The Guardian’s columnist Will Hutton, a declared Keynesian, has expressed his astonishment at the Tory government suddenly abandoning its economic orthodoxy as the appropriate response to the coronavirus pandemic. His readers certainly remember the “Cameron-Osborne austerity” of only a few years ago, when Conservative economists, as they have done for decades, insisted that austerity was […] More
We live in an age of accelerated individualization — or so sociologists and social philosophers like Ulrich Beck have told us for decades. We have accepted it, even if we did not necessarily like it. The citizens of the former Soviet empire were among the first to take note. In East Germany, in Czechoslovakia, in Hungary […] More
As the global COVID-19 pandemic engulfs the world, the grand strategy of revisionist powers will either falter or accelerate. At the dawn of the post-coronavirus world — whenever it might come — the Chinese Communist Party will push forward with its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which will threaten to further marginalize the role of […] More
As the civil war in Syria moves toward an end, it becomes ever more difficult to postpone resolution of the toughest issues. Each actor has different priorities, which are not easy to reconcile. The Syrian regime wants to regain full control of its territory, while Russia and Iran are particularly keen on eliminating the jihadi […] More
Tracing the ever-rising death toll of the COVID-19 outbreak to the exotic meat on sale at a wet market in Wuhan, China, probably feels a bit surreal. If anything, it serves as a sobering reminder of how, in our globalized, interconnected lives, a plate of dubiously sourced food can rapidly lead to packed hospitals, empty […] More
Orhan Cam / Shutterstock Conspiracy theories have a long history, but the actual term “conspiracy theory” emerged much more recently. It was only a few decades ago that the term took on the derogatory connotations it has today, where to call someone a conspiracy theorist functions as an insult. So it may come as no […] More
Pete Buttigieg speaks with members of the media on March 1 in Plains, Georgia. AP Photo/Matt Rourke According to family lore, my father suspected I was gay when I was six because I liked cars with windshield wipers in the rear. (As a shrink, he’s always had a penchant for looking under the hood, so […] More
Other sectors of the world economy may be suffering but the arms industry continues to do a roaring trade, and nowhere more so than in the MENA region. In its annual report released on March 9, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), notes a dramatic increase in weapons exports to a part of the world engaged […] More
