At the start of this week, a four-day gathering of the World Trade Organization ended in deadlock over a disagreement between just two of its 166 member countries. The United States sought a 10-year extension to existing duty-free digital purchasing rules (for items such as software, music, and movies); Brazil would only agree to a two-year extension.
Nevertheless, working on the sidelines, 66 other members – from Asia, Europe, and the Americas – forged their own agreement on the issue.
The recent increase in such “minilateral” solutions to global obstacles signifies more than mere impatience with time-consuming multilateral processes. Rather, it highlights the impetus and realization among the world’s middle powers about their changing role – and responsibility – in shaping a world order amid major geopolitical shifts. Middle powers are seeking ways to lessen overdependence on the world’s two largest economies – the U.S. and China – while also crafting new interdependent relations with a wider range of partners.
“Middle powers have the potential to help stabilize global order and advance cooperation,” according to Stewart Patrick, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The range of potential issue areas for cooperation is vast, ... [including] trade, climate action and energy security, digital technology, and support for the international rule of law.”
The European Union and Canada, both longtime allies that the U.S. has recently shunned, are at the forefront of this trend. In January, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney urged a move toward “building coalitions that work, issue by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together.” He dubbed this a policy of “variable geometry,” based on shared values and interests.
In the two months since his speech at the Davos World Economic Forum, Mr. Carney has traveled to Asia and Australia to hold trade talks. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU, has also logged many air miles. In the first three months of 2026, she helped conclude three significant free-trade negotiations – with the five-country Mercosur bloc in South America, and with India and Australia.
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The Mercosur deal – in discussion for 25 years – “signals that the EU can still … deliver; even if slowly,” noted the Policy Center for the New South. For Mercosur nations, it is a “recognition of agency. Instead of choosing between China’s purchasing power and Washington’s attention, the bloc gains a third pillar: Europe’s market and political stability.” Both sides, the Morocco-based center said, benefit from “what the other can offer: balance, resources, stability.”
Referring to the U.S. retreat from a range of alliances and pacts, Dr. Patrick of Carnegie believes that emerging middle powers can “fill the leadership vacuum.” This is their opportunity, he wrote in January, “to defend what should be preserved, jettison what is obsolete, and renegotiate rules so that they work better for all.”
One theme of the Iran war has been rising concern – from nearly all sides – for children. More to the point, the concern is for how to safeguard their inherent innocence and propensity for peace.
The latest example focuses on Iran’s new campaign to enlist 12- and 13-year-olds in “war-related roles,” such as security patrols. A teachers union in Iran has condemned the regime’s militarization of childhood. It warns about placing children in harm’s way, which would be a violation of international child rights.
For its part, the United States was roundly criticized after an American missile struck near an Iranian girls’ school Feb. 28, resulting in more than 170 deaths. The White House claims children are not U.S. military targets. Yet the Pentagon has launched a formal investigation of the incident. And the U.N. Human Rights Council has agreed to examine the killings.
Meanwhile, Israel has appealed to the United Nations to respond to Iran’s alleged indiscriminate missile attacks on “innocent civilians and children.” And on March 3, U.S. first lady Melania Trump chaired a meeting of the Security Council on the general topic of children and education during conflict. The Iran war was top of mind, starting with opening comments by U.N. Under-Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo.
“When conflicts erupt, children are among those most severely affected,” she said. “We have been reminded of this truth over the last two days. Schools in Israel, the [United Arab Emirates], Qatar, Bahrain and Oman have closed and moved to remote learning owing to the ongoing military operations in the region.”
One reason for this strong spotlight on children in war lies in the expanding set of treaties and global norms over decades to protect youth in conflicts. The U.N. has found that many armed militias, such as in Colombia, are willing to accept that the innocence of children requires they not be used as soldiers. This tendency might indicate a growing recognition that nurturing a child’s expression of innocence can help lessen the aftereffects of a war.
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The focus on children has also sometimes helped end wars. In recent decades, outcry over the use of child soldiers during conflicts in Sierra Leone and Liberia, for example, raised pressure on belligerents to compromise. Sierra Leone’s 1991–2002 civil war led to the first conviction for the war crime of recruiting children as well as attention on the rehabilitation of former child soldiers.
