Gen. John Allen, the retired Marine who is coordinating the campaign against ISIS, gave an upbeat briefing to Congress last week. He said that because of...
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lobbied powerfully against a nuclear agreement with Iran in a well-crafted speech to Congress Tuesday. The problem...
The Obama administration’s decision to engage Egypt is “a case of realpolitik over idealism,” concedes one official. But it’s also the right policy...
Prussian King Frederick the Great offered this rebuke to those who refused to allow any concessions: “If you try to hold everything, you hold...
The public rift between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the Iranian nuclear issue is often described as a personality...
Mistrust between the Obama administration and Benjamin Netanyahu has widened even further in recent days because of U.S. suspicion that the Israeli prime...
One of the weaknesses of the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS is that America isn’t trusted as a messenger in much of the Arab world. So it is important that...
From the roof of his office, Gov. Najmaldin Karim can see multiethnic Kirkuk laid out below. He points toward the Sunni suburb of Huwija about 24 kilometers...
From the heights of Mount Bata, in Iraq, you have a panoramic view of the strategic territory west of Mosul that Kurdish peshmerga fighters, supported by U.S....
Sitting next to Iran’s foreign minister Sunday as he said that another extension of the nuclear talks isn’t “in the interests of anybody,” it seemed clear...
Niccolo Machiavelli, perhaps the shrewdest political philosopher in history, believed that great events were shaped by luck – or “fortuna” as he called this...
Saudi Arabia, which often confounds outsiders with its slow and opaque governance, has moved surprisingly quickly under King Salman, its new monarch, to...
Strange bedfellows of 2015: As the Obama administration pushes toward a major new trade agreement in Asia this spring, it is developing two unlikely allies –...
What went wrong for the U.S.-backed government in Yemen and what are the consequences for counterterrorism operations there against Al-Qaeda’s most dangerous...
A sign of the concern among business and political leaders in Davos, Switzerland, about sluggish economic growth is that one of the World Economic Forum...
President Barack Obama has been chafing for months at the notion that he’s a lame-duck president. That’s one reason he took the offensive in the run-up to the...
What’s the relationship between the Internet and the surge of jihadi violence in Paris and around the world? That’s the puzzle examined by Marc Sageman, a...
In the days after the deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, France declared “war” on terrorism, 10,000 French paramilitary police took to the...
When William J. Bratton was appointed to his second stint as New York police commissioner by Mayor Bill de Blasio in late 2013, he said he wanted every New...
As the United States and Iran continue negotiating a possible breakthrough nuclear agreement, both sides are carrying concealed weapons that could be used if...
The recent plunge in oil prices to below $50 a barrel offers the same lessons as previous sharp fluctuations: Energy markets work and politicians who try to...
The revival of the U.S. financial system after the crash of 2008 is arguably the Obama administration’s biggest domestic policy success. But Sen. Elizabeth...
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...