Ned Temko

1 week ago | csmonitor.com | Ned Temko

A “diplomatic tsunami” is how one Israeli newspaper has dubbed intensifying criticism from Israel’s Western allies of its latest military attacks – and the dire humanitarian crisis – in Gaza. But this international anger, contrasting sharply with the sympathy that most of the world offered Israel after Hamas murdered and abducted hundreds of civilians on Oct. 7, 2023, may be diverting attention from an even greater impact of the war in Gaza.

2 weeks ago | csmonitor.com | Ned Temko

This is the story, unimaginable only a couple of weeks ago, of two men born a few years apart midway through the last century, suddenly sharing the international stage as the most powerful Americans on Earth. In background, experience, and demeanor, President Donald Trump and Pope Leo XIV, the first American-born leader of the Catholic Church, could hardly be more different.

3 weeks ago | csmonitor.com | Ned Temko

The American atomic bombs that ended World War II 80 summers ago snuffed out tens of thousands of lives in an instant. They blighted countless others. But they also left behind a more hopeful legacy: a collective determination by world powers to avoid the use of nuclear weapons forever, and to tightly limit their possession. Today, that achievement is coming under strain as never before.

4 weeks ago | csmonitor.com | Ned Temko

A “hinge moment of history.”That is how Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney described the dramatic shift in world politics that helped him win his come-from-behind election victory last week. Yet he could also have been describing three other democratic elections that have followed in quick succession in the past few days: in Britain, Australia, and Romania. They are all part of a battle over the future shape of democracy worldwide, framed by two key questions.

1 month ago | csmonitor.com | Ned Temko

If there were job ads inviting nation states to apply for work, it is not hard to guess which post would top the world’s search list, 100 days into Donald Trump’s second presidential term. “Help wanted,” the ad would read. “Leader of the free world.”President Trump has delivered a series of hammer blows to an international order that America largely built, buttressed, and led in the decades after World War II.