Yes, Brazilians still love soccer, but they hate the World Cup and what it has come to represent: a prize whose luster will fade fast after the games are done and Brazil’s chronic economic problems remain.

Has political hierarchy in the form of the state met its match in today’s networked world?

When no values are worth fighting for, all that matters is the fight itself, and victory, no matter what the cause. It’s both a understandable and eminently dangerous sentiment that has led to much suffering in the 20th century.

For years the United States has relied on the Gulf Cooperation Council as a force multiplier and an oasis of stability in a volatile part of the world, but internal disagreements are now threatening the GCC’s unity.

The President’s new emissions rules are as historic as they are contentious, and it’s too early to see whether they can efficiently achieve their intended effect. What is clear, however, is that this breakthrough was made possible in spite of—not thanks to—the environmental movement, and that lasting green progress will come at the expense of the biases and ideals of those who claim they want to save the planet most.

Boko Haram’s horrors are no more attributable to Islam than they are to the perpetrators’ identities as Nigerians or Africans. They instead have everything to do with what happens when societies don’t put the brakes on men—or menace.

Seventy years ago, D-Day marked the pinnacle of the U.S.-UK “special relationship.” Today British military power is a shell of its former self.

From the Middle East to Europe to Asia, the Obama Administration looks increasingly adrift. A serious course-correction has to happen soon.

It is very doubtful whether there are any “laws of history”. However, there are certain recurring sequences of events that make one suspect that similar circumstances are likely to have similar consequences. One such sequence is that movements of liberation result in repressive regimes.

The President’s recent remarks at West Point show that he doesn’t understand the rules of the game he’s playing with Vladimir Putin in Ukraine.