At the same time, many current wars, including in Myanmar and Yemen, still involve children as combatants. In Iran, many parents accept the regime’s recruitment of children. Still, the worldwide attention on the issue might turn public attitudes to further support the safeguarding of children’s innocence – and perhaps help turn the tide of the war.
Politics in Washington might be downbeat and divided, but nothing unites the U.S. capital – and many thousands of tourists – in a spirit of optimism and anticipation like the spring blossoms of the city’s iconic cherry trees. “PEAK BLOOM! PEAK BLOOM! PEAK BLOOM! It’s official!” the National Park Service gleefully announced Thursday.
The news confirmed that the last weekend of March would be the best time to visit the Tidal Basin and National Mall, joining in conversation and contemplation along the pink-hued and perfumed walkways lined with more than 3,000 Japanese cherry trees given as a gift by the city of Tokyo in 1912.
“The first cherry trees helped crystallize an image of what Washington could look like,” Thomas Luebke, secretary of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, said on the centenary of the gift that helped transform and soften the landscape of the United States’ seat of power.
For students of history and culture, the cherry trees’ delicate flowers and gnarled trunks speak to the enduring soft power of global goodwill, culture, and faith in a better future to overcome division, including wartime enmity and destruction. After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, the cherry trees in Washington were occasionally vandalized. But in 1952, as the U.S. shepherded post-World War II reconstruction, budwood from the Washington trees was transferred to Tokyo to restore the damaged original parent grove. This year, an additional 250 cherry trees sent by Japan to commemorate the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence will be planted in Washington.
Beyond political gestures, cherry blossom celebrations point to near-universal interpretations of springtime as a season of renewal and fresh beginnings. The Japanese practice of hanami – gathering with family and friends to view the blossoms, share conversation, and enjoy leisurely picnics – has spread around the U.S. as well as to cities including London, Paris, and Stockholm.
In an international context that currently feels fragile or fractured, and alongside increasing isolation especially among urban populations, this spring tradition spreads a priceless joy and connection. The Washington Post last year highlighted a couple who have held a sunrise picnic during cherry blossom time for more than 25 years – and are now regularly recognized and greeted by passersby.
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As Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa expressed in a classic haiku some 200 years ago:
Under the cherry blossoms
strangers are not
really strangers
When the ruling party in Britain proposed last year that the voting age be lowered to 16, one smart TV station went out and asked 16- and 17-year-olds what they thought of the idea. Of 500 surveyed, a bare 51% supported it. Only 18% said they would definitely vote.
The Labour Party might have learned a lesson. To nurture maturity in teens, one must respect what maturity they already have – in how they view their own potential and problems. Love means listening first, then legislating. The bill to lower the voting age has yet to pass.
This year, as public pressure builds worldwide to ban teen use of social media, the U.K. government has commissioned a pilot test before making a power slap against tech giants such as Meta, Google, or TikTok. In a research trial in coming months, a few hundred persons ages 13 to 17 (yes, they are persons) will voluntarily be banned from social media in their home for six weeks to measure the impact on their well-being and safety.
The research, led by a team at the University of Cambridge and Bradford Institute for Health Research, is not only scientific but also exemplifies a sensitivity to the nuances of both the harm and benefits of online content. Another group with access to social media will also be watched. The trial’s restrictions will vary, such as setting different time limits, to fine-tune possible regulations.
“We can act at pace on the results of the consultation on young people and social media,” stated U.K. Technology Secretary Liz Kendall.
Focusing only on evil aspects of online content might blind lawmakers – as well as court judges – to the good, such as advances in safe, supportive social media that might drive off the bad. Teens themselves can give advice on how to sift the chaff from the wheat.
A blanket ban might end up not improving children’s safety and well-being. Or teens could devise methods to skirt a ban. Working with them – as many parents have learned – can reduce social media’s harms while enhancing mental growth in dealing with such challenges.
In the United States, a Pew Research Center survey last year found 45% of teens agree that they spend too much time on social media, while a majority says it helps in making connections and expressing their creativity. A minority 20% says it hurts their mental health or grades.
