Portside

Storm Daniel was a Mediterranean hurricane that struck Greece, Bulgaria, Libya, Egypt and Turkey, killing thousands. Climatologists are struggling to understand whether this is a harbinger of North Africa's future.

Brazilians prepare for a momentous vote

World crises demand groundbreaking strategies

For the last two decades, the United States has been conducting an undeclared war across much of the globe. It has taken pains to normalize the use of drone warfare outside established war zones.

Focus on national politics in Brazil, Chile, France, Honduras, Libya and Turkey, and saving the planet

In just 20 years, the total cost of the US increasing homeland security and waging wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere since Sept. 11, 2001, have exceeded $8 trillion, according to new estimates by the Costs of War project at Brown University.

A week of furious street battles, and rethinking feminism, decolonialism and indigenous rights

The war ended in October 2011. US and European aircraft attacked Qadhafi’s convoy, and he was brutally murdered by extremist rebels. The government soon dissolved. In the six years since, Libya has been roiled by chaos and bloodshed. Multiple would-be governments are competing for control of the oil-rich country, and in some areas there is still no functioning central authority. Many thousands of people have died, although the true numbers are impossible to verify.

Saudi Arabia's puzzling effort to blacklist its tiny neighbor Qatar begs the question of who's really isolated in the Gulf. The attack on Qatar is part of Saudi Arabia’s aggressive new foreign policy that is being led by Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman. As Saudi Arabia’s “monarch in waiting,” Mohammed has launched a disastrous war in Yemen that’s killed more than 10,000 civilians and sparked a country-wide cholera epidemic there.

An Iraqi politician once said that the problem in his country was that parties and movements were “too weak to win, but too strong to lose.” This is increasingly the pattern for the whole region and is spreading elsewhere. It carries with it the possibility of an endless cycle of indecisive wars and an era of instability that has already begun.