If Joe Biden enters the White House on the afternoon of Jan. 20, there is reason to expect that intraparty conflicts will come racing to the fore: between the Democratic left and Democratic moderates; between multicultural, debt-laden youth and Whiter, more affluent, suburbanites; between the alternate Sanders/AOC ticket and the actual Biden/Harris ticket. It’s also possible that Biden might succeed in having an awful lot of his political cake and eating it, too. US politics has changed

There are a myriad of enigmatic things happening in Korea these days, whether in the North or the South. For example, North Korea confuses us by showing us a friendly gesture recently, while displaying deadly weapons that can strike the South in a military parade. In South Korea, too, we are witnessing a plethora of sphinxlike things of late One of the inscrutable things in South Korea is the recent tendency of political parties to change their names continually. In fact, this phenomenon of pol

Kastellorizo is one of those places that might become a cause for war even though most people couldn’t find it on a map. The combatants would be Greece and Turkey, formally NATO “allies” but in reality perennial foes since the sloppy unraveling of the Ottoman Empire. And their war would be less about the island as such than about the Mediterranean waters said to belong to it. That’s because underneath the sea bed, there may be lots of oil and gas. Kastellorizo derives

  For governments facing a growing wave of coronavirus cases as fall turns to winter, there’s a stark lesson in Saturday’s stunning election victory for New Zealand’s incumbent Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern: Voters really want their governments to suppress the pandemic. A landslide victory means Ardern could govern with the first outright majority since her country adopted proportional representation in the 1990s, with her Labour party on track to win the largest share of

India’s COVID-19 economic gloom turned into despair last week, on news that its per capita gross domestic product may be lower for 2020 than in neighboring Bangladesh. “Any emerging economy doing well is good news,” Kaushik Basu, a former World Bank chief economist, tweeted after the International Monetary Fund updated its World Economic Outlook. “But it’s shocking that India, which had a lead of 25 percent five years ago, is now trailing.” Ever since it beg

In 1989 I was a captain in the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment stationed in West Germany. Our regiment patrolled a stretch of the Iron Curtain that divided democracies and dictatorships. That November, the Berlin Wall fell and the Iron Curtain parted. The United States and the free world had triumphed over communist totalitarianism without firing a shot. The Soviet Union soon broke apart. Just over a year later, those same cavalry troopers helped kick Saddam Hussein’s army out of Kuwait. In

An unseasonal cold snap did little to deter hundreds of people, young and old, from taking in the enchanting view of Gyeongbokgung at night on Wednesday. The colorful dancheong that decorate the palace buildings seemed to shimmer in the warm glow of the lights and the trees that have weathered numerous changes of seasons, illuminated from below, seemed to come to life. “This is the first time in my life that I am here at night,” I overheard a woman tell her friend as they kept thei