Watching events unfold in Iraq this year has been like viewing a slow-motion train wreck. Iraqi tribal leaders have been warning since spring about the rise...
The nadir for President Barack Obama’s foreign policy was probably in April. His Republican critics were calling him “weak” and “indecisive” after Russia’s...
This year began with some Chinese and American foreign-policy analysts looking back a century to World War I and wondering if confrontation was inevitable...
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s use of torture was immensely valuable. But it should have addressed Congress’ own failure to oversee...
Gen. John Allen must sometimes feel that he’s navigating a maze as he organizes the coalition to defeat ISIS: Iran is a silent partner in Iraq but a potential...
A CIA medical officer who was assigned to monitor the interrogation of an Al-Qaeda operative named Abu Zubaida sent a message to his superiors on Aug. 4,...
The House Intelligence Committee, a rare island of bipartisanship in recent years, may soon become a more confrontational arena with the retirement of its...
The worm of paranoia begins to eat into even the hardest adversary. An example is a Twitter post last week displaying an ISIS leaflet offering a $5,000 reward...
The Obama administration’s slow campaign against ISIS takes a small step forward this week as a leading Sunni politician visits Washington to urge support for...
At Thanksgiving, Americans think about the spirit of community that animates the country at its best. But in a year characterized by so much political and...
The Iran nuclear talks defy easy comparison: But think of a labor negotiation where it’s too costly for workers to go on strike or for management to impose a...
A centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s strategy for defeating ISIS is mobilizing tribal fighters to join the Iraqi military in retaking Anbar and other...
The politics of selfishness was embraced enthusiastically last week by Senator Mitch McConnell. In dismissing President Barack Obama’s deal with China to...
The photograph Tuesday from Beijing was as carefully arranged as a display of Ming china: Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping discussing the world’s...
As the United States advances into its third war in Iraq in a quarter century, it’s important to have a mental checklist to assess whether U.S. strategy there...
President Obama looked almost relieved after Tuesday’s election blowout. A man who has been perhaps the least political president in modern American history...
With U.S.-backed “moderate” opposition forces on the run in northern Syria, a mediation group is proposing an alternative strategy for local cease-fires and a...
An intriguing new figure is gaining prominence in the Iranian government just as regional conflicts in Iraq and Syria intensify and nuclear talks with the...
A glimpse of the anxiety sweeping the Arab world surfaced last week when an Arab woman complained during a talk in Amman at the Columbia Global Center for the...
Jalal al-Gaood, one of the tribal leaders the U.S. has been cultivating in hopes of rolling back extremists in Iraq, grimly describes how his hometown in...
“Hedayah” certainly doesn’t look like a global counterterrorism center. It sits in a quiet villa on Fatima bint Mubarak Street here in Abu Dhabi.It has a...
Richard Preston, whose 1994 book “The Hot Zone” brought the Ebola virus terrifyingly alive for readers, once described how, during his research, his biohazard...
As ISIS fighters surge toward control of Anbar Province in western Iraq and the border town of Ain al-Arab, also known as Kobani, in Syria, U.S. commanders...
Maybe President Obama should have asked his Cabinet secretaries to sign book-royalty agreements when they took their oaths of office, so he could share in the...
What happens when an American plan for limited war against ISIS meets the savage reality of combat, as happened this week when the extremists pounded Kurdish...