Thousands of lawsuits in the U.S. are now testing courts in deciding if tech companies should be held responsible for such harms. In two separate cases this week, verdicts held social media companies accountable for harm cited by young users.
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Solutions might lie in simply giving an ear to teens, both individually and societywide. Close attention to their fears and aims can also spark self-regulation.
This year, Britain launched a campaign called “You Won’t Know Until You Ask.” It provides practical advice for parents in conversations with kids on internet use. Any government action, said Technology Secretary Kendall, must be “informed by the experiences of families themselves.”
This month, three democracy-tracking organizations released analyses of the state of political, press, and personal freedoms around the world. The title of one report, “The Growing Shadow of Autocracy,” sums up a shared view about backsliding on all these fronts. Yet the data and perspectives also reveal progress – especially in the enduring and widespread appeal of democratic ideals and values.
Looking back at 2025, the Sweden-based Variety of Democracies Institute, known as V-Dem, counts 44 countries worldwide that it says are “autocratizing,” including the United States. In particular for the U.S., V-Dem cites recent “attacks on the press, academia, civil liberties, and dissenting voices.”
On the other hand, the Dartmouth College-based Bright Line Watch finds that declining views of American democracy from earlier in 2025 have “largely stabilized,” and public opinion now shows “mild optimism.” The smooth rollout of state elections last November, as well as court rulings on immigration and tariff issues, appears to have reaffirmed for Americans that their system of checks and balances still works. Speaking on NPR, Bright Line Watch co-founder John Carey pointed to the key role of “government institutions that serve as referees.”
Such institutions can help stem a drift to autocracy in countries that Washington-based watchdog Freedom House defines as only “partly free.” The organization annually tracks 25 indicators of political rights and civil liberties – such as electoral processes and pluralism, freedom of expression, and rule of law. In 2025, these metrics deteriorated in 54 countries.
However, they trended upward in 35 others. Three examples are Bolivia, Fiji, and Malawi – among the world’s poorer or smaller nations. They each moved from “partly free” to “free” status. They did this through fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power, as well as steps to root out corruption and boost transparency and judicial independence. Gabon and Syria, both in the “not free” category, saw substantial improvement in scores as they began to loosen restrictions on basic rights after decades of authoritarian rule.
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Freedom House makes a point of noting that more than 85% of the countries rated as “free” in 2005 still remain so, two decades later. As the organization’s CEO, Jamie Fly, and research director Yana Gorokhovskaia wrote in The Washington Post, “As more than 50 years’ worth of ... data shows, the demand for freedom is universal and unwavering.
“Those who live under repression,” they stated, “require the sustained support of those of us who enjoy the blessings of liberty.”
Many nations that have emerged from internal conflict – Rwanda, Colombia, Indonesia, to name a few – have anchored their national reconciliations in acts of mercy. In its own peculiar way, Venezuela might now join this group, nearly three months after the United States removed its dictator, Nicolás Maduro, by force and charged him with narcoterrorism and drug trafficking.
Most of Mr. Maduro’s colleagues remain in power in a deal made with U.S. President Donald Trump in the name of stability and a sharing of oil wealth. Yet the regime has also begun releasing political prisoners – just how many is in dispute. And in late February, Venezuela’s National Assembly passed an amnesty law that, for all its serious flaws, covers hundreds of detainees over decades.
These acts of mercy might seem useless. Many of the political prisoners violated no law, or at least none based on democratic rights. And the proceedings for their release from prison are conducted in front of judges tied closely to the regime. In addition, many Venezuelans are still being arrested for speaking out.
Yet the mere prospect of a general amnesty has begun to erode the regime’s legitimacy and has raised hopes for justice. More crucially, it opens a window to a full transition to democracy, one based on truth about the dictatorship’s worst abuses but that might include forgiveness for lesser crimes.
“Amnesty does not defeat the regime on its own, but it does take away its capacity for coercion, breaks the logic of political hostages, and renders terror ineffective as a tool of social control,” wrote Orlando Viera-Blanco, a Venezuelan human rights activist, in Analitica.com, a digital media outlet. “Thus, amnesty is not capitulation, it is the containment of oppression.”
