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 […]

In a column this week for the New York Times, Ross Douthat echoes a theme we’ve been developing at Via Meadia for some time: that the bloody unintended consequences of our Libyan humanitarian intervention–from a civil war in Mali to a rise in Islamic radicalism in the region–should give pause to the “Right to Protect” […]

With the news that Mitt Romney is considering selecting his running mate much earlier than the traditional late August announcement date, regular Via Meadia contributor Adam Clancy looks at the “Veepstakes” and asks what, if anything, we can deduce from the process.Go take a look; Adam is a young Australian who has been studying in […]

With the job market still sluggish and some professions looking a little sickly (law, journalism, university teaching, mainline Protestant clergy), more and more college grads are going to be looking for something to do — either for a while to bridge the gap until something long term comes through, or as an alternative career.Maybe because […]

A Pew poll out this week shows how people in Pakistan and several Middle Eastern countries feel about democracy. In most places democracy polls pretty well — and then there is the Land of the Pure. Only 42 percent of those polled in Pakistan think democracy is a good idea, almost twenty percentage points below […]

It turns out that Boston’s “Big Dig” construction project cost taxpayers much more than expected — and enormous bills for interest payments and mass transit are still rolling in.Hailed at its inception as an example of “smart government” and proof that “government can still get things done,” the project was originally estimated to cost $2.8 […]

America’s new Asia policy (pivot, rebalance, refocus, you name it) is, Via Meadia thinks, the right thing to do, but much of the country — including, alas, much of the MSM — doesn’t get how complicated and dangerous a place Asia is. For decades US press coverage and the public discourse of our national leadership […]

California’s dysfunctional alliance between suburban greens urban machines has killed what could and should have been a boom, writes Joel Kotkin at The Daily Beast. As part of a large piece about the political danger to the Democrats that comes from fighting the transformational “brown jobs” boom, Kotkin points out that Californians are turning their […]

A Chinese naval frigate has run aground on a shoal claimed by the Philippines as the South China Sea dispute rolls along. From the Associated Press, via the Washington Post: The Philippines says a Chinese warship entered an area it claims in the South China Sea and ran aground on a shoal, as tensions continue […]

As President Obama prepares to make several campaign stops in Virginia over the weekend, the looming threat of defense budget cuts could prove to be his Achilles’ heel in this crucial swing state.Congress’ failure to reach a deficit reduction deal means that the series of automatic cuts will go into effect, despite the Obama Administration’s […]