The Obama administration’s decision to shutter 21 embassies across the Middle East for fear of a “serious,” albeit vague Al Qaeda threat hasn’t won it many friends this week. Especially in the wake of Benghazi, no doubt the President considered the move a necessary and responsible safety precaution to protect the lives of American diplomats. […]

Secretary of State John Kerry went uncomfortably off-message yesterday in Pakistan, voicing a surprising level of support for Egypt’s military to journalists in Islamabad: “In effect, they were restoring democracy,” Mr. Kerry said of Egypt’s military to Pakistan’s Geo News during a South Asia tour on Thursday. “The military did not take over, to the […]

It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but it’s stunning nonetheless: an entrepreneur in India has managed to bring down the cost of a coronary bypass surgery to $1,583; the same procedure costs $106,385 in one clinic in the United States. Devi Shetty has opened a series of medical centers all across India to serve a population of […]

It turns out that the smart diplomats and strategery buffs in the White House have taken another look at the situation in Syria and reached a new conclusion: that Assad isn’t going anywhere after all. The Syrian civil war is going to drag murderously on into the indefinite future, jihadi groups will fester and multiply […]

 Is Egypt’s revolution falling apart? Clashes between anti-government protestors and Muslim Brotherhood supporters turned deadly yesterday, leaving at least three—including an American college student—dead. These clashes come ahead of massive country-wide demonstrations against President Morsi scheduled for Sunday. The NYT reports that on-the-ground forces are even speaking of a civil war: The use of firearms […]

[This essay is part of a series that examines the five critical challenges America faces in our time. The first group of essays in the series looked at the problem of jobs as the economy transitions from an industrial to an information economy; the next group, which starts today, takes on the challenge of managing […]

Could the Obama administration in its second term be making a series of Middle East policy mistakes even more expensive and destructive than those the Bush administration made in its first? That is admittedly a high bar, but the trends are unsettling to say the least. The region is unraveling and American policy is in […]

The news from the White House today brings the United States significantly closer to yet another Middle Eastern war. Concluding that “forces loyal” to the brutal Syrian dictator Assad had used chemical weapons against rebels, President Obama is stepping up the “scope and scale” of aid to the forces seeking to drive Assad from power. […]

As if the Tea Party/IRS mess isn’t enough, the White House has been shaken to its foundations by a series of dramatic and devastating revelations about the unsuspected reach of the government’s surveillance of the telephone records, email and other activities of US citizens without their knowledge. The President’s liberal base is stunned and appalled, […]

President Obama has a strategy for American counterterror policy and he is sticking to it; that was the core message of the speech the President gave Thursday at the National Defense University.Confronted by a troubling strategic and political situation in the world at large as well as in the complex conflict that he does not […]