The nuances of foreign policy do not feature heavily in the ongoing presidential campaign. Every candidate intends to “destroy” the Islamic State; each has concerns about Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korea, and China; every one of them will defend Israel; and no one wants to talk much about anything else — except, in the case of the Republicans, who rattle their sabers against Iran. In that light, here’s a little trip down memory lane: in October 2012, I considered five critical...

Earlier this month while delivering a public lecture in Kiev, “The Challenges of an Ever-Changing World,” former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made an inspiring remark for anyone who might have been thinking that life in Ukraine was bad: “You should go to Liberia where the standard of living is much lower, and then you will be thankful.” Ironically, Forbes Ukraine reacted to this with a slightly perplexed analysis that nonetheless led to a conclusion of flawless logic: “Although...

On March 23, 2011, at the very start of what we now call the ‘Syrian conflict,’ two young men - Sa’er Yahya Merhej and Habeel Anis Dayoub - were gunned down in the southern Syrian city of Daraa. Merhej and Dayoub were neither civilians, nor were they in opposition to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. They were two regular soldiers in the ranks of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA). Shot by unknown gunmen, Merhej and Dayoub were the first of eighty-eight soldiers killed throughout...

People of goodwill naturally attempt to make sense of terrible events like yesterday's bombings in Brussels, to help themselves address the psychological discomfort that occurs when seemingly incomprehensible violence occurs. We have a hard time processing a world where random bombs go off and kill peaceful travelers in airports or subway stations, because it threatens our equilibrium and sense of personal well-being. This discomfort has intensified in our era of 24 hour global news, whereas...

A crucial problem in news media coverage of the Syrian civil war has been how to characterize the relationship between the so-called “moderate” opposition forces armed by the CIA, on one hand, and the Al Qaeda franchise Al Nusra Front (and its close ally Ahrar al Sham), on the other. But it is a politically sensitive issue for US policy, which seeks to overthrow Syria’s government without seeming to make common cause with the movement responsible for 9/11, and the system of news production has...

Airport security or Gitmo? Transportation security requires competence not sexual assault. The Transportation Security Administration finally obeyed a 2011 federal court order March 3 and issued a 157 page Federal Register notice justifying its controversial full-body scanners and other checkpoint procedures. TSA’s notice ignored the fact that the “nudie” scanners are utterly unreliable; TSA failed to detect 95% of weapons and mock bombs that Inspector General testers smuggled past them last...

Eastern Europeans and Arabs are all-too-familiar with the political street hooliganism sponsored by global “provocateur” George Soros and his minions. Lately, middle-class Americans have had a taste of the type of violent protest provocations during the current US presidential campaign that have previously been visited upon governments from Macedonia and Moldova to Syria and Libya. Recently, Donald Trump campaign rallies have seen highly-coordinated and well-planned political demonstrations in...

If you’d have said a year ago that the US State Department, Google, and Al Jazeera had been collaborating in pursuance of regime change in Syria, chances are you’d have been casually dismissed as a "crank" and a ‘conspiracy theorist." Syria was a people’s uprising against a wicked genocidal Russian-backed dictator and the West had nothing to do with the bloodshed which engulfed the country. If you thought otherwise then you were considered an "Assad apologist." However, thanks to Wikileaks,...

According to a recent poll, 73 percent of all Americans oppose increases in federal spending. Since this anti-government spending sentiment is a major reason Republicans control the House and Senate, one would expect the Republican Congress to hold the line on, or even cut, government spending. Yet, despite the Republican leadership’s rhetoric about "fiscal responsibility," this year’s House Republican budget spends $104 billion more than the GOP’s 2013 budget. Some conservatives, most notably...

One of the unintended consequences of the US invasions of Iraq in 1991 and 2003 -- and their aftermaths -- has been the unleashing of the Kurdish nationalist genie in the Middle East. Today, a de-facto Kurdish statelet exists in northeast Iraq, one is emerging in northern Syria, and, after a period of attempted reconciliation, the Kurdish-Turkish violence is metastasizing again throughout Turkey. Only the Kurdish region in northwestern Iran is quiet. The Kurdish genie has its origin in the...

There are currently two governments in Libya. A "moderately Islamist" one in the west in Tripoli and one in the east in Tobruk. The eastern one is internationally recognized and "secular" but also supported by some Salafist groups. Both governments have their own parliament and various supporting militia. In the middle of the long east-west coastline the Islamic State led by some cadres from Iraq and Syria has taken a foothold in Sirte. It is recruiting followers from north Africa and moving...

Rajan Menon’s new book, “The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention,” (Oxford) launches a timely argument against a dominant argument lying behind so much of modern American foreign policy—“humanitarian intervention” or “liberal interventionism.” We are, of course, well familiar with Republican and neocon readiness to go to war, but the reality is that many Democrat Party leaders have been no less seduced into a series of optional foreign military interventions, with increasingly disastrous...

The American people are absolutely convinced that they need the US national-security establishment, namely, the military, the CIA, and the NSA. Without this totalitarian-like apparatus that was grafted onto America’s governmental system after World War II, it is commonly believed, Americans wouldn’t be safe. It’s the national-security state, the story goes, that is America’s last bastion against the terrorists, communists, North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, and other supposedly dangerous...