In his reluctance to brandish America’s world leadership credentials at every turn, President Obama is tapping into an interesting if frustrating strain of American history—and it just might help America learn the wisdom of great power prudence and humility.

The errant 2002–03 U.S. intelligence estimate of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction stockpiles and the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on the Iranian nuclear weapons program are two of the most controversial judgments in the history of the U.S. intelligence community.

American passivity has already helped ensure that the fall of Bashar al-Assad will be worse than it might have been. What will Washington do with Syria when it can no longer do nothing?

Recent commentary on Europe has been overwhelmingly parochial. You can’t talk about the continent’s crises and future in a vacuum.

Turkish secularism is eroding before our eyes, and the resulting cocktail of religious intolerance and social activism may even threaten the current Islamist leaders who are mixing it up.

Historian Peter Brown’s critique of Edward Gibbon also sheds light on the popular myths of American decline.

It’s still too early to render definitive judgment on the Iraq War, but it’s high time to start asking the right questions. We may need the answers sooner than we think.

Some Australian strategists have taken a shine to Beijing. If Australia’s loyalty to America can be shaken, none of America’s Asian alliances is safe.

Political inequality drives economic inequality, not the other way around.

Large cities in poorly and misgoverned lands have problems dis- tinct from those in more affluent, better-institutionalized democracies. The denizens of the latter fail to appreciate what ails those of the former even as they produce “wasteful waste” of their own.