By Jeffrey D. Sachs NEW YORK – The year 2020 was a harrowing one, with the COVID-19 pandemic, worldwide economic reversals, widespread climate-related disasters, pervasive social unrest, and even US President Donald Trump’s phony claims about massive electoral fraud and calls among his backers for martial law.
By Shlomo Ben-Ami TEL AVIV – When the struggling street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, on December 17, 2010, he could not possibly have imagined how consequential his desperate protest would be.
By Jorge G. Castañeda MEXICO CITY – US President-elect Joe Biden made a “return to normalcy” one of his election campaign’s leitmotifs.
By Joseph S. Nye CAMBRIDGE – Friends and allies have come to distrust the United States.
By Chris Patten LONDON – The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in the 1970s was a product of the Cold War standoff between the liberal democratic West and the communist Soviet bloc.
By Paola Subacchi LONDON – A global collapse in economic activity during the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly increased the risk of debt distress in many countries, pushing the poorest ones to the brink.
By Shlomo Ben-Ami TEL AVIV – In less than four years, outgoing US President Donald Trump has achieved what, historically, only devastating wars had done: recast the global order.
By Laurence Tubiana PARIS – In the space of just a week during this year’s United Nations General Assembly, representatives of the world’s largest single market and the world’s second-largest economy each laid their climate cards on the table.
By Dani Rodrik CAMBRIDGE – As Joe Biden eked out a victory in the US presidential election after a few suspenseful days, observers of American democracy were left scratching their heads.
By Shashi Tharoor NEW DELHI – Beyond the major headlines surrounding the US presidential election, a little-noticed development is attracting attention both in India and among American campaign strategists.
SAN DIEGO – It is hard to imagine more devastating effects of climate change than the fires that have been raging in California, Oregon, and Washington, or the procession of hurricanes that have approached – and, at times, ravaged – the Gulf Coast.
By Marta Valiñas, Francisco Cox Vial, and Paul Seils NEW YORK – In September 2019, the United Nations Human Rights Council mandated us to investigate alleged human-rights violations in Venezuela – specifically, extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions and torture, and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.
By Chris Patten LONDON – When I was governor of Hong Kong, one of my noisiest critics was Sir Percy Cradock, a former British ambassador to China.
SÃO PAULO/GENT– When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Brazil’s economy, the country’s per capita income was already in steady decline.
By Muhammed Magassy BANJUL – Africa is becoming a new COVID-19 epicentre.
WASHINGTON, DC – After months of downplaying the severity of COVID-19, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has contracted it.
By William A. Haseltine CAMBRIDGE – I was recently stunned to learn of the serious consideration being given to deliberately infecting human volunteers with the SARS-CoV-2 virus in order to assess the effectiveness of potential COVID-19 vaccines.
By Jeffrey Sommers MILWAUKEE – George Floyd’s death at the hands – and under the knee – of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has triggered a wave of peaceful protests and violent rioting in most major cities across the United States.
By Simon Johnson, Galit Alter, Tess Cameron, and Michael Mina Simon Johnson is co-chair of the COVID-19 Policy Alliance and a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
By Shlomo Ben-Ami TEL AVIV – The COVID-19 crisis has become the latest front in the escalating clash of ideologies that has become a central feature of geopolitics in recent years.
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