Merry Christmas and happy holiday to all! We are having a tense morning at the ancestral Mead home today, jumping whenever the telephone rings. There’s an old South Carolina custom that when two friends or relations greet one another on Christmas morning, the first one who says “Christmas gift!” gets to select one of the […]

James Holmes, a professor of strategy at the Naval War College, is thinking about America’s new Pacific entente, the rise of China, and the possible directions US-Indian cooperation can take down the road.  Blogging at The Diplomat, Holmes writes: The U.S., Japanese, South Korean, and Australian navies already field Aegis and ballistic-missile defense systems or […]

Prime Minister David Cameron’s Christmas message to the Falkland Islanders was as clear as anything Mrs. Thatcher would have said. Whatever challenges we face in the UK, the British Government’s commitment to the security and prosperity of the overseas territories, including the Falklands, remains undiminished. ”So let me be absolutely clear. We will always maintain […]

As political and economic conditions in Egypt deteriorate, a new kind of refugee is beginning to appear, one that will test America’s character.  Violence against Christians is growing; bad economic times, the inability or unwillingness of security forces and police to keep order, and the growing tide of Islamist political and religious mobilizations is making […]

Earlier in the week, Via Meadia commented on how Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s remarks to CBS were so strong that the Obama administration seems committed to military measures if Iran proceeds with its nuclear program.  For many commentators, that point was overshadowed by the aggressive timetable the SecDef laid out, suggesting that the mullahs could […]

[It’s Christmas Eve today and time for the oldest tradition at Via Meadia: our annual Yule Blog when we present the thirteen posts of Christmas running from Christmas Eve through Twelfth Night. During this holiday season in 2011-2012 there will be some light ordinary blogging as well and in January we will return to a […]

The American withdrawal was going to lead to a time of testing in Iraq in any case, but political overreaching by the Shiite majority is making a bad situation worse.During the first years of the American presence, it was the Sunnis who fatally misread the power realities of Iraq.  Having been dominant in Iraq since […]

Against a background of growing concern about slowing growth, the Indian government is launching a major infrastructure drive, targeting power plants, highways, airports and other critical bottlenecks that are slowing the country’s growth, reports the Financial Times.Greens will not rejoice; the government wants a rapid expansion of coal mining, believing that exploiting domestic coal represents […]

The entente that could change the world is off to a strong start.  US officials describe the first ever Japan-US-India trilateral talks as a huge success.  Foreign Policy’s The Cable reports: Two State Department officials described the meeting for The Cable. “What I really loved about it was that it just seemed like a very […]

Many Middle East Christians were initially optimistic that the changes sweeping through their region as part of the ‘Arab Spring’ protests would usher in a new era of tolerance. But as the Arab Spring has congealed into a cold and dark regional winter, the FT reports that Christians in Egypt, Syria and Iraq find little […]