The consensus surrounding Syria has been that President Bashar al-Assad was on the defensive, but at least one U.S. general disagrees with that assessment. Marine General James Mattis—who is head of U.S. Central Command—said that with Assad gaining “momentum” on the battlefield, the situation will “get worse before it gets better” and that he expects […]

We’ve grown used to thinking of the developing world as a region beset by insurmountable poverty and strife, but the truth is that sometimes there’s good news too. A new report cited in the New York Times claims that the past few years have in fact been very kind to developing countries. Economists have been […]

President Obama’s “pivot to Asia” appears to have come at just the right moment. A new report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) claims that defense spending in Asia this year is set to overtake that of Europe for the first time in centuries.The report, which Financial Times calls “a blunt assessment of […]

The economy keeps sending mixed signals. First we see progress in the energy sector leading to broader job growth in the economy as a whole, then we hear that rising energy prices are threatening to stop the recovery in its tracks. Now the pendulum is swinging back to the positive with some of the best […]

Here at Via Meadia we’ve been skeptical that our recent trade of food aid for the end to a North Korean nuclear program was anything more than an old trick to extort concessions from America, but the Economist is more optimistic. Hailing the recent deal as a “breakthrough,” it notes that the recent succession has altered the […]

The Wall Street Journal is running a WRM piece on the continuing US role in the Middle East this morning; it’s been reprinted, without the paywall, by RealClearWorld. Writes WRM: The Middle East is on fire. As waves of populist, ethnic and religious unrest sweep the region, long-established regimes totter like ninepins, violent conflicts explode […]

According to the conventional wisdom, moderate Republican Senator Scott Brown was supposed to be toast in Massachusetts. After leftie Democratic hero and Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren entered the race riding a veritable tidal wave of favorable buzz and national publicity, the election had all but been called for her.There’s just one problem with this triumphalist […]

There has been an enormous amount of media and public attention on two young American athletes, rising stars in respectively football and basketball—Tim Tebow of the Denver Broncos and Jeremy Lin of the New York Knicks. My knowledge of the two sports is roughly equivalent to my knowledge of nuclear physics, but I understand that […]

I wrote fairly recently a fourth update on Libya, thinking it would be the last update for a while. But having read this morning’s New York Times, I can’t resist a short comment. An article by Suliman Ali Alzawy and David D. Kirkpatrick reports that Libyans in the eastern province, centered on Benghazi, have declared […]

Germany has been pushing a fiscal treaty as the solution to the problems of the eurozone, but the pact, signed by European leaders at a summit in Brussels on March 2, is hitting roadblocks at every turn. First Francois Hollande announced he would trash this treaty if he were elected (something that looks likelier every day). Now, opposition […]