Politics
Pakistan Thought It Had Contained the Taliban Insurgency. Peshawar Suggests the Problem Was Never Really Gone.
On Monday morning, hundreds of people gathered for prayers inside a mosque in Peshawar’s Police Lines compound. The location should have been among the more secure places in the city. Police Lines contains police headquarters…
India Blocked a BBC Documentary About Modi. The Argument Is Now About More Than the Documentary.
The BBC’s two-part documentary India: The Modi Question examines Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s political career, particularly his tenure as chief minister of Gujarat during the communal violence of 2002, when more than a thousand people…
Jacinda Ardern Is Resigning. Perhaps Knowing When to Leave Is Part of Governing Well.
Jacinda Ardern announced on Thursday that she will resign as prime minister of New Zealand after more than five years in office. Her explanation was unusually personal. She said that leading a country requires having…
Netanyahu Won an Election. How Much Power Should Winning Actually Give Him?
Israel held its fifth election in less than four years last November. Benjamin Netanyahu succeeded where several previous governments had failed: he assembled a parliamentary majority. His coalition controls 64 of the Knesset’s 120 seats,…
One Week After Lula Took Office, Bolsonaro Supporters Stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and Presidential Palace.
Exactly one week ago, I wrote that Brazil’s institutions had successfully transferred power from Jair Bolsonaro to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva without requiring Bolsonaro’s personal approval. Lula had won the election, the result had…
Lula Is President Again. Brazil’s Institutions Did Not Need Bolsonaro’s Permission.
Twenty years after first entering the presidency, twelve years after leaving it, and after a political journey that included corruption investigations, imprisonment, the annulment of his convictions and an extraordinary return to electoral politics, Lula…
The Taliban Has Banned Women From University. This Is Not Only a Human-Rights Disaster. It Is a Strategy for Power.
On Tuesday, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Higher Education instructed every public and private university in the country to suspend education for female students until further notice. The order was effective immediately. By Wednesday morning, women arriving…
Peru Stopped Castillo’s Attempt to Break the Constitution. That Does Not Give the New Government Unlimited Power to Defend It.
Last week, I argued that Peru’s institutions were right to stop Pedro Castillo when he attempted to dissolve Congress and govern by decree. A democratically elected president does not acquire the right to destroy constitutional…
Pedro Castillo Was Democratically Elected. That Did Not Give Him the Right to Dissolve Democracy.
Peru had a president on Wednesday morning. By Wednesday evening, that president had attempted to dissolve Congress, been impeached, arrested and replaced by his vice-president. The speed of the collapse makes the sequence almost difficult…
China’s Blank Sheets of Paper May Be Saying Something More Important Than Any Slogan Could.
Protesters in Shanghai, Beijing and other Chinese cities held up blank sheets of white paper. There was no printed manifesto, party logo or political programme. The emptiness was the message. In a country where criticism…
Anwar Ibrahim Finally Became Malaysia’s Prime Minister. His Hardest Compromise Came After He Won.
Anwar Ibrahim has spent almost a quarter of a century moving between the centre of Malaysian power and its political margins. He served as deputy prime minister during the 1990s, appeared positioned to succeed Mahathir…
Rich Countries Have Finally Accepted the Principle of Paying for Climate Damage. Now Comes the Difficult Part.
After negotiations extending beyond the conference’s scheduled conclusion, governments at COP27 in Egypt reached an agreement early today that developing countries have demanded for decades: the creation of a dedicated fund to address loss and…
