The French are calling President Obama Carteresque—and they don’t mean it as a compliment: Carter was a somewhat bland engineer, whereas Obama is a charismatic lawyer. Yet they seem to share a fundamental indecisiveness in their approach to world affairs. Carter had difficulty choosing between the muscular line of his national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, […]

Earlier this week, the staff posted a notice on the blog that my mother’s life was nearing its end. She breathed her last around 11 PM on September 16; since then the family has been caught up in the grief and the business of a heavy loss. We held her funeral on Friday and committed […]

In news this week from Asia, China unveiled two new plans to combat its pollution problem, one involving tax credits for electric vehicles, and the other a commitment to name-and-shame its worst-polluting megacities. A large part of the smog hovering over China’s countryside comes from burning coal; China has aggressively looked to diversify its energy […]

Adam Garfinkle has another excellent essay up on where the roller-coaster that is the Obama administration’s Syria policy is at right now. He wonders aloud whether the uptick in reports of back-channel dialogue between Washington and Tehran has anything to do with President Obama’s series of swift pivots on whether to punish Assad for his […]

Members of a Kurdish Peshmerga battalion show their ink-stained fingers in front of an insignia after voting in the region’s legislative elections at a polling station on September 19, 2013 in the northern Kurdish city of Arbil. Iraq’s Kurdistan, a three-province autonomous region, goes to the polls on September 21, grappling with a swathe of […]

Yet another horrific religiously-motivated massacre occurred this Sunday, this time in Pakistan. The New York Times: The attack occurred as worshipers left the All Saints Church in the old quarter of the regional capital, Peshawar, after a service on Sunday morning. Up to 600 worshipers had attended the service and were leaving to receive free food […]

It was hailed at the time as Norway’s “moon landing,” but Oslo’s outgoing government announced its plan to scrap a carbon capture and storage (CCS) facility. Reuters reports: The plan had been to capture carbon emissions from a natural gas plant at the site, which also hosts an oil refinery, and pipe them into underground storage on […]

Kenya has once again become a frontline in the Lord Voldemort War: the war that must not be named, the conflict once known as the Global War on Terror. So far, as many as 59 people are reported dead as the result of an ongoing siege at Nairobi’s Westlake shopping center. The BBC is reporting […]

Obama’s failed Syria policy has brought renewed attention to the Russian-US relationship, and Putin’s headline grabbing NYT op-ed on the Syria situation has only increased that attention. In light of that, American Interest publisher Charles Davidson’s interview with Hermitage Capital co-founder and CEO William Browder is particularly timely.In the interview, Davidson and Browder discuss the Magnitsky Act, which denies […]

Mara Hvistendahl made waves in 2011 with Unnatural Selection,  her book profiling the global rise of sex-selective abortions. But two new studies highlighted by The Economist say the problem is poised to get worse.The studies look at the Caucasus, where the popularity of sex-selection rivals Asia’s high rates of male preference. The natural ratio of men to women is […]