Aaron David Miller, CNN
(CNN)Aaron Sorkin, the creator of the hit TV series The West Wing, once described the White House as the world's greatest home court advantage. And President Joe Biden...
Henry Nau, Providence
The lesson many draw from the debacle in Afghanistan is no more nation-building. But you can't ignore nation-building because military threats to the United States originate in one of two places—unstable or failed states and aggressive totalitarian societies. No democracy threatens the United States today. That fact alone suggests that the type of domestic regime matters greatly in the calculus of America's national interests.
Sergei Guriev, Russia Matters
Thirty years after the failed August 1991 coup in the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the country four months later, it is hard to avoid asking: What led to the demise of that superpower and are the same factors relevant for its successor, today's Russia? The final years of the USSR have been the subject of many studies, including post-Soviet reformer Yegor Gaidar's "Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia." Five years ago, Russia Matters'...
Rainer Zitelmann, TNI
Currently, the leading polls are all pointing toward a coalition of the SPD, the environmentalist Green Party, and the leftist Die Linke. Until just a few years ago, the SPD had always ruled out coalitions with Die Linke at the federal level because the hard-left party was too radical, but things have changed.
Jen Kirby, Vox
How the US's Afghanistan withdrawal echoed overseas.
Vicente Olaya, El Pais
The Elda Museum in Alicante is exhibiting a newly restored chandelier-style lantern from the 1st century A.D., which features 32 points of light
Ben Caspit, Al-Monitor
How did last week's effort to turn US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett into BFFs turn out? Are the 78-year-old American president and 49-year-old Israeli premier now bros? Was their first White House meeting Aug. 27 the start of the proverbial beautiful friendship? Will the chemistry between them pave the way for an intimate, trusting relationship totally contrary to relations between the Democrats and former...
R. Zaretsky, F'ward
France being France, literature is often the continuation of politics by other means. That is the case this year, with the two rentrées merging in the person who has come to be known, at least on this side of the Atlantic, as the French Tucker Carlson: Éric Zemmour. In mid-September, Zemmour's new book "La France n'a pas dit son dernier mot" ("France Has Not Had Its Final Word") will come out. By then, and not unrelatedly, he may come out as a candidate for next year's presidential election. Читать дальше...
Armin Rosen, Tablet
Tiny armies march across the sands beside the Hargeisa-Berbera highway. The road is being freshly tarmacked, and over the summer it grew almost by the day. When traffic stalled around the construction roadblocks, a stationary glance at the bordering wilderness revealed the stuff of hallucination: a horizon of ravening specks, an invasion force of grasshoppers, off to feed on what remained of the desert's vegetation.
Ronald Inglehart, Foreign Affairs
A dozen years ago, my colleague Pippa Norris and I analyzed data on religious trends in 49 countries, including a few subnational territories such as Northern Ireland, from which survey evidence was available from 1981 to 2007 (these countries contained 60 percent of the world's population). We did not find a universal resurgence of religion, despite claims to that effect—most high-income countries became less...
Atlantic Council
The final US troops departed Afghanistan on Monday shortly before midnight local time, ceding the country to Taliban control ahead of US President Joe Biden's August 31 deadline—and nearly twenty years after the United States first invaded the country.
Dominic Tierney, Big Think
Paradoxically, we lose wars because the world is peaceful and the U.S. is powerful.
Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic
Social codes are changing, in many ways for the better. But for those whose behavior doesn't adapt fast enough to the new norms, judgment can be swift—and merciless.
Vladislav Davidzon, Foreign Policy
The White House meeting is a chance to repair a damaged relationship.
