Authoritarian movements are rising in democracies around the world, in ways not seen since the 1930s. And contrary to the title of a famous dystopian novel from that era, it can happen here. In lots of small ways, it’s already happening. In Missouri, one state official is trying to dictate what library patrons can read, while another is demanding to see journalists’ emails. In Florida, people ar...

Over the eight months since Russia invaded Ukraine, public support for US military aid to Kyiv has been remarkably solid and mostly bipartisan. A large majority of Americans (73 percent in a Reuters/Ipsos survey this month) favor continued help for Ukraine, and Congress, with support from both parties, has approved more than $65 billion in aid. But cracks in the consensus have begun to appear, ...

The 2022 US midterm elections are just around the corner. The outcome of the election on November 8 is crucial for both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party because it will heavily influence the next presidential election in 2024. Therefore, election campaigns are rampant these days. On their front yard lawn, homeowners set up pickets bearing the names of senators and representatives the...

High inflation, rising interest rates, falling currencies and volatile energy prices, together with an economic slowdown and post-pandemic budget woes, may increase pressure on the ASEAN+3 -- the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, together with China, Japan and South Korea -- to scale back efforts to mitigate climate risk. While this policy shift may make fiscal sense, it i...

American voters seem poised to hand the Republican Party control of the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate as well, in November’s midterm elections. The same goes for many state races, where polls show Republicans gaining ground. Such an outcome could have profound consequences for American democracy, especially if it results in even greater degradation of the US electoral system....

What if the way to break through our polarized politics was to reward those willing to cross the partisan divide for the greater good? America is mired in a dysfunctional stew of hyper-partisanship. Too many view members of the opposing political party as enemies and not fellow Americans. Not to mention this environment can make it difficult to govern. A multitude of books have been written abou...

The war in Ukraine and the global cost-of-living crisis are hitting Latin America and the Caribbean hard. Growth in the region, which rebounded impressively from COVID-19 to reach an average rate of 6.8 percent in 2021, will fall to just 1.8 percent this year, with crippling effects on the most vulnerable people. Compared to 2021, Latin America’s poverty rate will increase by 0.9 percentage point...

“On the morning of the 26th, the temperature in Harbin dropped below zero and it snowed lightly. Ahn Jung-geun changed into new clothes and headed to Harbin Station. He took a seat in a tearoom on the second floor of the third-class lounge and ordered tea. Russian military police officers stood guard outside, while foot patrol officers made their rounds with resounding footsteps.” This is Kim Ho...

The world might not want to hear it, but Kim Jong-un might be right. “There will never be such a thing as our abandonment of the nuclear weapons or denuclearization,” Kim declared last month. “The position of our state as a nuclear nation has become irreversible.” Decades of pursuing the “denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula has failed. After North Korea last month declared itself a nuclea...

Due to cultural differences or a lack of foreign language proficiency, we are prone to misunderstanding others or making mistakes despite our good intentions. Such a tendency may result in awkward situations, and yet we should try to understand each other. Recently, for example, many Koreans were upset about the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which grants benefits to electric ca...

President Joe Biden and his designated message-deliverers just got some crucial, last-minute insights -- from a most unlikely source -- Wednesday night. It made clear how they should be talking about the only issue that almost half of Americans say they really care about in this all-over-the-lot midterm campaign. Yep, we are talking today about the issue you assumed Democratic strategist James C...

Last July, in the middle of Gangnam, a posh district in Seoul well known for the global hit K-pop song “Gangnam Style,” a man in his 20s, who took methamphetamine at a drinking party, died in a car accident on his way home. Police found 64 grams of methamphetamine in his vehicle. Recently, a smuggler carrying illegal drugs to South Korea in his stomach died after packets of drugs burst inside hi...

Put aside, if you can, the growing anxiety about Russian President Vladimir Putin going nuclear in his barbaric war against Ukraine. Even if he doesn’t -- and the risk, though real, remains small -- he’s already brought the whole world closer to atomic disaster occurring at some point. That’s because Putin, with his repeated threats to drop nukes on Ukraine or other European countries, has in ef...