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The U.S. has laid out a plan that calls for both an election and a reconciliation process, often called transitional justice. That, combined with the limited amnesty, has emboldened Venezuelans to assert civil liberties. Public workers have gone on strike, activists have held vigils for detained political prisoners, and university students have organized protests.
The amnesty law itself speaks of creating “political pluralism” and reintegrating former political prisoners into public life. Still missing are steps toward truth, accountability, and reparations. The law might be only a tactical sacrifice by the regime simply to retain power. But with each release of a political prisoner, the regime “limits its narrative of internal enemies,” as Mr. Viera-Blanco contended, “and weakens its monopoly on fear.”
About 10 years ago, backlash against an influx of Eastern European immigrants – mainly from Poland – helped propel Brexit, the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union. (That, in turn, led thousands of Poles to leave the U.K.)
A little more than 10 days ago, The London Times published a guide for citizens of the U.K. about picking up their lives and moving ... to Poland! “With a lower cost of living and a booming tech industry, [Poland] is calling to many Brits,” the Times stated.
This turnaround highlights how economic progress in the formerly communist nation has taken place side by side with growth in democratic values and institutions that reward individual effort and innovation.
“Poland ... stands as one of history’s most remarkable examples of how embracing democratic institutions and a free-market economy can radically transform a nation and propel it [to] rapid development,” the Atlantic Council noted in a report last year. The document cited “three foundational pillars of a free society – rule of law, democracy, and [a] market economy” – as contributing to Poland’s ability to thrive.
These pillars are cemented in Poland’s history of resisting and overthrowing decades of communist rule in the late 1980s, when citizens lacked basic foods as well as freedoms.
Today, 85% of Poles say that “living in a democratically governed country is definitely important,” according to a survey conducted last month by the College of Eastern Europe in Wrocław. Most respondents, the report said, displayed a “reverence and respect for democracy,” pointing to aspects such as freedom of speech and expression, the ability to make decisions about their own lives, and the influence they can have on society and politics.
Seeking to join the European Union (which it did in 2004), Poland has built frameworks for civil liberty and business, including an independent judiciary, banking regulations, and an anti-monopoly agency. Its economy has grown 3.8% annually and combines agriculture, manufacturing, finance, tech, and services. It is now among the world’s 20 largest economies, having recently displaced Switzerland from that group.
The Polish people’s commitment to political and economic openness is notable, in a context of growing right-wing nationalism at home and the war raging along its eastern border. Poland has taken in more than 1 million refugees since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But it has turned that to an advantage by tapping their skills to increase both the workforce and the tax base.
As it confronts a shrinking and aging population, Poland is fortunate that skilled citizens wish to return home from the United States and Western Europe, and those in the country already don’t want to leave.
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“Poland has ... so many opportunities for development, that of course I am staying,” a young graduate student told The Associated Press this month. “Poland is promising.”
What’s in a name? For global aid groups hit hard last year when the world’s largest donor – the United States – slashed its humanitarian and development budget, a name change can bring a refreshing change in how to view poor, unwell, and homeless people.
On March 18, Mercy Corps, which once directly helped about 37 million people in 35 countries, announced it would soon call itself Prosper Global, after a major downsizing of the Oregon-based organization. “We believe strongly that what these communities need is prosperity, not mercy,” chief development officer Mary Stata told Axios.
The rebranding reflects a view that “participants” in programs are leaders, not “passive recipients of humanitarian aid,” as Ms. Stata explained. The new name will reinforce moves already underway to follow the lead of local community leaders in setting priorities; assisting private investments in long-term projects with a mix of profit and charity motives; and better convening a broader range of organizations to take action in order to build sustainable growth.
“We increasingly felt like our current identity was no longer representing our values ... or able to really represent our work with clarity,” Ms. Stata said.
Such a shift would see the dignity of those in need not so much restored as roused to life in them. It will require higher levels of listening along with genuine respect for and partnership with people as decision-makers and as advocates for what they expect of their local governments.
