Dan Perry

The "special relationship" between the United States and Israel has been defended on the grounds of "shared values." While not everyone agreed the values merited all the specialness, only the unkind ever doubted they were shared.

France marks Bastille Day this coming weekend, but amid rounds of rioting and widespread malaise, the mood is hardly celebratory.

Moscow is the world capital of smoke and mirrors, which is why the odd events of recent days may amount to more than meets the eye.

It's an ethical dilemma as old as civilization: When do you muscle in on somebody else's business? What gives you the right?

Trump's colossal miscalculation on Iran may be the greatest sin of them all. It is in the realm of foreign policy that idiocy can most easily beget the End of Days.

Why are elections so tight almost everywhere? It's a metaphysical mystery of our time.

Artificial intelligence is the first technology since the dawn of the nuclear age to have us truly terrified.

The most remarkable thing about last month's Senate vote blocking ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment is how unremarkable it was.

The basic assumption that is so widely held in the West—that people want freedom and democracy—does not always hold. Many want something else.

Not clearly evil, but posing a menace to liberal democracy, figures like Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan take on a confounding and oddly popular shade of gray.

Many Americans will be asking themselves this weekend how the indictment of former President Donald Trump will influence their country's future. Will he remain one of the two main candidates for the presidency in 2024? They might cast their gaze eastward, to Israel and its own criminal defendant-in-chief, Trump's good buddy Benjamin Netanyahu.

This week Putin has helped kill off of the fictitious language of Moldovan, thus reducing the sum of nonsense in the world.

Journalists covering global events face a constant buzzing in the ear: what words to use when there's a narrative dispute. The issue is ever more acute in our frenzied era of societal polarization, entitled grievance politics, and never-ending spin—like efforts to brand an invasion of Ukraine as a "special military operation."

The outrage spread on WhatsApp after Sara Netanyahu (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's wife) was seen at a high-end hair salon in Tel Aviv. It was a day when hundreds of thousands had taken to the streets, braving stun grenades and water cannons to protest her husband's efforts to install authoritarianism. Dozens had been arrested, and one man lost an ear.

While getting on the ballot can be difficult, nothing in the law excludes a third party, or even a ninth. And with both parties leaning toward extremes, creating a large centrist party could change the country's dysfunctional politics.

What was the Chinese leadership thinking in flying an easy-to-spot low-tech balloon over U.S. nuclear installations? Did they want to get caught? Was one branch of a fragmented autocracy trying to embarrass another?

Criticism of democracy is not new: thinkers from Plato to Socrates to Voltaire to Hobbes have expressed such sentiments, united by a common skepticism that average people possess enough of a clue to be trusted with any influence.

The past four decades or so have seen spectacular technological advances that have vastly disrupted industries, brought unimaginable convenience and efficiencies, and scrambled our brains in ways we may come to regret.

Two decades ago, Saudi Arabia led a broad Arab initiative offering Israel peace with its neighbors in exchange for the return of occupied Arab territories. Israel did not engage with that offer, which came at the height of a bloody Palestinian uprising. Now would be a great time for a new one.

Should the United States lower the boom on Israel's new far-right government? Does the democratic world have the leverage, the will or even any right to try to save Israel from itself?

The avalanche of criticism about the corrosive impact of social media has tended to focus on the viral spread of lies. But social media—indeed technological progress as a whole—may be harming us no less by revealing the unvarnished truth about ourselves.

One of the striking differences between the globally beloved game of soccer (or football if you prefer) and sports popular in the United States is its absence of precision timekeeping.

As 2022 turns to 2024—in election terms—the Democrats are still busy congratulating themselves over not being mauled on Nov. 8. But if they continue winning like this, it'll be a Republican sitting behind the big desk in the Oval Office

Israel seems set to establish a government led once again by Benjamin Netanyahu and heavily dependent on the country's far right. This dangerous assemblage will claim to be governing in the name of "the people." That claim does not entirely stand up to scrutiny.

The Democrats' timidity is doing them no favors. It is a deficiency liberals manifest all around the world, and unless this is fixed authoritarians might come to dominate our era.

Americans feeling apocalyptic about the future of their country might be interested to know that there is another democracy hanging by a thread in a November election: Israel's.

Observers are asking whether Xi Jinping, about to be reappointed to another term as the leader of China, is the new Mao. Some of the accoutrements are there, but the real question is whether he'll become a viler version of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

What do new Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, Benjamin Netanyahu, Marine Le Pen, and Donald Trump have in common? All are popular leaders in democratic countries whose supporters are unafraid to support autocrats-in-training.

In the great grab for territory is nothing ever enough? Is it worth sacrificing a single life to add to Russia, India, Pakistan's already huge numbers?

What was once widely seen as a boon for humanity has bred bitter resentments over deindustrialization and an awkward dependence on despotic regimes.