Obama as Carter comparisons continue to roll in, from the Left as well as the Right.

John Allen, the White House’s point man on countering ISIS, has said that taking Damascus is not a part of U.S. strategy. Our Sunni allies think otherwise, and they won’t be happy to hear this.

Nigeria doesn’t share Syria’s experience with state-building, which will make dealing with Boko Haram in some ways more difficult than dealing with ISIS, even if the latter is a more direct threat to the West. That’s likely to have costs—and not only for Nigeria.

Dilma Rousseff has narrowly beat out the center-right candidate Aecio Neves in Brazil’s presidential election. But Rousseff’s gain could be Brazil’s loss as her Worker’s Party enters its fourth consecutive term of presidential power.

ISIS is attacking Lebanon’s border, and meanwhile, gaining influence among the country’s Sunnis. With dissent in the national army, poor finances, and Hezbollah’s all-in support for Assad, Lebanon is trying to prevent the Syrian Civil War from becoming a Lebanese Civil War.

Ukraine’s elections have confirmed the country’s desire to continue on its course for integration with the West. But the road ahead is long and difficult, with oligarchs whose interests don’t include transparency and accountability still holding overwhelming power in the country.

Market factors made it inevitable that China’s monopoly on rare earth element production would be temporary.

China and Iran both say that they want their militaries to work more closely together. The world’s revisionist powers will only keep seeking to overturn the structures of the global world order.

China’s plans to roll out its vaunted BRICS development bank are not going very well, because its foreign policy cannot have one foot in the door of the liberal world order, and one foot out.

Environmentalists tend to paint a grim portrait of a future, in which humanity’s quest for growth leads to widespread environmental devastation. But the ongoing transition to an information economy suggests that a different and altogether more hopeful future awaits.