[Lee Edwards] 20 years later, critical lessons from 9/11

It is understandable, given the chaos surrounding the US exit from Afghanistan -- especially the murder of the 13 US troops -- that our attention has been focused on the ending of America’s longest war. The statistics are sobering. Length of the war: 20 years. Total number of US fatalities: 2,461. US wounded: more than 20,000. Afghan fatalities: more than 70,000. Cost of the war: $2.3 trillion. Major goal achieved: The Taliban were removed in late 2001 as the head of the Afghan governmen

Sept. 13, 2021

[Ajmal Ahmady] Economic challenges facing the Taliban

There are optimistic suggestions that the hard-won integration of Afghanistan into the global economy will remain despite the ascendancy of the Taliban and the withdrawal of the US. A number of commentators have suggested that China -- which the Taliban have declared their strongest ally -- could become Afghanistan’s primary economic supporter and help the country stay part of the global system. That analysis is unrealistic. For one, it ignores the sanctions regime imposed by the internat

Sept. 13, 2021

[Digital Simplicity] Is ‘metaverse’ another come-and-go digital meme?

Truck drivers are often blamed for the surging number of people who get transported to another virtual world filled with magicians, knights and demons. I mean, not real truck drivers, but those in fantasy web novels. A typical storyline goes like this: A protagonist is killed by a speeding truck on the road and for some mysterious reason comes to life in a new world that is drastically different from Earth. In the transition period, a mythical god gives superhuman abilities to the characters s

Sept. 11, 2021

[Robert J. Fouser] The post-war-on-terror era begins

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The attacks brought the two 110-story towers down, killing 2,606 people. Another 125 died at the Pentagon, and 265 died on the four airplanes hijacked for the attacks. In response to 9/11, then-President George W. Bush began a “war on terror” to weaken terrorists around the world and prevent future attacks. In October 2001, a US-led coalition invaded Afghanistan to overthr

Sept. 10, 2021

[Bobby Ghosh] Ethiopia’s civil war is a disaster that’s only getting worse

As the world is transfixed by the tragedy playing out in Afghanistan, another humanitarian catastrophe is getting little scrutiny. In Ethiopia, a conflict with roots in a dispute between the central government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and authorities of the northern Tigray region has spilled into neighboring provinces and metastasized into a full-blown civil war -- one fueled as much by ethnic enmities as by political grievances. It’s time for the West to pay attention and get tougher

Sept. 9, 2021

[Kim Myong-sik] Pathetic ulterior motive of ‘fake news’ bill

In 2007, the final year of the Roh Moo-hyun presidency, major government offices literally locked down press rooms in their precincts under an order from the Blue House. The president made the decision out of belief that media representatives were just there to harass officials on duty. Print and broadcast journalists, as well as some internet reporters who were not many at that time, had to rent small spaces near government offices to continue to do their job of reporting what was going on in

Sept. 9, 2021

[Adam Minter] Space junk is now an imminent threat

In March, a Chinese military satellite appeared to spontaneously disintegrate in orbit, leaving a trail of debris high above the Earth. If China knew anything, it wasn’t saying. Did the propulsion system explode? Was there a collision with some of the space junk that’s accumulating in orbit? Or did something a bit more conspiratorial happen? The mystery persisted until last month, when an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics announced the answer. Yunhai 1-02, as the satellite is

Sept. 8, 2021

[Kim Seong-kon] The globalization of Korea and the prefix “K-”

These days, the South Korean government as well as pop culture promotion agencies attach “K-” to virtually everything of Korean origin that is popular overseas, such as K-culture, K-literature, K-pop, K-food, K-cars, K-dramas, K-quarantine and a host of others. Perhaps politicians and promoters want to inspire patriotism and pride by branding all these cultural exports with a “K,” suggesting that whatever raises the profile of Korea overseas is uniquely “Korean.&rdq

Sept. 8, 2021

[Hwang Jae-ho] Strategic perspective over the Afghanistan crisis

The chaotic scenes of Afghanistan women desperately crying out in fear, cheers from Taliban, Kabul airport covered with bloody terror, and President Joe Biden’s frustrated looks. ... With the recent withdrawal of Afghanistan, there has been growing controversy over the credibility and morality of US leadership; over whether “America is Back,” “America can be Back,” or even “America is Willing to be Back’. Criticisms of the Biden administration’s ir

Sept. 8, 2021

[Eric Posner] America’s return to foreign-policy realism

US President Joe Biden’s speech defending the withdrawal from Afghanistan announced a decisive break with a tradition of foreign-policy idealism that began with Woodrow Wilson and reached its apex in the 1990s. While that tradition has often been called “liberal internationalism,” it also was the dominant view on the right by the end of the Cold War. The United States, according to liberal internationalists, should use military force as well as its economic power to compel othe

Sept. 7, 2021

[Noah Feldman] Is the Supreme Court ready to overturn Wade v. Roe?

