The dispute over Edward Snowden—if anyone still remembers him—gave us the chance to slough off the mindset constraining Western policy towards Russia. How Western nations proceed over Syria will show how far that chance is developed. The US “reset” was a reset to factory mode, not a fresh beginning, and the factory was built to […]

The Circus Is Over (For Now) by Lilia Shevtsova The Real Test for Obama on Russia by David J. Kramer Russia and the West: No Special Treatment by Andrew Wood

Compared to the G8 meeting in June in Northern Ireland, when he seemed isolated on the issue of Syria, Vladimir Putin seemed to have lots of company in opposing any possible U.S. military action at last week’s G20 meeting in St. Petersburg. Reasonable people can have legitimate differences over what should be done in Syria […]

The Israeli-Turkish relationship has experienced ups and downs since 1949, when Turkey was the first Muslim country to recognize the State of Israel. And because both countries are partners with the United States in a sensitive region, American policy has an invested stake in that relationship as well—one which occasionally demands active engagement during low […]

“Americans,” Robert Kaplan has observed, “champion idealism while employing realists perhaps because we need to have a high opinion of ourselves while pursuing our own interests.” There’s a lot of truth to this. After all, beneath the soaring rhetoric about spreading freedom and democracy, the most successful foreign-policy presidents tend to espouse a kind of […]

One of the more interesting details to come from the Snowden-leaked federal ‘black budget’ for 2013 is the extent to which Pakistan is now one of the biggest targets for US intelligence: Pakistan appears at the top of charts listing critical U.S. intelligence gaps. It is named as a target of newly formed analytic cells. […]

The Spanish economy has been taking a beating since the Euro crisis began. Unemployment rates in Spain are at record levels, with young people hit particularly hard. Young, out-of-work Spaniards are increasingly leaving home in search of greener pastures elsewhere. Other EU countries like Germany, France or Great Britain, as well as the United States, […]

This is a guest post by Adam Garfinkle, editor of The American Interest. It is cross-posted from his blog elsewhere on this site. Be sure to bookmark his page!It is often remarked, mainly by frustrated parents and disrespected teachers, that two wrong do not make a right. But then what do they make? The scolds never […]

We are saddened to learn that David S. Landes, economic historian and author of canonical works such as The Wealth and Poverty of Nations and A Revolution In Time passed away on August 17. If you by chance are not acquainted with his work, we encourage you to start by reading Chapter 1 of his Prometheus Unbound, excerpted […]

In early August, TAI editor Adam Garfinkle sat down with General Michael V. Hayden in his Washington office to talk about recent intelligence-related headlines and what is behind those headlines. General Hayden, a retired Air Force Four-Star, has served as director of the National Security Agency (1999–2005), as Principal Deputy to the Director of National Intelligence (2005–06) and as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (2006–09). Here is a lightly edited transcript of that conversation.