’
Israeli soldiers ready a tank near the border with Gaza on Thursday. The Jewish state's victory in the Gaza conflict will depend on addressing Palestinian despair.
COMMENTARY
Jun 4, 2024
Israel will always be held to a different standard
Arrest warrants, campus protests and genocide accusations were not inevitable. These were the direct results of Netanyahu’s choices.
Mourners gather in Tehran's Valiasr Square on Monday to honor President Ebrahim Raisi and others who died in a helicopter crash a day earlier.
COMMENTARY / World
May 21, 2024
Iranian President Raisi's failed experiment in ideological purity
Yet totalitarian regimes such as Iran don’t need their populations to be content, so long as they have security forces willing to kill to suppress dissent.
As the entire world is fixated on Gaza, the Iranian government has been arresting girls who go out in the street without headscarves and executing people.
COMMENTARY / World
May 10, 2024
Don't let Gaza help Iran cloak its own repression
As the entire world is fixated on Gaza, the Iranian government has been arresting girls who go out in the street without headscarves and executing people.
The ruling Georgian Dream Party, whose leader is pro-Russian, holds a rally in support of the government in Tbilisi on Monday.
COMMENTARY / World
May 2, 2024
What if Russia wins in Ukraine? Ask Georgia.
A billionaire leader in Tblisi echoes Moscow as he rails against “global party of war.”
This Israeli Army handout released on April 18 shows Israeli soldiers conducting operations in the Gaza Strip against Hamas militants.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 28, 2024
Freeing hostages matters more than destroying Hamas
After a joint plea from the US and 17 other nations focusing on Hamas, Israel should lean into a deal.
Elderly women walk past a building destroyed during a Russian missile attack in the town of Selydove, in Ukraine's Donetsk region, on April 14. The West needs to take decisive action to support an out-gunned Ukraine before the situation worsens.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 19, 2024
If only the West backed Ukraine as it did Israel
Western leaders need to take decisive action to support an out-gunned Ukraine before the situation worsens.
A direct military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities by the U.S. and its allies would likely only delay its program while risking regional war and increasing the likelihood of Tehran acquiring nuclear weapons in the long run.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 16, 2024
Iran hawks want to strike now. They're wrong.
One thing Iran hawks get right, starting with the contention that by attacking Israel directly on Saturday night, Iran changed rules of engagement.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei made the decision to launch a missile attack on Israel on Saturday, one that was largely repelled by the latter’s air defense systems. This had the effect of weakening Iran’s position and strengthening Israel’s.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 15, 2024
Netanyahu can gain from Iran’s missile barrage error
Having repelled Iran's attack, the Israeli government can rebuild its standing at home and abroad by drawing attention away from its mistakes in Gaza.
The surprising election losses by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party to candidates of the Republican People's Party are signs of hope for democracy and secularism in the country.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 2, 2024
Turkey’s Erdogan is down, but don’t count him out
The election upset of President Erdogan’s AKP Party is just the start in a long fight for liberal democracy.
A woman pays her respects at a makeshift memorial in front of the Crocus City Hall in Moscow on Friday, a week after a deadly attack by gunmen there killed at least 143 people.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 31, 2024
Putin's conspiracy theories make Russians less safe
The Kremlin hopes that blaming Kyiv and the West for the attack will turn a difficult domestic political situation to its advantage.
Russian President Vladimir Putin visits a church outside Moscow on Sunday, a national day of mourning following the attack on the Crocus City Hall on Friday.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 26, 2024
Putin forgot Islamic State thinks he too is the West
The leader portrays Russia as a victim of Western imperialism, but the Islamic State terrorists who attacked Moscow on Friday reject this narrative.
With Vladimir Putin's electoral triumph, Russia's democratic facade fades further.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 20, 2024
Putin's win isn't just a sham. It's a danger.
Vladimir Putin can now expect at least another six years in office that would make him Russia’s longest-serving leader since Catherine the Great.
Modern advances in the production of missiles and drones such as those used by the Houthis have democratized extremely powerful weapons that until recently were available only to the richest states.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 13, 2024
The Houthis school the world in asymmetric warfare
Advances in missile and drone production have democratized extremely powerful weapons that until recently were available only to the richest states
Palestinians carry bags of flour they grabbed from an aid truck in mid February near an Israeli checkpoint as Gaza residents face crisis levels of hunger amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 7, 2024
Getting more aid to Gaza shouldn’t be this difficult
Adding avoidable deaths through hunger and disease in Gaza to an already high fatality toll is good for no one but extremists.
Remember, Vladimir Putin ridiculed the idea that he would invade Ukraine, right up until he ordered close to 200,000 troops over the border.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 3, 2024
Would Putin stop if he wins in Ukraine? Let’s not find out.
Just because the Russian leader is a serial liar doesn’t prove he is being untruthful now.
Palestinians help an injured man in the aftermath of an Israeli strike in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Saturday.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 23, 2024
The Gaza war isn't a Holocaust, but it's still a nightmare
There are, sadly, many examples in history of the kind of conflict under way in Gaza, and the Holocaust isn’t one of them.
Alexei Navalny, who Russian authorities say died on Friday, attends a 2019 rally in Moscow with his wife, Yulia Navalnaya (right), in memory of murdered dissident Boris Nemtsov.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 19, 2024
Navalny was too brave to be allowed to live
Alexei Navalny never stopped speaking truth to the powers of Russian despotism. His fearlessness was simply too much for the Kremlin to bear.

Longform

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