A day after the Constitution-flouting Texas anti-abortion law went into effect, a divided Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that it won’t block the law before it can grapple with a concrete case that tests it in practice. The five most conservative justices agreed to an unsigned, one-and-a-half-page opinion that said the law might or might not be unconstitutional, but that given its unusual form, which delegates enforcement to private citizens instead of state authorities, it was too legall

Sept. 6, 2021

[Bobby Ghosh] Biden shouldn‘t abandon Iraq too

As Afghans grapple with fear and uncertainty in the wake of the US military pullout from their country, Iraqis are beginning to wonder if it will be their turn next. The Biden administration, doubling and tripling down on the president’s defense of his Afghanistan withdrawal, has been deploying Washington‘s current catchphrase, “forever wars,” as well as invoking old shibboleths about the “national interest.” Pursuing the latter, so the theory goes, requires

Sept. 6, 2021

[Serendipity] Thinking of future in Korea

  A photo of massive, foreboding, rocky mountains, barren except for a few bushes, with a truckload of soldiers carrying rifles is a lasting image I have of Afghanistan. I used the photo, clipped out of Time magazine, I think, to make a scrap book about various countries -- a middle school geography assignment. I don’t remember why I chose Afghanistan, among all the other countries that started with the letter A. Perhaps because this was in the early 1980s and the country was much in

Sept. 3, 2021

[Slawomir Sierakowski] Europe’s new refugee crisis

The humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan has already deepened conflicts elsewhere, including Europe, where a confrontation is escalating between Belarus and its European Union neighbors: Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. Even before the meltdown in Kabul, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had been funneling refugees and migrants across the border, both to exact revenge for EU sanctions on his dictatorship and to generate some additional revenue. Belarusian authorities have organized flights

Sept. 3, 2021

[Lee Kyong-hee] A legendary hero’s return to divided homeland

He was a “flying general,” tactfully eluding and attacking Japanese forces. But to the men under his command, he was “Boss Hong,” a simple expression of their affection and respect for a commander who shared their toils and led them to victory. Despite his remarkable role in armed resistance against Japanese colonizers from the late 19th to the early 20th century, Hong Beom-do became more of an enigma than a hero. The ideological chasm and power struggles between North

Sept. 2, 2021

[Jean Pisani-Ferry] Climate versus capitalism?

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change leaves no doubt: Global warming will continue until at least 2050, even if greenhouse gas emissions are drastically reduced in the coming decades. If they are cut too slowly, the kinds of heat waves, droughts, heavy rains and flooding experienced this summer will become more frequent. More catastrophic outcomes, such as abrupt, irreversible changes in oceanic circulation, cannot be ruled out. Fortunately, the public is increa

Sept. 2, 2021

[William L. Silber] The danger of ‘nothing to lose’

Presidents, generals, dictators and ordinary people take big risks when they have nothing to lose, similar to a football quarterback throwing a so-called Hail Mary pass. But the consequences of such a strategy in politics, war and business are usually more serious than the outcome of a football game. In the Middle East, for example, it has produced continuous conflict because the warring parties feel as though they have nothing to lose. The brokerage firm TD Ameritrade’s annual collegiat

Sept. 1, 2021

[Kim Seong-kon] The Afghan incident and specialists on America

We tend to assume that we know America quite well. Actually, however, we do not. After the recent withdrawal of the US troops from Afghanistan, for example, some Korean opinion leaders wrote that America had been “defeated” in the war in Afghanistan. Yet, that is far from what most Americans think. Even the Taliban would not put it that way. Such an argument derives from misunderstandings about America. Recently, Henry Kissinger wrote about why America “failed” in Afgha

Sept. 1, 2021

[Joseph E. Stiglitz] Getting finance onside for climate

The world has finally awoken to the existential imperative of securing a rapid transition to a green economy. Finance will play a pivotal role in that process. But while financial institutions have made a big show of doing their part -- issuing green bonds and installing green lightbulbs -- far too many continue to provide capital to the fossil-fuel industry and support other parts of the economy that are incompatible with a green transition. Such financing actively fuels the climate crisis. M

Aug. 31, 2021

[Bobby Ghosh] Trusting Taliban to fight IS

Reports from Washington and Kabul show the extent to which the Biden administration has been counting on the Taliban to facilitate the US withdrawal from Afghanistan -- and, apparently, to keep up the fight against IS-Khorasan, the local franchise of the Islamic State group, after the Americans are gone. The White House and Pentagon believe that the new rulers in Kabul share their eagerness for a speedy evacuation: a “common purpose,” in the words of Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, commander

Aug. 30, 2021