Why does Russia always seem to be a step ahead of the U.S. in Syria? The answer is simple: Moscow knows exactly what it wants, and the U.S. doesn’t.

Western analysts have failed to understand Russia for many of the same reasons they failed to understand the Soviet Union: a rejection of normative criteria.

The ironies of the pragmatists’ approach to US-Russian relations.

Russia is increasingly turning to armies of legal professionals to press its interests and bully its detractors in the West.

The U.S. should back Taiwanese voters’ clear call to remain separate from China.

How do Russia and the West see one another? What are the experts’ views on the confrontation between Russia and the West? How do the pundits explain the Russo-Ukrainian war and Russia’s Syrian gambit? What are the roots of the mythology about Russia in the West, and why has the West failed to predict and understand Russia’s trajectory? These questions and more will be discussed in this essay and in the series to follow.

The dangers of believing in the myth of Progress.

Amidst tragedy and sectarian hatred, moderate Shi‘a in Saudi Arabia have an historic opportunity to reject militancy and to speak up for their rights.

Putin rings in the New Year with a blustery new National Security Strategy.

What the rise and fall of a 12th-century Islamic empire does (and doesn’t) tell us about the rise (and fall?) of ISIS.