by Juan Cole These days, our global political alliances seem to shift with remarkable rapidity, as if we were actually living in George Orwell’s 1984. Are we at war this month with Oceania? Or is it Eastasia? In that novel, the… Continue Reading
by Rebecca Gordon My father and I always had a tacit agreement: “We will never speak of That Part of the World.” He’d grown up in an Orthodox Jewish family in Norfolk, Virginia. His own father, a refugee from early-twentieth-century… Continue Reading
by Thomas W. Lippman Military analysts and political commentators have deluged their readers over the past week with their views about the U.S. missile strike on Syria ordered by President Donald Trump. Some of the assessments were more useful than… Continue Reading
by Derek Davison Top Iranian and Saudi officials traded barbs earlier this week over who is and isn’t a true Muslim, deepening the Middle East’s most prominent, longest-running, and deadliest diplomatic crisis. On September 6, Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti, Abdulaziz… Continue Reading
by Paul R. Pillar A recurring feature in criticism of President Obama’s foreign policy, particularly in referring to strife-torn Syria and Iraq, is the notion that if only the United States had followed some different course, bad things in such… Continue Reading