The End of Europe’s Chinese Dream
BERLIN – A paradigm shift is taking place in relations between the European Union and China. The COVID-19 crisis has triggered a new debate within Europe about the need for greater supply-chain…
Project Syndicate
New Zealand’s Loss of Innocence
WELLINGTON – After the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, Le Monde famously proclaimed that “Today, we are all Americans.” In the wake of the horrors in Christchurch, New Zealand, we must…
Brexit Demands a New British Politics
BRUSSELS – The populist revolts in the United States and the United Kingdom have each reached a critical juncture. At the start of his third year in office, US President Donald Trump…
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights at 70
LONDON – Seven decades after its adoption, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) remains a beacon of hope for the world, sending out an unequivocal message that an injustice anywhere is…
Mark Zuckerberg Has Lost Control of Facebook
BRUSSELS – When Mark Zuckerberg, the chairman, CEO, and co-founder of Facebook, appeared before the European Parliament in May, I suggested to him that he had lost control of his company. As one of…
The Disruptive Power of Ethnic Nationalism
TEL AVIV – This summer, Israel passed a controversial new “nation-state law” that asserted that “the right [to exercise] national self-determination” is “unique to the Jewish people” and established Hebrew as Israel’s…
The New Disappeared
NEW YORK – From the military juntas that ruled Argentina and Chile in the 1970s and 1980s to Joseph Stalin’s iron-fisted regime in the Soviet Union, dictatorships have a long history of…
Present at the Destruction
NEW YORK – At the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly this month, there was a widespread sense of foreboding among world leaders. The anxiety went beyond standard concerns about…
Kofi Annan’s Achievement
CANBERRA – Kofi Annan deserves to be remembered as a near-exemplary United Nations secretary-general (SG). Great chief executives need a guiding vision for the exercise of authority, and all the more so…
Tech vs. Democracy
BRUSSELS – Instagram, a photo-sharing platform owned by Facebook, recently caved in to a demand by the Russian government that it remove posts by opposition leader Alexey Navalny alleging misconduct on the…
Making Journalism Great Again
OXFORD – In the debate over the future of journalism, “fake news” has taken center stage, with storylines featuring a ranting American president, Russian communication “bots,” and betrayal and subterfuge competing for…
A Federal Spain in a Federal Europe
BRUSSELS – I have always been a profound admirer of Spanish democracy, but especially since February 23, 1981. On that dramatic day, Colonel Antonio Tejero attempted a coup d’état against the young…
Counting What Counts in Development
NEW YORK – To most people, “development” is best measured by the quantity of change – like gains in average income, life expectancy, or years spent in school. The Human Development Index (HDI), a composite measure…
Urbanisation 2.0
CHICAGO – We are now in the final days of the industrial age. Just as the second generation of steam engines propelled the Industrial Revolution forward, so, too, are new technologies advancing…
The Macron Method
LONDON – Emmanuel Macron’s election to the French presidency provides the European Union with an opportunity to move past the internal conflicts that have hastened its disintegration. Rather than standing exclusively with…