J. Devermont, CSIS
The Guinean military's overthrow of President Alpha Condé—an outcome of autocratic overreach, economic mismanagement, and eroding democratic norms—points to the failure of regional bodies and international partners to anticipate and respond to an evolving coup playbook. On September 5, Colonel Mamady Doumbouya ousted the country's civilian leader Alpha Condé, proclaiming that "the duty of a soldier is to save the country."
Dominique Moisi, Worldcrunch
PARIS — "Men make their own history, but they do not make the history they please." Twenty years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, could Karl Marx's old formula help us understand the upheavals that have occurred in the world during the last two decades?
J.D. Tuccille, Reason
People and economies are retreating, or being pushed, back behind restricted frontiers.
Mark Leonard, ECFR
The end of the US-led "forever war" in Afghanistan will not bring peace, because the methods that countries use to attack each other have changed. The world has entered a new age of perpetual competition among powerful states.
Philip Stephens, FT
Germany must shoulder more of the burden of defending an open international system.
Shadi Hamid, Foreign Affairs
In the End, Years of Upheaval Led Only to Despair
David Lepeska, The National
The news last week must have hit Washington's main partner in north-eastern Syria, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), like a punch in the gut: US troops had quietly pulled out of three military bases, including one near the crucial Al Omar oilfield and another near the city of Qamishli.
Asma Khalid, NPR
When President Biden looked into the cameras last week and firmly declared that "the war in Afghanistan is now over," his words were, in his view, the culmination of a central campaign promise.
Garrett Graff, The Atlantic
A mission to rid the world of "terror" and "evil" led the U.S. in tragic directions.
Iain Martin, Times of London
The PM's decision to pay for his social care upheaval with reckless tax rises shows he doesn't understand the economy
C. Raja Mohan, FP
The fall of Kabul may have widened the rift between New Delhi and Moscow.
D.Trenin, V. Ušackas & Graham Stacey, Project Syndicate
Clashing worldviews and the introduction of dangerous new technologies and techniques of asymmetric warfare have made the global security environment increasingly fraught. With the annual season for military exercises now upon us, policymakers must take steps to mitigate the risk of catastrophic accidents or miscalculations.
Tim Brinkhof, Big Think
China's dominance of the rare earth metal industry is part of its overall geopolitical strategy.
Daniel Moss, Bloomberg
If you can tear yourself away from the disappointing U.S. jobs numbers and what that means for the Federal Reserve's prospective reduction in stimulus, signals from China offer an equally sobering view of the global recovery.
Colin Clarke, Politico
Last week, al Qaeda's central media apparatus finally weighed in on the Taliban retaking Afghanistan with a triumphant proclamation: "This victory has demonstrated what the Islamic nation is capable of when it unites, takes up arms, and fights in the Way of Allah to defend its Religion....
Andrew Fischer, CF
Over the past year, government and non-governmental bodies around the world have focused attention on the ethnic demography of China's far-western region of Tibet, often lumping it together with Xinjiang. On April 7, 2021, in its "List of issues in relation to the third periodic report of China," the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights requested that China "provide information on the trend in the demographic composition in the Xinjiang Uighur and Tibet...
Jonah Goldberg, The Dispatch
I got back to the U.S. from my honeymoon on Sept. 10, 2001. My wife went straight home to Washington, D.C., to start her new job at the Justice Department. I went to Washington state, where we'd gotten married, to retrieve our dog Cosmo, whom we'd left with family. I was in a hotel room in Pendleton, Oregon, when I saw the first reports of a plane hitting the World Trade Center. I used something called AOL Instant Messenger to tell my co-workers to turn on the TV.
