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. […]

Forget peak oil; forget the Middle East. The energy revolution of the 21st century isn’t about solar energy or wind power and the “scramble for oil” isn’t going to drive global politics. The energy abundance that helped propel the United States to global leadership in the 19th and 2oth centuries is back; if the energy […]

This year’s Bastille Day promises to be a very sombre affair.  In a move being billed variously as a “disaster”, “bloodbath” and “earthquake”, car marker PSA Peugeot-Citröen announced on July 12 that it would be laying off 8,000 workers throughout France and stopping auto production at one of its flagship plants at Aulnay-sous-Bois, not far […]

The collapse of the latest round of negotiations between the great powers and the Islamic Republic of Iran in Moscow has prompted the usual soul-searching in Washington and Brussels: Did we misread the mullahs’ psychology yet again? Could a sweeter Western proposal have overcome their natural mistrust? These are worthwhile questions to ask. But the emotional […]

The past several days have elapsed without my having made a comment here on matters Middle Eastern. That does not mean nothing has been going on, but nothing has happened of such a dramatic nature as to focus any extended comment. Reality does not always pour forth with punctuation marks, so that it seems to […]

The vice presidency is the job that everyone wants but nobody likes. The desire is obvious. A spot on the presidential ticket provides ambitious politicians (which is to say, politicians) with the most precious commodity in politics: national exposure. Moreover, scandal, illness and assassination have conspired to elevate an extraordinary number of vice-presidents to the […]

As a social scientist with broad cross-national interests, I subscribe to a number of periodicals that provide reasonably reliable information on what goes on in different parts of the world. But every couple of weeks or so I go to Harvard Square and browse for what looks interesting in the kiosk that sits in the […]

It is difficult to decipher whether those who argue that Russia holds the keys to the solution of the Syrian crisis really believe it or are using Russia as an excuse to do nothing. The recent Syrian Action Group meeting in Geneva clearly showed that the Kremlin is not moving closer to the position of […]

Over the past year, we’ve been watching a geopolitical revolution get underway. It’s much bigger and more consequential than the Arab Spring, though the legacy media are giving it much less play. It will rearrange the global chessboard, improving the position of some powers, weakening others. It is a powerful boost to American power, reducing […]

The news has come that Manaf Tlass, an intimate Republican Guard friend of Bashir al-Assad, has defected to Turkey. As the press is saying, this is the most significant inner-circle defection since the beginning of the Syrian uprising. It could well be a sign that the inner circle is cracking in the belief that Assad […]