The situation in Syria today, now occupying the top slot on the international agenda, is about more than just the U.S.-Russia political compromise on chemical weapons. It is also about the interethnic and sectarian tensions driving Syria’s civil war. These tensions are echoing well beyond Syria itself, into the countries of the Greater Caucasus region, […]

Americans define personal success in different ways, but certainly no one strives for mediocrity. Maybe this is why Tyler Cowen’s latest book is getting people angry.

Larry Summers wrote a smart column in the FT this past weekend, arguing that the debt ceiling deadlock in Washington and its attendant wrangling over minutiae like medical device taxes may very well go down in history as a minor event. The debt itself, he argues, shouldn’t be keeping us up at night: it’s a […]

The murder of a 25 year-old Russian national last Thursday led to a violent riot in Moscow on Sunday. After a media outlet reported that the suspect in the murder was of “non-Slavic appearance”, Muscovites gathered to protest, attacking a vegetable warehouse that employs large numbers of illegal migrant workers, most of them Muslims from […]

Some of the environmental movement’s smarter members are ditching the knee-jerk, emotionally-wrought strategy to bash fracking as an evil phenomenon. The shale energy debate is extremely polarized, its middle ground deserted, but some notable “fracktivists” are crossing the green picket line. The AP reports: In one northeastern Pennsylvania village that became a global flashpoint in […]

In addition to his Le Monde interview, WRM also give at a talk at the Institut Français des Relations Internationales on the future of US power and US leadership when he was in France. And this one is in English! A taste: The US has come to the end of the road in some ways in the Middle […]

America’s nuclear industry isn’t healthy. Thanks to the rise of cheap shale energy, four nuclear plants have closed so far this year. Older reactors can’t compete with today’s energy market conditions, but a new generation of nuclear technology promises to breathe new life into the industry. NuScale Power has plans to shrink containment vessels down to […]

College applicants should may notice their financial aid packets getting a bit thinner this year. The Wall Street Journal reports that a number of colleges are cutting both tuition and financial aid in an effort to attract cost-sensitive students and break their dependence on financial aid and scholarships. Effectively, these colleges are gambling that they can […]

A lot happened in Asia this week. Chinese officials are suffering the revenge of scorned mistresses, while the country’s young working class is agitating for higher pay. China’s state-owned oil company CNOOC bought a Canadian firm for a cool $15 billion earlier this year, and might already be feeling buyer’s remorse. China is increasingly looking abroad for […]

A new study out of Stanford University looks at the rates at which private insurance companies reimburse doctors nationwide, and finds the results utterly baffling. Doctors are paid dramatically different rates for doing the same procedures (some twice as much as others), and there doesn’t seem to be any reason at all for it. Reuters: […]