Project Syndicate

Putin’s March of Folly

By Carl Bildt NEW DELHI – In a lengthy address at the annual Valdai Discussion Club meeting this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to outline his view of the world.

Is the loss and damage fund becoming an empty promise?

By Liane Schalatek WASHINGTON, DC – So far this year, floods, heat waves, droughts, storms, and wildfires have led to thousands of deaths, threatened the health and livelihoods of millions of people, and caused tens of billions of dollars in damage – at least $41 billion by June.

India’s troubled truce with China

By Shashi Tharoor NEW DELHI – In June 2020, incursions by Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops into the fraught borderlands of India’s Ladakh region triggered bloody clashes that killed 20 Indian soldiers, plunged bilateral relations to their lowest point in decades, and led to a prolonged military standoff.

The battle over Russia’s Central Bank heats up

By Anders Åslund STOCKHOLM – Almost three years after Russia invaded Ukraine, the West’s financial sanctions have finally started to bite, triggering fierce infighting within the Kremlin over control of Russia’s central bank.

The end of US democracy was all too predictable

By Jason Stanley NEW YORK – Like others, since late Tuesday night, my phone has been blaring with text messages asking how this could have happened (as some of my friends, colleagues, and acquaintances know, I had been fully convinced that Donald Trump would win this election handily).

How Trump won

By Nina L. Khrushcheva NEW YORK – Fans of The Lord of the Rings will remember the scene where King Théoden, with his refuge of Helm’s Deep poised to fall to the marauding orcs and their “reckless hate,” wonders: How did it come to this?

The end of Georgia’s European dream?

By Salome Samadashvili TBILISI – In Georgia’s 2012 election, then-President Mikheil Saakashvili’s pro-Western party was defeated by Georgian Dream, a party led by the Russian-backed oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili.

Don’t dismiss the BRICS

By  Joschka Fischer BERLIN – It would be a big mistake for the West to dismiss the recent BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) summit in Kazan – Russia’s unofficial “Islamic” capital – as an anti-Western sideshow of little consequence.

A new paradigm for standing forests

By Ajay Banga, Fernando Haddad, and Marina Silva WASHINGTON, DC/CALI, COLOMBIA – With this year’s global summits on biodiversity (COP16), climate change (COP29), and desertification (COP16) fast approaching, the consequences of the climate emergency are evident everywhere.

Ukraine’s Post-Colonial Future

VIENNA – Thirty years ago, in a Ukrainian churchyard where my Russian ancestors are buried, I knelt beside a very old woman leaning on a stick, her hair covered in a black kerchief.

The Cuban contingent protecting Maduro

By Jorge G. Castañeda MEXICO CITY – On January 23, 1958, a group of Venezuelan military officers overthrew the brutal dictator Marcos Pérez Jimenez, who had ruled for six years – longer than he deserved – thanks to an oil bonanza.

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