With all the courage and moral dignity that it brought to World War Two, Italy has succeeded in postponing oil sanctions against Syria until November — when current contracts expire.  That said, this craven and self-serving approach might actually turn out for the best.  Sanctions often work better as a threat than as a reality; […]

Some rare good news for President Obama: Britain and France appear to be taking responsibility for post-Ghaddafi Libya. Both countries are now expressing interest in leading the push for Libyan elections. From the Financial Times: The announcement came ahead of a summit in Paris on Libya’s future, at which Britain and France will press Libya’s […]

In late July, an Indian amphibious assault vessel 45 nautical miles off the coast of Vietnam received a strange demand over the radio. The caller identified himself as “the Chinese Navy” and requested that the Indian ship explain its presence “in Chinese waters”. As a story in today’s FT says: This latest example of China’s […]

The Libyan rebels have marched triumphantly into Tripoli this week, but they can’t expect much in the way of congratulations from the African Union, which has thus far refused to recognize the National Transitional Council. With the Great Loon little more than a fugitive, and with pro-Loon forces decimated to the point where only the […]

[A Vintage Via Meadia essay originally published one year ago, republished as a new cohort of first year students tries to figure out how to get the most out of college — and a new cohort of parents tries to figure out how to pay for it.]The anxious emails from students are hitting my in-boxes […]

The Japanese are on to their sixth prime minister in five years. The FT calls it the “PM revolving door”, and says the newest leader, Yoshihiko Noda, will be lucky to get a meeting with President Obama at the White House. In public, the White House welcomed Mr Noda’s appointment. “The relationship between the US […]

China’s low cost manufacturing sector is widely seen as the single biggest contributor to the Middle Kingdom’s dramatic and much-ballyhooed economic rise. For many companies, locating manufacturing operations in China just made too much sense to pass up. One by one, companies with plants in the US, Europe, and even Mexico pulled up stakes to join in […]

As I surveyed the photographs of people in Cairo and elsewhere in the Arab world, mostly young and brimming with enthusiasm, often with fingers raised in a “V” for victory, I was reminded of three similar moments in recent Latin American history, each of which I witnessed firsthand: the Dominican revolution of 1965; the Sandinista […]

How Americans have commemorated the Civil War at fifty, one hundred and 150 years tells us who we are as a nation-in-progress.

To whom are we planning to hand off the war against the Taliban? An inside look at the Afghan National Army.