The soon-to-be-called Prosper Global will “co-create solutions that help people adapt, thrive, and build lasting resilience in the face of climate change, conflict, and poverty,” as Mercy Corps stated last year after the massive loss of money from the now-closed United States Agency for International Development.
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Similar reinventions by aid groups are “something close to a mental liberation,” as The Economist stated last year. Along with funding cuts by many European countries, “the world entered a new chapter of global aid, as the development sector moves past traditional philanthropic models,” wrote Dave Neiswander, head of World Bicycle Relief, for the World Economic Forum. “The international development narrative must shift from one of charity to investing in self-sufficiency.”
As the aid community continues to adjust to the cuts, local leaders “are stepping up to meet the moment,” declared Refugees International last month. A big rethink of how aid works has opened opportunities to honor the inherent sovereignty of each individual to uplift themselves.
This week, as a U.S. Senate committee held confirmation hearings and advanced the nomination of a new head of the Department of Homeland Security, the department itself entered Month 2 of a partial shutdown and funding freeze.
This juxtaposition highlights what Americans repeatedly say are among the country’s top “problems” – “poor” government leadership and the issues surrounding immigration.
Currently, congressional Democrats refuse to approve full DHS funding, unless their Republican peers and the White House agree to key changes in immigrant detention and deportation tactics. These include banning face coverings for agents and requiring body cameras and judicial warrants to enter private property.
Both sides blame each other for the impasse – and its impact on DHS services such as airport security and emergency management.
However, among voters, cross-partisan views on immigration issues may be starting to overlap – and could help point elected representatives toward workable compromises, if not consensus. Even as around 60% of Americans feel that recent immigration enforcement tactics have “gone too far,” they hold nuanced views on upholding immigration laws, alongside compassion. A significant portion wants to ensure due process for migrants that respects their humanity.
Polls show that voters across political parties support deporting immigrants who have committed a serious crime. About 56% of Republicans say they want all unauthorized immigrants deported, but only 8% of Democrats want that. A much larger share of Democrats and independent voters prefer not to deport undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States for years, arrived as a child, or committed a minor infraction.
These views are reflected in a draft immigration reform bill in Congress, the Dignity Act of 2025. To date, the proposal has bipartisan support from 19 House Republicans and 20 Democrats and from 75 groups representing business, religious, and community organizations. The Dignity Act would not offer citizenship to the estimated 14 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. But it would open pathways to legal residency over a period of several years (and after payment of penalties), and streamline asylum and other processes.
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At his Wednesday hearing to be DHS chief, Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin stated he would revoke the policy allowing federal immigration officers to enter private property without a judicial warrant. He also said one of his aims was “that we’re not in the lead [news] story every day,” as was the case under his predecessor, Kristi Noem.
Targeted immigration actions that operate within legal and policy bounds can help allay Americans’ concerns about overly aggressive enforcement. As a group of faith leaders told listeners in Richmond, Virginia, in late February, “We must be able to uphold the law while refusing to dehumanize those who live under its penalties.”
Ever since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, news about the impact of artificial intelligence on jobs has vacillated between two four-letter words: fear and hype. As a result, about two-thirds of Americans believe AI will lead to fewer jobs, while the overpromising of AI’s potential has helped lead to a similar proportion of Americans not using AI much or at all in their jobs.
By last year, however, surveys of AI’s actual impact in the workplace had started to roll in. And many indicate a move toward enhancing the application of reason, analytical judgment, and other skills of humans – and redefining intelligence to levels beyond the limits of a machine or the brain.
One federal survey in the New York-northern New Jersey area found that a large share of businesses using AI are retraining workers to utilize the technology with no significant reductions in employment. “For those who have a job, they are more likely to be retrained than replaced by AI,” the survey concluded.
Another study by three prominent universities found that employees who were retrained to use AI earn substantially more. Meanwhile, research analysis by Morgan Stanley, a financial firm, found AI will not only augment human capabilities but also “could come with an unprecedented demand for re-skilling.” AI will be “a net positive effect on employment growth.”
“Each wave of technological transformation has brought both disruption and opportunity,” said Morgan Stanley U.S. economist Heather Berger. “We expect AI to do the same: While some roles may be automated, others will see enhancement through AI augmentation, and AI is likely to create entirely new roles.”
