Democracy for Sale?
The Question Democracy Cannot Escape What if the greatest threat to democracy is not the voter who has lost faith in it, but the billionaire who has learned how to buy it? Democracy rests on a...
The Odyssey: The Wounds of Violating Deepest Values
Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” a new adaptation of Homer’s epic tale of Odysseus’ perilous journey home after the Trojan War, is already being described as a case study in post-traumatic stress disorder. But even more so, actor Matt Damon’s tortured and broken portrayal of Odysseus offers a...
More Unlimited Money in American Politics?
A decades-old law limiting how much money political parties can spend in coordination with candidates was struck down by the Supreme Court on June 30, 2026. Citing First Amendment principles, the...
Poison Beneath Our Feet
How Assam's Fluoride Crisis Is Stealing Childhoods—and What It Can Teach India and the World In policy discussions on environmental risk, attention often gravitates toward air pollution, industrial waste, climate change, and plastic contamination. Yet one of the most damaging environmental health...
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Why Washington Still Misunderstands Iran
Understanding the Internal Struggle Behind the Islamic Republic Women protest on March 8, 1979, against the compulsory headscarf (Hijab) In the spring of 1983, I witnessed an event that shaped my understanding of Iran. In central Mashhad, a young political prisoner stood beneath...
Rethinking U.S. Security Guarantees in the Gulf
Iran’s strategic strikes have exploded the myth that America’s military presence can shield the Gulf’s vulnerable economies. Wars in the Middle East are often decided less by what is destroyed than by what continues functioning afterward — and how quickly those systems begin to fail. That...
Why Trump’s Push to Expand the Abraham Accords Is Destined to Fail?
As negotiations to end the Iran war continued on May 25, Donald Trump made a series of phone calls in which he pressed key leaders from the Middle East to join the Abraham Accords. Announced in 2020, these accords established diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab states, beginning...
Iran: Why Does Leadership Decapitation Fail?
The coordinated U.S.-Israeli strikes at the outset of the war in Iran killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, along with other key regime figures. In doing so, the United States and Israel crossed what The New York Times and others described as “a new Rubicon”: the deliberate, overt killing of a head...
Pope Leo: Peace and Human Dignity are Central
When he was elected pope on May 8, 2025, Robert Prevost, who took the name Leo XIV, greeted the crowd with Christ’s words to his disciples: “Peace be with you.” Peace has become a central theme of the pontificate of the first American pope. In recent months, opposing the war in the Middle East,...
Bringing God into War: The Biblical Interpretation of the War in Iran by Some Conservative Christians
As the American and Israeli war with Iran unfolds, some American Christians are speaking of the conflict in biblical terms, mapping end-time prophecies on to current events in the Middle East. In a sermon on March 1, 2026, for example, John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel, described...
The U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran: What comes next?
Shortly after the opening salvo of U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, 2026 – with missiles targeting cities across the country, some of which killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – President Donald Trump declared the objective was to destroy Iran’s military capabilities and give rise...
America at the Edge of a Multipolar World
Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy: Strategic Realism or Doctrinal Exhaustion? The 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) issued under Donald Trump is less a roadmap for American power than a political artifact of an era marked by exhaustion, anxiety, and systemic transition. Drafted amid...
Maduro’s Capture: The Warning of a Historian
The United States military recently carried out a covert operation to capture and then remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, transporting them from Caracas to New York. The pair is accused of narco-terrorism, conspiracy, drug trafficking, and money laundering. President Donald...
When Stories Become Forests: How India’s Folklore Can Guide Its Ecological Future
“The earth is our mother, and we are her children.” As India grapples with climate extremes, disappearing forests, polluted rivers, and accelerating biodiversity loss, policy experts increasingly look to scientific and technological solutions. Yet millions across the country continue to draw...
