Gordon Brown on Covid -19, recession and Trump: ‘When there’s a crisis you have to act qiuckly’
The former PM on his sympathy for Boris Johnson, Keir Starmer’s leadership – and why the US president’s approach to global health is an act of self-harm. From the window of his home study, Gordon Brown looks out across the waters of the Firth of Forth, towards the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle. It is…
The coronavirus butterfly effect: Six predictions for a new world order
In chaos theory, the butterfly effect describes a small change that can have massive, unpredictable consequences. An insect flaps its wings and, weeks later, causes a tornado. The coronavirus is more like an earthquake, with aftershocks that will permanently reshape the world. If we are lucky, the w…
The United Nations goes missing
The coronavirus pandemic should have been a moment for global action. Instead, the U.N. is riven with dissension and self-doubt, and countries are going their own way. It took more than three months, a death toll above 87,000 and cases in more than 180 countries, repeated pleas from smaller nations,…
Saving Europe from corona’s nasty geopolitics
Four months into the corona crisis and one month into the nerve-racking spectacle of social and economic shutdown, it becomes clear that the big geopolitical loser of the pandemic is likely going to be Europe.The reason for this is not primarily the poor performance of EU countries in using integrat…
A Greater Depression?
With the COVID-19 pandemic still spiraling out of control, the best economic outcome that anyone can hope for is a recession deeper than that following the 2008 financial crisis. But given the flailing policy response so far, the chances of a far worse outcome are increasing by the day. NEW YORK – T…
The Pentagon Is Sitting on a Chunk of Valuable Airwaves. Why?
As the Trump administration squares off with China’s Huawei over who will dominate the world’s next generation of wireless networks, another battle is emerging closer to home. And in this one, the force causing the most concern isn’t a shadowy Chinese firm, or even a company at all. It’s the Pentago…
The One War That the Human Species Can’t Lose
Last week, the temperature in Antarctica hit almost seventy degrees—the hottest in recorded history. It wasn’t a one-day fluke. Famed for its snowscapes, the Earth’s coldest, wildest, windiest, highest, and most mysterious continent has been experiencing a heat wave. A few days earlier, an Antarctic…
How the Kushner Peace Plan Overturned Israeli Strategy
The Kushner plan will encourage people, both inside and outside Palestine, to think and act less in terms of two states and more in terms of advocating for the rights of Palestinian Arabs within a binational state. That shift will make it harder than ever to avoid comparisons between the Israeli ver…
Germany Chooses China Over the West
Berlin’s refusal to shut Huawei out of its 5G networks weakens Europe’s prospects of standing up to Beijing. Over U.S. and European Union objections, the German government is poised to put in place newly drafted security requirements that do not set clear limits on the Chinese telecommunic…
Albania gets religion
SKRAPAR, Albania — On a parched day in late August, tens of thousands of Sufi pilgrims wound their way up the dusty, unpaved road to Mount Tomorr, in southern Albania. At the summit, they ritually slaughtered thousands of sheep, lit candles and prayed during a weeklong ceremony to commemorate the 7t…