The Syria and Iran deals were evidently not what they seemed, unless you’d already become inured to this Administration’s amateur-hour grasp of policy process. In which case they were.

For the first time since the Cold War, the United States is going to have to adopt a coherent Eurasian strategy that integrates European, Middle Eastern, South Asian and East Asian policy into a comprehensive design.

Saturday’s Washington Post ran an interesting article on its front page, above the fold left, called “Virginia stays out of gaming as stakes rise.”  As the author, with the very improbable name of J. Freedom du Lac, explains, Virginia is one of only ten states (plus the District of Columbia) to have successfully resisted the […]

In its November 2013 issue Commentary magazine carried an article by Jonathan Tobin, “Loving us to Death: How America’s Embrace is Imperiling American Jewry”. The article takes off from the rather startling findings of A Portrait of Jewish Americans, a survey of the Pew Center for Research. The demographic decline in the number of Jews […]

Many in the West see “balance of power” and “spheres of influence” as antiquated and less-than-legitimate concepts and therefore largely ignore them. It’s time to ditch that conceit.

As is often the case in Thailand, politics are complicated and press reports tend to be garbled. But that doesn’t mean this is not an important story to watch.

A lot has happened since I last wrote, on November 13, about the P5+1-Iran nuclear negotiations. The main development, of course, is that there is now a signed “interim” agreement and, as was not the case on November 12, there is a text to be perused. It’s not entirely obvious how or why we got […]

As the powers negotiated in Geneva, and as the Israelis and Saudis hissed warnings from the sidelines, flame wars burst out among the chatterati over the nuclear agreement with Iran. Some on our Twitter feed say that the interim nuclear deal with Iran is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Others think it’s the biggest […]

Democrats moved yesterday to eliminate the filibuster in the Senate for most presidential nominees, sweeping aside a decades-old convention in what has come to be known colloquially in Washington as ‘the nuclear option‘: The rule change allows nominations to proceed with a simple majority, or 51 votes when all senators are present, down from the […]

Just as his release of embarrassing secrets about U.S. cyber intelligence tarnished Washington’s relations with many European nations last month, so have Edward Snowden’s leaks now led to a serious diplomatic stand-off between Australia and Indonesia.