With British-Argentine tensions escalating in the South Atlantic over the barren Falkland Islands, many observers, Via Meadia included, have predicted a similar confrontation over Gibraltar, Britain’s other controversial possession. Now this very scenario appears to be playing out, as Gibraltar’s new Chief Minister had scarcely ascended to his chair when Spain intensified its claim to […]

First the mullahs bailed on their threat to close the Strait of Hormuz. Now they’ve walked back their promise to boycott the European Union in response to its oil embargo. Writes the Financial Times (subscription required): Rostam Ghasemi, Iran’s oil minister, on Saturday said that any cut-off in Iranian oil supplies would target “hostile states” […]

The great voices of history are often said to echo down through the generations. But as the New York Times reports, sometimes those voices are more than just a metaphor: Tucked away for decades in a cabinet in Thomas Edison’s laboratory, just behind the cot in which the great inventor napped, a trove of wax […]

Via NPR strategy whiz Andy Carvin come some remarkable prep notes written for Bashar Assad before his December interview with Barbara Walters. Excerpts: It is hugely important and worth mentioning that “mistakes” have been done in the beginning of the crises because we did not have a well-organized “police force”. American Psyche can be easily […]

I have, to put it mildly, been somewhat astonished at the heated reaction that my blog post “Do Institutions Matter?” has provoked, culminating in a letter from the Hungarian State Secretary for Communication, Zoltán Kovács, to The American Interest complaining about my piece and contesting various points in it. I’m now one of the few […]

If Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were an American college president, he’d be fighting for his life right now.  Said Sergei, according to Reuters: “Some of the voices heard in the West with evaluations of the results of the vote in the U.N. Security Council on the Syria resolution sound, I would say, improper, somewhere […]

New debt figures from Europe are encouraging, for a change. Greek debt is up, and so are debt levels in Portugal, Ireland and Spain.But in Italy, as in the eurozone as a whole, debt edged down in the third quarter of last year.If this trend continues, and Italy continues to widen the distance between itself […]

China has passed a law banning Chinese airlines from complying with an EU directive to buy carbon permits to offset CO2 generated on passenger and cargo flights to and from EU destinations.  It’s the strongest step yet in global resistance to the EU requirement, which India, the US and most other countries around the world […]

In Moscow this Saturday thousands of people marched against fraudulent elections and the Putin regime’s general abuse of power. This was the third such mass protest since the December 4 parliamentary elections, in which Vladimir Putin’s previously dominant United Russia party failed to get more than 50 percent of the vote despite widespread fraud in […]

The quest for a new social model has to start with economics. America could survive without growing prosperity and rising standards of living, but it would not flourish — and it would not be living up to its potential to create a better life not only for Americans but for people all over the world.  […]