[Cory Franklin] High COVID-19 death rate in US

Following his recent retirement, Dr. Anthony Fauci reflected on his government role during the COVID-19 pandemic. When asked about the high per capita COVID-19 death rate in the US, Fauci replied, “Something clearly went wrong. And I don’t know exactly what it was. But the reason we know it went wrong is that we are the richest country in the world, and on a per capita basis we’ve done worse than virtually all other countries. And there’s no reason that a rich country lik

May 17, 2023

[Daniel DePetris] US still very much at war on terrorism

At a time when the Biden administration has its hands full trying to reverse Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and manage a US-China relationship stuck in the doldrums, America’s vast, lethal counterterrorism machine continues to be in high gear. The US intelligence community, in close partnership with America’s special operators, are tracking and hunting down terrorists in several countries -- Syria and Somalia, most especially -- with such regularity that it barely makes a dent in

May 16, 2023

[Lisa Jarvis] Isolation is as harmful as smoking

Your doctor’s orders for staying healthy might include a daily routine of eating your broccoli, going to the gym and getting a good night’s sleep. Now, the US surgeon general would like to add another action item to the list: Reach out to a friend. In a new report, Vivek Murthy says that the US is experiencing an epidemic of loneliness and isolation that can be as harmful to our health as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Murthy also offers practical fixes: public policies and spac

May 16, 2023

[Ana Palacio] A BRICS revival?

There was a time when everyone was talking about a group of fast-growing emerging economies with huge potential. But the BRICS -- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- struggled to transform themselves from a promising asset class into a unified group of real-world diplomatic and financial players. Is this finally changing? The story of the BRICS begins with a November 2001 paper by Jim O’Neill, then the head of global economic research at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, called

May 15, 2023

[Mark Z. Barabak] Will Trump pay a political price?

There is a long list of descriptors used to identify Donald Trump: real estate magnate, reality TV star, former president, insurrectionist, criminally indicted payer of hush money. As of Tuesday, a new particularly incriminating label can be added: sexual assailant. Even so, the determination of a civil jury -- that Trump physically brutalized writer E. Jean Carroll -- seems unlikely to make much difference to his unshakable political base or, for now, change the fundamental dynamics of the 202

May 12, 2023

[Lee Kyong-hee] History matters in Korea-US-Japan relations

On the cusp of World War II, Syngman Rhee warned Americans about Imperial Japan’s expansionist ambitions. “To review the past is to preview the future,” wrote the future president of Korea in his 1941 book, “Japan Inside out: The Challenge of Today.” Months after the book’s release, Japanese planes bombed US naval ships at Pearl Harbor. This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Korea-US alliance and mutual defense treaty, hailed as a historic success. Yet, t

May 11, 2023

[Doyle McManus] Concerns grow about US debt ceiling

It's time to start worrying about the debt ceiling. The US federal government is careening toward its borrowing credit limit, beyond which the Treasury won't be able to pay all its bills. The consequences could be truly catastrophic -- a global financial crash -- or merely damaging: a jump in interest rates, a plummeting stock market and a more likely recession. Last week, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said the "X Date," the day the money runs out, could arrive as soon a

May 11, 2023

[Kim Seong-kon] From Hallyu fans to Korean studies specialists

The other day, I passed by a Books-A-Million store near my house in rural New England. Otherwise known as “BAM!,” this big store is a typical pop culture emporium that sells books, DVDs, movies and toys. Normally I would walk by without a second thought, but I saw something that intrigued me, a big poster hanging on the front window that said, “K-Pop Available Here.” The poster got me so curious that I decided to drop in to see what they had. Inside, I found another large

May 10, 2023

[Antara Haldar] The price of sweatshop development

It has been ten years since an eight-story commercial building housing several textile factories on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, collapsed on April 24, 2013. The collapse of Rana Plaza claimed the lives of 1,134 people and severely injured 2,000 more, most of them women. It was the deadliest industrial disaster since the 1984 gas leak that killed more than 3,000 people in Bhopal, India, and the worst accident in the modern history of the textile industry. Thousands of workers were trapped

May 10, 2023

[Faye Flam] AI helps us read minds, but should we?