Upskilling means elevating the capabilities of workers beyond what they believe is their level of intelligence. The nature of work in the AI era will require an expansion of qualities, such as curiosity, intuition, and humility. “The skill that is going to be rewarded most in the short run is imagination in finding creative ways to use AI,” Rajeev Rajan of Atlassian, an office-software firm, told The Economist.
The world’s thinkers have often tried to break the belief that intelligence is human-centric. The founder of the Monitor, Mary Baker Eddy, wrote that discernment requires a capacity for spiritual understanding beyond the physical senses. “Such intuitions reveal whatever constitutes and perpetuates harmony, enabling one to do good, but not evil,” she stated in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.
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Just before the debut of ChatGPT, three Dutch academics wrote in the journal Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence of the need to reconceptualize intelligence in “its many possible forms and combinations.” Human intelligence is not “the golden standard” in defining the capacity to “realize complex goals.”
AI might catch up with human intelligence, they suggested, but we should not dwell on whether “AI will outsmart us, take our jobs, or how to endow it with all kinds of human abilities.” Rather, humans can expand their capacity for judgment to better supervise the growth of AI.
For most of the four-year war in Ukraine, Russia’s trading partners in Africa have maintained a studied silence on the issue. These nations rely on Russia for crucial imports – especially the oil that fuels their modernization and the wheat that feeds their burgeoning populations.
But recently, civilians in several of these trade-dependent countries have pushed their governments to speak up about a much different, much murkier type of trade with Russia – the deceitful trafficking in humans who are forcibly thrown into the Russian battlefront in Ukraine.
Last month, families of Kenyan men allegedly duped into fighting for Russia held protests in Nairobi, as the government revealed that more than 1,000 citizens had been so recruited. “These are ... matters of human rights, national responsibility, and continental dignity,” declared the Centre for Investigative Journalism in Zambia. “When African lives are treated as expendable labour or disposable combatants in a foreign conflict, governments have a duty to ask hard questions, and to act.”
This week, Kenya’s foreign minister visited Moscow and announced that Russia has agreed to stop using Kenyans in its war in Ukraine.
According to the Switzerland-based investigative group Inpact, more than 1,400 Africans had contracted with the Russian army as of last September – and over 300 of them were killed within months of arriving at the front. Inpact described how Russia uses social media influencers and intermediaries to draw in Africans with promises of jobs or scholarships. On arrival, their passports are taken, they are forced to sign Russian-language contracts they don’t understand, and they are shipped to the front.
While human trafficking is a crime under international law, recruiting from third countries is not unusual to boost troop contingents. The number of recruits joining Russia’s military has been steadily dropping, most recently by 6% from 2024 to 2025. (Early in the war, North Korea sent 14,000 of its soldiers to fight alongside Russians, earning foreign exchange.) Nonnative fighters have also joined on the Ukrainian side – but they have done so voluntarily.
Russia, on the other hand, “relies on systematic deception” and the exploitation of citizens facing “economic desperation” and “weak institutions,” according to the Swedish publication Engelsberg Ideas.
However, “The growth of Russia’s influence is not inevitable,” analysts William Mockapetris and Ryan Jurich wrote encouragingly in The International Affairs Review last month. “A comprehensive strategy to engage at-risk nations” and “dismantle trafficking networks” can curb Russia, they said.
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Despite economic and institutional challenges, African governments are stepping up. Kenya recently shut down more than 600 recruitment agencies suspected of duping applicants with promises of jobs overseas. And along with South Africa, Ghana, and Botswana, among others, Kenya is working to repatriate nationals – from Russia’s military ranks and from prisoner-of-war camps in Ukraine.
Preventive and restorative actions such as these are essential – and effective – in upholding individual dignity and national accountability.
More than material weapons might sway the war in Iran. As both Washington and Tehran are finding out, allies that would come to your assistance probably prefer to first share your values and not just mutual interests.
On Saturday, President Donald Trump put out a call to seven countries to send ships to defend the vital oil-shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz. The response has been largely halting – at best, hesitant. The international uncertainty over the legal premise for the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran is probably a hindrance to those nations in risking their military to protect petroleum flows. “This is not our war; we did not start it,” said Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defense minister.
