Cyber security is an ultra-modern challenge, but we could learn a lot about it by examining how pre-modern European city-states managed their defenses.

The former director of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty assesses what's right and what's wrong with U.S. broadcasting policy.

Scholars are fond of criticizing ideologues who ransack history for useful material to promote contemporary agendas. It turns out that many scholars do more or less the same thing.

Walker Percy distrusted the esoteric and the arcane, looking instead to the concrete and the quotidian as a bridge to faith and meaning. A man of both the American South and the Catholic Church, his novels and essays never evince a claim to know any mortal's destination—only the value of the journey.

The venerable publishing house Scribner recently published a new edition of Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel A Farewell to Arms, complete with all the many endings the author rejected. “I rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, 39 times before I was satisfied”, he told The Paris Review. Given a little […]

By Roger BerkowitzConspiracies are everywhere. From the President’s birthplace to U.S. involvement in 9/11, conspiracy theorists rule the airwaves. It is easy to mock those who purvey false certainties, but that should not stop us from taking them seriously. When people feel threatened and uneasy, in times of spiritual homelessness and economic dislocation, there is […]

For policymakers, the main appeal of unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) is that by keeping pilots and ground crews far from harm’s way, they dramatically reduce the political risks and costs of conducting military operations. That explains why the Obama administration is relying on drones to play the lead role in what used to be […]

The evolving crisis over Iran’s nuclear program has led the governments of the United States, Israel and other regional states to draw “red lines” that have shifted with time. Unfortunately, these red lines may be self-defeating in that their constant shifting gravely corrodes the credibility of those who set them—that is, credibility not only in […]

Mitt Romney’s midsummer foray into foreign policy has left Democrats giddy with schadenfreude. More than his stumbling performance abroad, however, it’s the substance of Romney’s views that ought to really give voters pause.  Or, more precisely, lack of substance. With less than 100 days to go, Romney has yet to develop a coherent outlook on […]

It seems that each week brings with it another news item about some jaw-dropping development in drone technology. Take, for example, the recent report in Britain’s Guardian newspaper that scientists at Northrop Grumman and Sandia National Laboratories are working on plans for nuclear-powered drones capable of loitering over target areas for months at a time. […]