America’s test

The world this week

Politics
Business
KAL’s cartoon
This week’s cover
Leaders


The stakes in Gaza
American power: indispensable or ineffective?
How Joe Biden manages the war between Israel and Hamas will define America’s global role

How to destroy an economy—and get away with it
Argentina’s election result is the worst of all possible outcomes
Sergio Massa, the economy minister, will now go head-to-head with Javier Milei

Think, then act
Governments must not rush into policing AI
A summit in Britain will focus on “extreme” risks. But no one knows what they look like

Just about managing
How to be a better boss
Tips from “Boss Class”, our new podcast

The green transition
Sodium batteries offer an alternative to tricky lithium
Lithium is relatively scarce and mostly refined in China. Sodium is neither

Letters

On Israel and Gaza
Letters to the editor
By Invitation


Global disorder
Mikhail Khodorkovsky says that support for Israel should not come at the expense of Ukraine
Briefing


Dread and disagreement
Why Israel’s invasion of Gaza has been delayed
Bibi and his generals are divided

Biden’s bandwidth
The overstretched superpower
America could face wars in the Middle East, Ukraine and Taiwan

Escalation in the Middle East
Why Saudi Arabia and the UAE want to keep links with Israel
Are the Abraham accords over?

The scavenger power
Iran’s ayatollahs play the Middle East’s most dangerous game
They want to escalate without triggering full-blown war

The day after
Can the Palestinian Authority control Gaza if Hamas is ousted?
It may be lucky to keep control of the West Bank by the end of this war
Asia


Strait talk
Taiwan’s opposition parties are struggling to unite
Present perfect
What gift would you give Narendra Modi?
Back to the future
Nawaz Sharif returns to Pakistan, again
Intrigue at court
Jokowi is building a political dynasty
Banyan
South Korean politics is one big row about history
Warabistan
Meet the Japanese Kurds
China


Treading gingerly
Why China and India are watching the Dalai Lama closely
In the dark
Rumours swirl after China’s defence minister, Li Shangfu, is sacked
Chaguan
How China sees Gaza
United States


Speak now
America’s House of Representatives finally has a speaker
Losing their religion
The Republican Party no longer believes America is the essential nation
Birds of New York
How to make NYC work better for its winged inhabitants
Oh my gourd
The economics of pumpkin patches
Lexington
Mitt Romney is the fixed point revealing the Republicans’ slide

Middle East & Africa


An interview with the president
Senegal’s president asks if democracy can work in Africa’s coup-belt
Pesticidal farmers
Nigeria is awash with dangerous pesticides
A king who stoops not to conquer
History will complicate King Charles’s visit to Kenya
The Americas


The enduring power of Peronism
Argentina’s presidential election delivers a surprise result
Paraguay’s population puzzle
Over a million Paraguayans disappear in the latest census
How to lose friends and irritate people
Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s left-wing president, is floundering
Europe


An Ataturk complex
Instead of undoing Ataturk’s legacy, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has claimed it
Seabed skulduggery
Who is sabotaging underwater infrastructure in the Baltic Sea?
Much at stake
The French debate the future of steak frites
What have you got left?
Ukraine’s allies are scrambling to bolster its air defences
The same old Balkan tinderbox
A mysterious attack in northern Kosovo rattles everyone
Charlemagne
What markets are trying to tell Europe—and why it should listen
Britain


Magic town
The most typical place in Britain is Basildon
Still knotty
Is the Windsor framework in Northern Ireland working?
Fight for the power
Britain must overhaul the way it approves infrastructure
The ghosts at the feast
Liz Truss and Jeremy Corbyn still haunt British politics
Not that by the by
Do by-election results in Britain matter?
Family division
Britain’s family-court system is overwhelmed
Bagehot
The rise and fall of class dysphoria in Britain
Business


The impossible job
Pity the modern manager—burnt-out, distracted and overloaded
Bartleby
Would you rather be a manager or a leader?
Of evils and evals
The world wants to regulate AI, but does not quite know how
Blackened
Why China is restricting exports of graphite
A year in the life of Meta
How Mark Zuckerberg escaped a metaverse-sized hole
Business oasis
The mood at Davos in the desert is one of anxiety
Schumpeter
Lessons from frugal businesses minting money in India
Finance & economics


Under the microscope
How health-care costs stopped rising
Fleet-footed
America would struggle to break Iran’s oil-smuggling complex
Buttonwood
Investors are returning to hedge funds. That may be unwise
Making a statement
Xi Jinping steps up his attempt to rescue China’s economy
Trade nightmares
America and the EU demonstrate protectionism’s ratchet effect
Consumerzzzzzzzzz
Welcome to the age of the hermit consumer
Free exchange
Israel’s war economy is working—for the time being
Science & technology


A battery ReNaissance
Firms are exploring sodium batteries as an alternative to lithium
Two seats, no pilot
China approves the world’s first flying taxi
Listening to the jungle
AI can catalogue a forest’s inhabitants simply by listening
Culture


Art hubs and snubs
The arts in Paris are booming—and trying to nip at London’s heels
The long (over)haul
One of Berlin’s star attractions is closing for 14 years
In a spin
How superstars and heritage acts hijacked the vinyl revival
A true-life African murder mystery
CIA plots, coups and a gold-capped molar in Congo
(Back) home on the range
Ken Burns chronicles the sad fate of the American buffalo
The architecture of death
Drug lords’ tombs are monuments to opulence
Economic & financial indicators

Indicators
Economic data, commodities and markets
Obituary


An eye over Gaza
Rushdi Sarraj loved to record what others did not or would not see