Those following the Stratblog posts know that we’ve been looking at sixteenth century grand strategy for a few weeks this spring.  Garrett Mattingly’s The Armada and Machiavelli’s The Prince both address the politics of that eventful period, but the worlds the two books describe can seem radically different.  Understanding the underlying similarities between Machiavelli’s apparent […]

Tuesday’s newspapers made for some interesting reading on the subject of the Middle East. First, I take note of a New York Times op-ed called “Finish the Job” by James M. Dubik, who is described as a retired Army Lieut. Gen. who oversaw the training of Iraqi troops from the 2007 to 2008. General Dubik […]

President Obama is now passing through what one must hope for both his sake and ours are the worst moments of a presidency no longer young. Abroad, the intervention in Libya has not had the quick and clear results he had hoped.  While things may still go well, and one devoutly hopes that they do, […]

When I first moved to Boston some thirty years ago, The Boston Globe prided itself on being the most liberal newspaper in the country. A joke I heard about then: What will be the very last headline of the Globe? – “World ends tomorrow—women and minorities hit hardest.” Since then the newspaper has been taken […]

I had to fly over to London last week for a meeting and to see some old friends; I lucked into one of those rare spring days when the English weather was perfect.  The sky was blue, the sun was warm, and the flowers and fountains in St. James Park were at their absolute best.  […]

The long-brewing crisis in Syria has entered a critical phase and it is changing the rules of the Middle East.  If the people keep marching and the regime keeps shooting, the Obama administration could face its toughest Middle East choices yet.  Will Samantha Power bomb yet another country in the region, or will she try […]

I’ve been blogging enthusiastically about Brazil and the potential for a new kind of relationship between the two most populous and dynamic republics in the western hemisphere.  And I’d add a little more: for young Americans wondering what country and language they can study that will give them an edge in life, let me suggest […]

For some decades now there has been a debate over the alleged Western bias of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the multitude of activities that have emanated from it. The debate has typically focused on the priority of individual rights over collective or communal rights. The former are supposed to be characteristic of […]

Making connections between the current engagement in Libya and our ongoing project in Iraq is not usually well received. To be fair, there are perhaps more differences than similarities. The European Union’s plans to ask, at last, for UN permission to send ground troops into Libya is nothing if not agonizingly slow in coming to […]

Last year I posted a series on the top ten trends that would shape the new decade and introduced it with a piece on the core reality driving events in our time: the accelerating pace of change.  Driven by forces hardwired into science and capitalism, history is speeding up, societies around the world are being […]