LATEST OP-ED STORIES

By ROBERT J. SAMUELSON

As worried investors channel funds from European securities into U.S. bonds, the decline in U.S. interest rates makes borrowing even easier. What comes next?

By MICHAEL RICHARDSON

China's meteoric rise to become the world's second biggest economy is sustained by increasing investment abroad, often in countries shunned by the West.

By THOMAS CAROTHERS

U.S. Mideast policy is conflicted. Efforts to bolster democratic change in some parts of the region contradict support for nondemocratic governments in others.

By MISCHA GABOWITSCH

So far, Russia's protest movement has gotten many things right. By focusing on fair elections, it has united liberals, communists, nationalists and apoliticals.

By DAVID J. KARL

New U.S. sanctions against Iran's oil sector as a means of pressuring Tehran to abandon its suspected nuclear weapons program have no truck with India.

By THEDA SKOCPOL

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has maneuvered with ruthless precision and impeccable timing to position himself as a champion of the tea party.

By HUGH CORTAZZI

Populist measures by the British government do not solve the basic problem of how senior executives should be fairly remunerated in a free market economy.

By JOHN J. METZLER

As an Arab Spring becomes political winter in Cairo, the Obama administration is rightly furious at having been played by the actions of Egypt's controlling military rulers..

Japan-related commentary

By ANDREY BORODAEVSKIY

It's time to switch the focus of Russia-Japan negotiations over the sovereignty of the "Northern Territories" from geopolitics to mutual economic benefits.

By JULIAN DIERKES

The type of knowledge drilled into students who attend juku schools so they can pass a test gives a Canadian professor cause to worry about Japan's future.

Country-specific commentary

By RICHARD SCHIFFMAN

Americans seem driven, even more than their counterparts in other developed countries including workaholic Japan, to work more hours for fewer benefits.

By CARRIE SHEFFIELD

There has been much talk of late about whether America is ready for a president who belongs to the Mormon Church. The tolerance question cuts both ways.

Global-related commentary

By KEVIN RAFFERTY

There is no sign that anyone has the vision to see the problem and the repercussions of unemployment, let alone to seize upon and remedy the deficiencies.

By MICHAEL RICHARDSON

There's a worldwide boom in the use of groundwater. The rate of extraction from aquifers more than doubled from 1960 to 2000, and continues to soar.