For Iran, two of its most powerful partners, China and Russia, are largely playing a minor role in the conflict, focusing mainly on crisis management or diplomacy. In Gaza, Hamas has asked Iran not to attack its neighboring Gulf states, saying that the regional countries should cooperate “to preserve the bonds of brotherhood.” In Iraq, the pro-Iran Shiite militias are largely staying quiet, preferring to preserve their moneymaking enterprises. Only Hezbollah in Lebanon, a key part of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” has again come to Iran’s aid by attacking Israel – much to the regret of Lebanese citizens.
In times of conflict, ties between nations that are based on trust, respect, and rules of conduct can help restore peace, not to mention prevent a war. Such partnerships, especially if codified into international law, thrive on transcendent principles with universal appeal, such as political freedom or religious values that teach compassion and forbearance.
“The thing to recognize about international law is that when it’s most powerful, it’s actually pretty invisible. It shapes what you consider to be the available options in ways that you don’t really even notice because it’s so fundamental,” Oona Hathaway of Yale Law School told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Most countries are not invading their neighbors, she points out, a simple fact about global norms that receives very little attention in the news.
Under the current Trump administration, the official national strategy report calls for “realism,” not “cloud-castle abstractions like the rules-based international order.” In Iran, too, a revolution once based on Islamic principles 47 years ago has descended into regime survival, even to the point of killing thousands of Iranians during just two days of protests in January.
The war in Iran could turn on how much either side adheres to practices widely accepted by humanity, or what Ms. Hathaway calls “principles that people believe in.”
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“If you need allies, if you’re fighting really dirty, you’re going [to] have a much harder time getting ... other states to support you,” she stated.
The near collapse of the international order set up after World War II now requires a creative rethink, she suggests. The war in Iran could be the contest that helps define new rules – in place of the ones now vanishing – that would still be able to end wars and preserve peace.
It took several decades for students’ individual computer access to become the norm in American schools. But it’s taken only about three years for the share of students using artificial intelligence in school assignments to go from zero to 84%.
At the same time, according to a 2025 report by the College Board, only 13% of schools encouraged using such generative AI in all their classes, while 1 in 5 had no policies governing its use. Educators are racing to keep pace with and use AI in ways that safeguard students’ educational interests and support vibrant classroom relationships. There is concern about repeating what some see as the “mistakes” of having allowed students unlimited access to phones and social media.
But blanket restrictions on AI in schools could be counterproductive, given that it infuses almost every aspect of daily commerce and communication – and is also shaping emerging career paths. Instead, some educators and researchers urge an approach that strengthens individual discernment and ethical decision-making – through broader “AI literacy.”
The focus should be on “how to build agency over the tech, not just agility with what it offers,” wrote Substack author Jenny Anderson and Brookings Institution analyst Rebecca Winthrop in The Washington Post this week. More than “prompt engineering,” children “need a holistic understanding” of how AI works, they wrote. Equipped with this, “they develop the capacity to know when AI supercharges their learning and when it stunts it.”
That point was underscored in a 2025 study comparing AI literacy and usage rates, which found that students with lower AI literacy were more likely to use the tools to complete their assignments than students with higher AI literacy and awareness.
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Incorporating discussion of ethics, values, and accountability alongside technical concepts further bolsters AI literacy and critical thinking skills, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a Paris-based multilateral agency. It helps ensure that “students know how to evaluate, question, and apply AI responsibly” in school and “beyond the classroom.”
Young people who understand how AI and its algorithms work are more likely to use it responsibly. Their understanding, in turn, can support the effective use of AI tools as a complement to the essential classroom interactions that enhance the education experience.
In just the past six years, the world economy has been jolted by three sharp rises in oil prices. First, during the pandemic. Then, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And now, a war-battered Iran has begun to block the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point for ships carrying 20% to 30% of the world’s petroleum supply.
Such energy crises often bring short-term hardship, such as higher gasoline prices. Yet they also spark bursts of innovation that help soften the next disruption to the global oil supply chain. One historic model: The 1973 Arab oil embargo led many countries to create strategic oil reserves for coordinated release in times of emergency, such as now.