Since mind reading has only existed in the realms of fantasy and fiction, it seems fair to apply the phrase to a system that uses brain scan data to decipher stories that a person has read, heard, or even just imagined. It’s the latest in a series of spooky linguistic feats fueled by artificial intelligence, and it’s left people wondering what kinds of nefarious uses humanity will find for such advances. Even the lead researcher on the project, computational neuroscientist Alexander

May 9, 2023

[Jonathan Bernstein] Why US elections are more democratic

Colin Allred, a former NFL player now in his third term in the US House, plans to give up a safe Texas seat to take on Ted Cruz for the US Senate in 2024. He is probably Democrats’ best hope to challenge the Republican incumbent. While his bid, announced Wednesday, is a long shot, Allred’s candidacy is proof that the torrent of money involved in political campaigns, and specifically the huge number of small-scale donations, has been a boon for American democracy. A lot of people hav

May 9, 2023

[Nicholas Goldberg] Trump‘s up in the polls. How can that be?

I guess it’s possible that Republicans really don’t care about Donald Trump’s run-ins with the law. Maybe, despite the numerous allegations, investigations and charges against him -- for rape, for defamation, for seeking to subvert the 2020 election, for his role in the Jan. 6 assault, for falsifying records about hush money payments -- he will maintain his position as the front-running GOP candidate and once again persuade his tens of millions of zealous supporters to vote for

May 8, 2023

[Tom Ginsburg] Charles' realm will not disappear

As Britain’s King Charles III is officially coronated, the “empire on which the sun never set” is looking a little shabby. In addition to the United Kingdom, 14 former British colonies still maintain Charles as their monarch and head of state, but many of his subjects around the world are reconsidering the arrangement. Barbados became a republic in 2021, and Jamaica has initiated a similar process of constitutional reform. Others might soon follow. Why should countries from Bel

May 8, 2023

[Robert J. Fouser] Problems with the ‘Pax Americana’ revival

President Yoon Suk-yeol charmed Washington last week on his first state visit to the US. His speech before a joint session of Congress was received warmly and his rendition of “American Pie” was the highlight of a lavish state dinner. He relished the hospitality, much as President Joe Biden did on a visit to Ireland in mid-April. The visit will be remembered, however, as a turning point, not in relations between South Korea and the US but in relations between South Korea and China. P

May 5, 2023

[Wang Son-taek] The secret to success following the Korea-US summit

President Yoon Suk Yeol returned to Seoul after a state visit to the US. As the visit is of national interest, it is natural to see many assessments and debates on whether the summit was successful. However, there are concerning elements in the discussions. The evaluations are sharply divided according to the political camps, becoming the subject of political struggle and causing the whole country to be cut in two. However, applying such tribalism to the outcome of the President's foreign

May 4, 2023

[Noah Feldman] Kids have free speech rights too

The new bipartisan bill to limit kids’ access to social media will no doubt appeal to many parents. The trouble is that, under existing First Amendment doctrine, the proposed law is almost certainly unconstitutional. For the Supreme Court to uphold it would require it to repudiate a 2011 precedent, Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, which struck down a California ban on selling or renting violent video games to minors. The proposed legislation, named the Protecting Kids on Soc

May 4, 2023

[Jean Pisani-Ferry] Economic threat of geopolitical primacy

In recent weeks, there has been no shortage of speeches by prominent leaders discussing their countries’ relationships with China and the potential economic fallout of geopolitical fragmentation. This is a welcome, if much-belated, discussion. But it must address a fundamental question: Can rivalry and economic integration coexist and, if so, under which terms? The answer will determine the fate of the global economy. In February 2020, Jennifer Harris and Jake Sullivan published an article

May 3, 2023

[Faye Flam] Threat from Pacific garbage patch

The infamous Pacific garbage patch is changing the balance of life in the seas. At least 37 species of coastal creatures -- worms, crabs, shellfish and the like -- have colonized the Texas-sized plastic tangle, turning it into an unnatural floating habitat. The findings, reported in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, show life’s tenacity, with a variety of castaway creatures treating our trash as their own Noah’s Ark. But it’s not something to celebrate. It should be a

May 2, 2023

[J. Bradford DeLong] Neoliberalism’s final stronghold

The past decade has not been kind to neoliberalism. With 40 years of deregulation, financialization, and globalization having failed to deliver prosperity for anyone but the rich, the United States and other Western liberal democracies have seemingly moved on from the neoliberal experiment and re-embraced industrial policy. But the economic paradigm that underpinned Thatcherism, Reaganomics and the Washington Consensus is alive and well in at least one place: the pages of the Economist. A re

May 1, 2023

[Joseph E. Stiglitz] How the US Fed undermined its own credibility

The aftershocks of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, while seemingly fading, are still reverberating around the world. Although Federal Reserve officials have taken pains to assure the public that the US banking system is sound, it is unclear why anyone should believe them. After all, Fed Chair Jerome Powell told the US Congress the same thing just days before SVB’s collapse in March. In the weeks since then, it was reported that the vaunted stress tests established by the 2010 Dodd-Fr

May 1, 2023