Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben was a hero of the American Revolutionary War. He arrived at Valley Forge in the bleak second winter of the war and trained the ragtag American regiments into a disciplined, coordinated force. He is quite possibly the most celebrated German American in history. Italian Americans have Columbus Day, but German Americans […]

The Great Lakes region that encompasses Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo is among Africa’s most beautiful regions. Cloud-covered volcanos, terraced fields, lush jungles, and lakes dot the landscape. It is also among the most violent.  The June 2025 peace agreement signed at the White House between two of the region’s countries (Rwanda […]

The 12-Day War and President Trump’s conclusion of it did little to resolve a range of non-nuclear Iranian threats. These include drones (which attack American allies from Kyiv to Tel Aviv), terrorist proxies, and assassination plots inside America. If past is prologue, then Tehran will again seek to bloody America wherever and however it can, […]

On May 22, the UK government of Labour’s Keir Starmer signed a treaty with the island nation of Mauritius, a former British colony in the Indian Ocean, to cede sovereignty over the Chagos Islands, a seven-atoll archipelago that includes the Diego Garcia military base. Though the deal contains protections for this base, it also raises […]

Israel has begun a little-noticed foreign policy transformation. Against the backdrop of its ongoing war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem has launched a new initiative in strategic communications.  The shift was borne of necessity. Historically, Israel’s international outreach has been based on the concept of hasbara [means “explanation”] – if the country were […]

On July 7, Prime Minister Netanyahu will have his third Oval Office meeting with President Trump in six months. But this will be a visit unlike any before it.   Netanyahu arrives in Washington as the man who won the Twelve Day War with Iran. He will also be there as President Trump’s (occasionally difficult) wartime […]

All wars teach lessons. The war that began with the murderous assault on southern Israel by the governing organization of Gaza, Hamas, on October 7, 2023, and ended – at least for now — on June 22, 2025 with the American bombing of three major parts of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, demonstrates the importance […]

For three decades Central Asia has remained largely peripheral to Washington’s strategic horizon. Yet Kazakhstan now supplies more than forty percent of the world’s mined uranium, while Turkmenistan controls one of the planet’s largest natural-gas deposits. No sitting US president has visited one of the region’s five countries – Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. […]

Three leading right-wing politicians in Latin America, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, Argentine President Javier Milei, and former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, have made much of their relationships with President Trump.  Bukele’s Prisons at Trump’s Disposal Of the three, Bukele has established the closest rapport with Trump, a major shift from the suspicion with which he […]

Every modern apartment in Israel comes with a safe room hardened to survive a missile or rocket hit. In 2022 I moved to Jerusalem, bought an apartment, and placed my library in the safe room. Thus, I had plenty of resources to consult in the safe room during the recent Iranian missile attacks. Here are […]

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was the charismatic leader of Argentina’s populist left for decades, elected twice as president, serving from 2007-2015, and again as vice president from 2019-2023. A fierce critic of Argentina’s current libertarian president Javier Milei, she was planning a comeback. Her plan to run for a seat in the legislature would have […]

The Trans-Caspian International Transit Route or “Middle Corridor” is Central Asia’s best bet for increasing connectivity and economic ties to the West. But Kazakhstan, the corridor’s hub, faces internal challenges like price competitiveness and external threats like climate change and geopolitics. The Middle Corridor stretches from western China across the vast Kazakh steppe and the […]

In 55 BCE, Julius Caesar decided (according to his Commentaries) to “cross the Rhine since he saw the Germans were so easily urged to go into Gaul, he desired they should have fears for their own territories when they discovered that the army of the Roman people both could and dared pass the Rhine.”  This […]

In his inaugural address this past January, Donald J. Trump declared that “my proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.” He added, “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end – and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get […]

President Trump, I write to you not with hesitation but with urgency. Your leadership transformed the Middle East. The Abraham Accords, your firm support for Israel, and your uncompromising stance toward terror made peace possible when many believed it was impossible. You did not follow the tired formulas of appeasement. You lead with principle and […]

Israel’s economy faces two threats in 2025 – from the Iran-Gaza war and from the global economic upheaval caused by the Trump tariffs – but there are also signs of recovery.  As we approach the end of the first half of 2025, Israel finds itself straddling two wars. The obvious one started from Gaza on […]

When Israel struck Iran on June 13, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan waited several hours before issuing a fiery rebuke, accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “and his massacre network” of “setting [the] entire region on fire.”  At the same time, Ankara must have quietly welcomed the attacks against its regional rival in Tehran. Turkey […]

Iran until recently was a paradox: a deeply unpopular regime that appeared superficially stable. Three years after the massive nationwide protests of 2022, Iran’s streets were calm, though signs of discontent were starting to resurface, with scattered strikes and business closures, including unrest among truck drivers. Most Iranians despised the Islamic Republic; their quietude was […]

Robert Silverman: You are an American Jew who moved to Israel, with your wife, as a young couple shortly after the Six-Day War. Then you wrote a book in the 1970s that influenced a whole generation of American Jews. It was called Letters to an American Jewish Friend. And you were talking to your counterparts […]

Yossi Klein Halevi: In terms of my personal journey, it’s framed by my evolving, understanding of the Holocaust, my relationship to the Holocaust and my generation’s experience as opposed to my father’s experience. My father was a survivor from Hungary.  I grew up in a very charged Holocaust environment in Brooklyn, in the 1960s, which […]

Gadi Taub: I believed in Oslo [the 1990s Palestinian-Israeli peace process] because I imagined the Palestinians to be like us. I imagined their national liberation movement to be a national liberation movement just like ours. Then reality just exploded outside my window. Tel Aviv is small. So from where I lived back then, when a […]