The New Great Game for Leadership in Asia

The strategic complexion of Asia has shifted substantially in recent years. The United States is no longer the predominant military, diplomatic, and economic power across the region, as it was for the last half of the 20th century and the first decade of this century. China actively contests American leadership as it strives to restore […]
Russia-Ukraine Information Warfare and the Challenge for Liberal Democracies

On November 15, 2022, NATO and Russia had a tense moment that might have escalated into a military confrontation. A missile hit a Polish village near the Polish-Ukrainian border, killing two civilians. Associated Press cited unnamed Western officials that it was a Russian missile. It might have been the basis for Poland invoking Article 5, […]
American Military Guarantees Boost Ukraine’s and NATO’S Long-Term Prospects

Introduction In a hard-hitting essay published here in the Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, A Year of War, the Washington Institute’s Anna Borshchevskaya paints a sobering picture of what Ukrainians, and all in NATO, face. She argues that Russians view the war as an existential struggle for their future. Washington and the rest of NATO are now rightly ensuring that at a minimum […]
How Would Republicans Conduct American Foreign Policy Today?

The global order is changing rapidly. China is brokering normalization between Iran and Saudi Arabia while the United States brokers normalization between Arab states and Israel. Turkey and Russia are both antagonists and collaborators in multiple hot spots. Ukraine’s military is proving stronger than Russia’s. Alliances and friendships in the Indo-Pacific are coalescing against Chinese […]
A Year of War

A year after invading Ukraine, Vladimir Putin defines the war as an existential battle for Russia’s survival. In a classic case of the aggressor blaming the victim, Putin says the West invaded Russia using Ukraine. “It’s they [the West] who have started the war. And we are using force to end it,” he said on […]
How Russia Used Gas Exports to Try to Overthrow a Government

To avoid receiving an energy bill she couldn’t afford, Zinaida Negruti, like countless others in Moldova, began spending more time in the dark as fall transitioned into winter. “Most of the time I don’t turn on the lights because I am worried it will be too expensive,” she says. “I try to use as little […]
Lessons of the Russo–Ukraine War

Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has been underway for almost nine years and is closing on one year in its current, full-scale form. What we can learn from the war’s origins and initial stages may assist us in finding the right policies to help end it on the best possible terms for Ukraine and […]
When Nation Building Works

Nation building is a US policy for transforming post-conflict countries, a policy discredited among a broad swath of Washington because of Iraq and Afghanistan. But I question this consensus and recommend rehabilitating the policy in time to help reconstruct postwar Ukraine. >> Diplomatic Dispatches: Read more from Robert Silverman Didn’t the US role in postwar Japan […]
The Reasoning Behind Israel’s Refusal to Supply Weapons to Ukraine

Ever since the Russian invasion of Ukraine last February, Israel’s policy of not supplying weapons to Ukraine has come under both domestic and international criticism. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently stated that the decision by Israeli leaders not to support Kyiv has encouraged Russia’s military partnership with Iran. Inside Israel, critics say support for Ukraine […]
Defense Minister Gantz Goes to Ankara

The ongoing rapprochement between Israel and Turkey was reinforced recently on October 27 by the visit to Ankara of Israel’s Defense Minister Gantz, following the groundbreaking and highly symbolic official visit of President Yitzhak Herzog in March. Gantz met with his counterpart, Hulusi Akar, considered to be one of the mainstays of the AKP government, […]