Participating on book award juries takes a lot of time and is often emotionally difficult as you struggle to do justice to many fine books.  This year I was asked to serve as a juror for Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s annual book prize and as usual there were many more first class books […]

More countries are joining the West with new sanctions on Iran. Yesterday, it was Japan. The WSJ reports: With the new sanctions, approved by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s cabinet Friday morning, Japan said it will freeze the assets of an additional 106 organizations, one individual and three banks, widening to more than 350 the circle […]

Despite the best efforts of Green unicorn hunters, and a last ditch effort to pull some kind of fuzzy pseudo-agreement from the ruins of the Durban meeting, the past year has seen climate treaty issues swept off of the front page in favor of more relevant and dramatic news about the European debt crisis, Iranian […]

I am returning to New York this morning from a speaking engagement in Columbus, Ohio.  Expect normal blogging to resume late in the day.

What's behind it? And can it last?

Creating a zone of democratic peace from Vancouver to Vladivostok.

Proposals for beefing up the non-kinetic side of U.S. statecraft.

Poland's vast, untapped reserves of shale gas can transform global energy markets and European-Russian relations.

A conversation with Pavel Bratinka on the legacy of 20th-century totalitarianism in the Czech Republic.

Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum's That Used to Be Us fights the latest upsurge of American declinism to a draw.