[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

[Christopher Cokinos] Root for SpaceX’s Starship rocket

Elon Musk is the most morally dubious rocket pioneer since Wernher von Braun. And the most successful. With each, we can critique faults and celebrate achievements. Von Braun, who supervised the V-2 weapon program for the Third Reich and once calculated the number of slave laborers needed for more efficient production of the system, went on to supervise America’s Saturn V moon rocket. The latter was laudable. The former probably would have led to Von Braun’s arrest by the Allies had

April 28, 2023

[Lee Kyong-hee] Take heed of North Korea’s food insecurity

North Korea is no stranger to chronic food shortages. For the past 17 consecutive years the UN Food and Agriculture Organization has placed the North on its list of countries in need of external assistance. The FAO’s latest quarterly review, “Crop Prospects and Food Situation,” issued last month, says, “A large portion of the population suffers from low levels of food consumption and poor dietary diversity. The food security situation is expected to remain fragile, given

April 27, 2023

[Kim Seong-kon] What to expect from the Korea-US summit meeting

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the South Korea-US alliance. To commemorate the invaluable friendship of these two countries, US President Joe Biden will host a state visit of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday. As international crises have loomed here and there and disrupted world peace lately, this upcoming summit in Washington is certainly very timely. In the past, when South Korea was underdeveloped and weak, it was almost the sole beneficiary of the Mutual Defense T

April 26, 2023

[Scott Moore, Derek Scissors] China may be just running in place

Something about China encourages grandiose predictions. Just a few years ago, the US Intelligence Community forecast China would emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic economically and politically stronger than the United States. Now a popular view in Washington is that China will soon pass its economic and military peak, and the US will confront a declining power willing to take desperate measures, especially in the event of a confrontation over Taiwan. Beijing’s military exercises following T

April 26, 2023

[Contribution] From Tesla to Rimac -- a highway to EV mobility

Following its energy transition strategy, the European Union has announced that the production of petrol cars within the EU market will be halted after 2035, as confirmed by the European Parliament last week. Overall adherence to this goal among EU member states has thus far been encouraging. In 2021, 19 percent of all newly registered passenger vehicles in the EU were electric, with more than 1.2 million EV cars sold. In some countries, such as Norway, 75 percent of all newly registered cars we

April 25, 2023

Ukraine hopes for S. Korean arms in fight against Russia

Ukraine is hoping for South Korea's defense support in its fight against Russia, said the Ukrainian Embassy in Seoul on Monday. The comments came after President Yoon Suk Yeol said that South Korea could provide aid beyond humanitarian or financial support if Ukraine comes under large-scale attacks against civilians in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday. Korea can support Ukraine by providing state-of-the-art Korean-made defense equipment, said the embassy. "The continuation of tim

April 25, 2023

[Stephen L. Carter] The costs of pandering to the crowd

I’m not surprised that Fox News settled the Dominion defamation lawsuit, though like everyone else I’m taken aback by the amount. My suspicion is that the decision to drop the defense stemmed less from a fear of the jury verdict -- which might have been much lower -- than from the reputational toll a trial would have caused. And if there’s a lesson here, it’s not so much about Fox News as such but about the growing costs of pandering to your audience. If you’re r

April 25, 2023

[Andreas Kluth] How NATO should deter Vladimir Putin's Russia

Come July, NATO allies will gather in Vilnius for their second summit since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his genocidal war of aggression against Ukraine. There’ll be 31 of them this time, after Finland joined the club in direct response to Putin’s bellicosity. What should they decide? One way or another, every discussion will touch on Putin. The neo-Tsarist, imperialist, irredentist and atavistic threat he represents menaces not only non-NATO countries such as Ukraine or

April 25, 2023

[Ana Palacio] Urgent for US to restore its position in Middle East

Perhaps no image better captures the shifting dynamics in the Middle East than that of Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s security council, and Musaad bin Mohammed Al Aiban, Saudi Arabia’s minister of state, shaking hands in Beijing, with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, smiling between them. The officials were celebrating a China-mediated deal restoring diplomatic ties between the two rivals. In the process, China solidified its reputation as a global powerbroker and under

April 24, 2023

[Robert J. Fouser] Leaked US documents offer insight

The recent leak of classified US intelligence documents shocked the military and diplomatic establishment in Washington. On April 13, the FBI arrested Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, who leaked the documents in a Discord chat room. Investigations are continuing into how a low-ranking national guardsman had access to the documents and how accessible such information should be moving forward. The leaked documents showed that the US was spying on many co

April 21, 2023

[Wang Son-taek] Teixeira case and political correctness

The leak of classified documents from the Pentagon is a global concern. As a Korean citizen whose country has been bugged by the United States, it is a very unpleasant incident. However, as a member of a global village, the incident has an interesting element as the motivation behind the leak is so absurd. In the process of talking to buddies in an internet chat room, Airman Jack Teixeira leaked national secrets to show off. In the past, leaks of confidential information were usually a campaign

April 20, 2023

[Lynn Schmidt] Find me an Abraham Lasso

What America needs now is a combination of a modern-day Abraham Lincoln and a real-life Ted Lasso. A leader who will inspire all of us, remind us of the better angels of our nature and who believes in what we can become. Most Americans are unhappy with the direction of the country. In an NBC poll from January, 71 percent of respondents said the country is headed in the wrong direction. It was the eighth time in the last nine NBC News surveys since October 2021 when the wrong-track response has b

April 20, 2023

[Kim Seong-kon] Hidden meanings behind nursery rhymes

Children grow up hearing and singing nursery rhymes. Experts say that many nursery rhymes have a secret meaning, such as a parody of our everyday lives or a satire of historical events. Children may sing nursery rhymes merrily, but some would give them a chill if they knew the origin of the song. We can find a host of internet websites about secret meanings behind English nursery rhymes. For example, “Ring Around the Rosie” is a cheerful song that children sing in a circle before the

April 19, 2023

[Gernot Wagner] Will banking busts hurt clean tech?

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank last month seemed to bode ill for the global clean-energy race. Just as recently enacted US investment packages and the rest of President Joe Biden’s climate dreams were about to take off, the high-tech start-up sector’s bank of choice went bust, and commentators are warning of a looming slowdown in “the transition to clean energy.” Yet, rather than hampering the clean-energy race, this episode should be a teachable moment. Yes, the ini

April 19, 2023

French Navy frigate Prairial in Korea

French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Catherine Colonna reiterates French government priorities and solidarity with Korea during a reception aboard Prairial, the French Navy's Floreal-class frigate docked in Incheon on Saturday. The Floreal-class frigate is the French Navy's light surveillance warship, designed after the end of the Cold War in 1989.

April 18, 2023

[Hal Brands] What went wrong in the Afghan pullout?

This month marks two years since President Joe Biden ordered the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, bringing America’s two-decade war there to an end. One might hope that Washington would be engaged in a searching debate about what went wrong in that conflict. So far, alas, it’s not clear that hindsight is making America much wiser. See, most recently, the Biden administration’s “after action review” of the US withdrawal. That document is not an objective ass

April 18, 2023

[Frank Shyong] Taiwanese Americans' lingering dread

As a Taiwanese American, I'm filled with anxiety and dread every time I see Taiwan in the headlines. It's not just that the news is never good for the small island nation that China claims as its own territory, where most of my family still lives. It's also because the issue is so politically tortuous that even smart, well-intentioned people have trouble following the conflict's twists and turns, ongoing for more than half a century. Most recently, when Taiwan President Tsai

April 18, 2023