The butterfly effect teaches us that seemingly insignificant actions can have enormous future consequences. A tiny pair of fluttering wings can disturb the air in a way that helps trigger a hurricane halfway around the world. Witness Syria, where the Arab Spring made its debut in 2011 in the form of a tame wave of … Read more
The United Nations will swear in António Guterres as its ninth secretary-general on Dec. 12, when the organization will be only weeks away from the inauguration of Donald Trump and the potentially most threatening, hostile political opposition to the UN ever assembled in Washington, D.C. The UN will have to be prepared to respond and … Read more
Whatever the real reason that led Donald Trump to name Nikki Haley as his ambassador to the United Nations — that she is a “deal-maker,” a woman from an ethnic minority and a moderate Republican voice he may want to remove from South Carolina — a wave of justifiable pride in many Indians and Indian-Americans … Read more
Recently, I spoke with Jan-Werner Muller, who is currently a fellow at the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna and teaches politics at Princeton University, where he is also the founding director of the History of Political Thought Project. He is the author of several books, including “What Is Populism?,” in which he explores the … Read more
Donald Trump, who has branded himself as the “law and order” candidate, is now the official Republican nominee for president of the United States, commander in chief of the most powerful military in the world and a White House beholding to national and international law and order. But what could a businessman possibly know about … Read more
When the last of President Barack Obama’s four summit meetings on keeping weapons-grade material out of the hands of terrorists and criminals ended on April 1, there were no headline advances to report, as experts were predicting. Instead, Obama took the opportunity at a farewell news conference to count how considerable progress had been made … Read more
SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. — For some Syrian refugees, “home” is no longer the plains of war-torn Syria but the densely populated cities of northern New Jersey. Since January this year, 86 refugees have arrived in the state, according to recent data from the Refugee Processing Center, and they have been resettled primarily in Paterson, Jersey … Read more
