As the Iranian mullahs’ nuclearization drive reaches its end goal, Western policymakers face a narrowing range of bad options. There are difficult choices ahead, and those choices are made all the more difficult by Tehran’s long track record of vicious rhetoric directed at Israel—the most notorious example of which was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s call […]

Fellow AI editor and blogger Adam Garfinkle has long been critical of the Obama Administration’s policies in Libya and Syria, and he recently offered some sage advice for policymakers working on Afghanistan: Look before you leap. His advice does not paint a pretty picture for the future of Afghanistan. [T]he entire enterprise of responsible U.S. and […]

The Telegraph reports on the latest development in the ever expanding world of state-sponsored cyberwarfare: Middle Eastern states were targeted and Iran ordered an emergency review of official computer installations after the discovery of a new virus, known as Flame.Experts said the massive malicious software was 20 times more powerful than other known cyber warfare […]

Feckless UN bureaucrats have tried to ban Dante and give Mt. Rushmore back to the Native Americans. Now comes news that serial human rights violator and war criminal Robert Mugabe has been appointed as an International Envoy for Tourism. The Guardian reports this development with wry understatement: Improbable as it seems, the man widely accused of […]

Chinese citizens have been using microblogging sites to get around government censorship, and the Bo Xilai and Chen Guangcheng affairs have increased the frequency of covert, critical conversation. Users evade the authorities by discussing politics in code, playing with homonyms and puns. Wen Jiabao, for instance, has been dubbed ‘Teletubby”; ‘Tomato” is often associated with […]

For the past month, contagion from Greece’s slow motion meltdown has been spreading west. Spain is now on the verge of collapse, and Italy and Portugal may not be far behind. Now the crisis may be spreading north as well. Despite recent signs of recovery in Ireland, concerns about a Greek euro exit and a […]

In an article at the Financial Times—reprinted on his blog—Frank Fukuyama looks at China’s authoritarian system, its benefits and dangers, and what is missing: The issue that Chinese governments have never been able to solve is what was historically known as the “Bad Emperor” problem:  while unchecked power in the hands of a benevolent and […]

[Thanks to Via Meadia’s Man in Istanbul for this roundup of the top stories in Turkey over the last few days.]In a closely watched statement, Interior Minister İdris Naim Şahin articulated what has emerged as the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) line on claims published by the Wall Street Journal that U.S. intelligence prompted […]

In recent weeks I have twice written in this space of the Obama Administration’s efforts to cover up its politically motivated spinelessness over Syria with efforts to make it seem like it’s doing something constructive. Using the New York Times as its very willing channel, it first tried to crow over its closer cooperation with […]

Remember when meetings to debate and negotiate an international carbon treaty were big news? The Copenhagen Summit was hailed as the largest assembly of world leaders ever to gather for one event; when it fizzled in waves of shame and confusion, the green movement was shocked and dismayed.There was a lot of happy talk, of […]