In recent years, we have seen the renewal of a phenomenon that seemed to have passed into history with the end of the Cold War: fierce and potentially violent competition between the most powerful countries on the globe. Yet as dangerous as that competition is in its own right, it is also worsening prospects for solving many of the world’s other problems, from migration to economic crises to climate change.Relations between the great powers -- the US and its allies on the one hand, and revisioni

Viewpoints Nov. 20, 2018

Political revolts around the world have targeted what are widely seen as corrupt and unaccountable political and business elite -- the elite that pursue their own interests globally at the expense of ordinary citizens and regulatory regimes in nation-states. The result has often been the elevation of demagogues stoking xenophobic passions against not only the elite, but minorities and immigrants. Yet one case -- Malaysia -- shows that demagoguery doesn’t have to be the inevitable consequence of

Viewpoints Nov. 19, 2018

The US-China trade war is looking more and more like a cold war. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, crackdown on alleged Chinese theft of American technology, and rhetoric have overturned decades of US foreign policy that had prioritized cooperation. Meanwhile, his counterpart Xi Jinping hasn’t budged on any concessions. China experts worry that relations between the world’s two most important countries have reached a turning point.Trump usually gets the blame (or credit, depending on where you s

Viewpoints Nov. 18, 2018

There’s this new park in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and it’s amazing. I went on a weekday afternoon last month expecting calm and quiet and instead encountered thousands of people, mostly families with kids. It was the first public-school break since the Gathering Place, as the park is called, had opened Sept. 8, and it seemed like everybody in and around Tulsa had decided to check it out.My fellow park visitors, while skewed toward youth, were of many different ages, races, ethnic backgrounds, sizes, hai

Viewpoints Nov. 18, 2018

European Union leaders have long called for the bloc to behave more independently and strengthen its international role. Their failure to build a way to bypass US sanctions on Iran has brutally exposed how far they are from that goal.In September, Federica Mogherini, the EU’s top foreign policy official, announced plans for a special-purpose vehicle to keep some trade with Iran flowing with Europe. The hope was to keep the 2015 Iran nuclear deal alive after it was abandoned by the Trump administ

Viewpoints Nov. 18, 2018

Splitting Amazon’s second headquarters between Queens and the Virginia suburbs of Washington was probably not the best decision from a social perspective. Added traffic will strain already crowded local infrastructure, and New York and Washington are already highly productive cities with thriving technology economies. For the country as a whole, Amazon’s decision represents a missed opportunity.That said, critics of HQ2 go too far when they paint the investment as a disaster for local residents.

Viewpoints Nov. 15, 2018

People have been imagining driverless cars since at least 1958, when Walt Disney Co. aired “Magic Highway U.S.A.” It’s been almost five decades, and we’re still talking about them.Initially, evolution in transport had been a product of necessity: As we moved from horse-drawn carriages to horseless ones, from steam engines to internal combustion, each development improved distance and speed. Then came luxuries like comfort and fuel-efficiency.Driverless cars could become more convenient than conv

Viewpoints Nov. 13, 2018

A hundred years ago today, at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the First World War in Europe ended. It had cost tens of millions of lives, utterly destroyed the existing political order, and paved the way for the rise of fascism and a repeat performance of global conflict in the form of World War II. Barbara Tuchman, in her peerless book on the outbreak of the war, “The Guns of August,” said, “Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.” In the

Viewpoints Nov. 13, 2018

The US government is divided once again. Democrats have the House of Representatives, while Republicans still hold the presidency and have deepened their control over the Senate. This means actual legislative breakthroughs are likely to be few and far between. But that doesn’t mean it’s useless to think about policy -- on the contrary, now is a perfect time for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to lay out their big ideas, as a way of inspiring the country to think about the future. Here’s a b

Viewpoints Nov. 12, 2018