With the start of the Iran war Feb. 28, creative responses to the current crisis are starting to show up. “What is needed now is not alarmism but foresight,” wrote Christopher Long, head of intelligence at the security management firm Neptune P2P Group, in The National.
Some American farmers, for example, who are worried about rising prices for fertilizers derived from natural gas, are eyeing a switch to new types of biological sources, such as nitrogen-fixing microbes or fertilizers made with low-emission hydrogen.
In the European Union, the latest oil shock helped spur a decision this week to invest €200 million ($230 million) toward designing and building small nuclear power plants as reliable sources of low-emissions power for a continent highly dependent on fossil fuel imports.
And with Iran threatening ships crossing the narrow Hormuz passage, insurers in the maritime industry are coming up with creative ways to lessen fears of lost or damaged vessels. The U.S. International Development Finance Corp., for example, has offered a $20 billion reinsurance backstop to cargo carriers.
The spirit of innovative thinking is never in short supply. Billions of people now facing rising energy costs are on a steep learning curve to devise ways to operate more efficiently or to switch to non-oil sources, such as solar power. For all the limited progress made so far to reduce greenhouse gases, the Iran crisis might accelerate the energy transition.
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Expensive oil has many benefits, writes Rita McGrath, a Columbia University business professor, in Fast Company magazine this month. It “accelerates the relative attractiveness of dematerialized products and services: software over hardware, streaming over shipping, local services over global supply chains, energy efficiency over energy consumption.”
Sweet are the uses of adversity, Shakespeare wrote. And just as sweet is releasing the fetters of material limits by reshaping the world with innovative ideas in energy.
Britain’s parliamentary democracy, one of the oldest in the world, has its quirks. For more than 1,000 years, its kings and queens have presided atop a pyramid of lords, earls, viscounts, and other layers of nobility. Alongside elected members of the House of Commons, these titled (and often wealthy) peers have held hundreds of hereditary seats in Parliament’s upper House of Lords for centuries.
“Undemocratic, overcrowded, dominated by silly archaic practices and unrepresentative of the British population,” is how one reform-minded member has described the chamber.
But all that is about to change: On Tuesday, Parliament adopted a bill abolishing the remaining quota of 92 seats that can be automatically filled by the heirs of titled peers. The act fulfills one of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s election pledges, completing a process started by his predecessor Tony Blair, who removed more than 600 seats in 1999.
This week’s shift signifies a major break with the past. Supporters have argued that nobility’s relative independence from shifting electoral politics and interests has provided stability and safeguarded democracy. The change raises questions for those concerned about Britain’s storied traditions. But it also offers the opportunity to align politics and society with more egalitarian values that acknowledge equality and intrinsic worth of each individual.
Amid increasing cultural diversity and economic inequality, dissolving hereditary privilege could help further dissolve entrenched class divisions and gender disparities dating from feudal times. (Titles have typically passed only to men, limiting women’s presence until the late 1950s, when prime ministers began nominating “lifetime peers” whose titles could not be passed on.)
“The principle of hereditary legislating has now been vanquished,” declared the Electoral Reform Society on its website this week. However, it is pushing for more: an elected, representative upper house that “better reflects the country it serves.”
This sentiment reflects growing public demand for more say in effective governing. Surveys in recent years showed that 28% of British people were dissatisfied with how their government works, and 15% would choose to abolish the monarchy. The royal family appears increasingly responsive to this sentiment. King Charles III has moved to curtail costs and has recently stripped his brother Andrew of all titles and benefits, over alleged connections to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. And Parliament is considering a Representation of the People Bill, to extend the vote to 16- and 17-year-olds and widen the range of accepted voter ID.
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“We have a duty to find a way forward,” the leader of the House of Lords, Baroness Angela Smith, said this week. The change is not about “individuals,” she said, “but [about] the underlying principle that ... no one should sit in our parliament by way of an inherited title.”
By its nature, democracy is rarely a “finished” project. It might now be time for ordinary Britons to claim a greater role in shaping and safeguarding their nation’s unique governing system.