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 […]

There’s a tough issue that humanitarian interventionists need to take into account when it comes to Syria. There is really no good way to read the Constitution that gives the president an unlimited unilateral power to order US forces into combat for humanitarian missions, and it is even harder to find justification for a unilateral […]

[A Vintage Via Meadia essay originally published three years ago, republished and retweaked as a new cohort of first year students tries to figure out how to get the most out of college — and a new cohort of parents tries to figure out how to pay for it.]The anxious emails from students are hitting […]

The tea leaves aren’t easy to read, but at this point Congress appears to be inching reluctantly towards granting President Obama some manner of authorization to bomb Syria. But even as they come closer to authorizing acts of war, our elected representatives seem to be trying to evade the harsh truth about what they are […]

On August 30, 2013, the Washington Post carried a story about a draft for the new Egyptian constitution, which is to replace the one promulgated in 2012 under President Morsi. The latter had pushed through that constitution in a parliament packed with supporters of his Muslim Brotherhood (this was one of the reasons for the […]

“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 […]

Little did I suspect when I put down my pen on August 30, having finished “Painted into a Corner, Obama Ponders Cosmetic Strikes”, that yet another self-inflicted verbal wound from the White House could possibly make the crisis of U.S. Syria policy even worse. I guess I misunderestimated the man. President Obama’s decision to go […]

I could spend the next ten posts or so describing how poorly crafted legislative mandates have led to bad administrative outcomes, but I’ll provide just one here that is quite typical of many developing-world public agencies.The city of Hyderabad, India, has been one of the fastest growing over the past two decades, and one of […]

There is little to quarrel with in President Obama’s speech—beyond the usual observation that telling your opponents that your military attacks will be limited and short term is probably not the wisest course. Otherwise, he was clear. He is not letting the paralysis of the United Nations Security Council define his options and he has […]

The world’s eyes are riveted on Syria this week, as the United States, France and perhaps a few others organize plans to punish a bloodstained government for its use of chemical weapons against its own people. It’s a story that has everything: the prospect of violence, the political agony of an embattled White House, David […]