A JST Conversation with Dr. Sebastian Gorka
US Strategic Imperatives in the Middle East
More Essays
More on JST
Truth Has Finally Defeated Fear
Thank you President Trump. Thank you for understanding what so many refused to confront. Thank you for doing what generations of leaders hesitated to attempt. Thank you for exposing the dark machinery that has shaped the Middle East’s tragedies for far too long. I write as someone from an Arab and Muslim country, someone who […]
Beijing Rewrites the Story of Taiwan
Ilan Berman returns from Taiwan with a message: Beijing is winning the information war.
A Pipeline to Success: Central Asia’s Strategic Opportunity
Daniel Runde champions creating a new strategic pipeline in Central Asia.
Reforming the Department of State: A Vision for an Elite, Agile Diplomatic Corps
How to reform the State Department? Michael Gfoeller’s plan would return the American Foreign Service to an elite corps focused on its core strengths of operational know-how and regional expertise.
Can Europe Go It Alone?
Andreas Umland asks whether Europe can really go it alone in the Trump era.
The Unquiet Last Years of Naguib Mahfouz
Raymond Stock recalls the great Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz and the unresolved political battles of Mahfouz’s last years in Cairo.
New York’s Zohran Mamdani and Chile’s Gabriel Boric
New York’s mayor-elect Mamdani would do well to learn from the mistakes made by Chile’s Boric, a prior wunderkind of the progressive left, writes Richard Sanders.
The View Over the Yarmouk River, An Israeli Reserve Officer on the Israel-Syria border
A young officer serving on the Golan writes about the challenges and the hopes across the border in Syria.
Confronting the Muslim Brotherhood: A Practical Roadmap for the Trump Administration
The Trump administration should address challenges presented by the Muslim Brotherhood, writes Haisam Hassanein.
The United States as an Offshore Balancer
Michael Mandelbaum looks at the traditional British practice of offshore balancing as a potential role model for current American foreign policy.
Africa’s Twin, Connected Crises
Joseph Diamond detects connections both ideological and material between crises in Nigeria and Sudan.
Kurdistan Between Tehran and Ankara
The autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq carefully balances economic and security pressures, and dueling regional ambitions, from Turkey and Iran.
Book & Movie Reviews
A New Interpretation of Hitler’s War in the East
Jochen Hellbeck, World Enemy No. 1: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews, Penguin Press, 2025 Legend has it that when the first chancellor of West Germany, Konrad Adenauer, crossed the Elbe River by train, he lowered the shades and remarked, “Here we go, Asia again.” As a Rhinelander, Adenauer, who had […]
A Clarion Call for Liberal Education
Blue Skies: My Life in Many Worlds, by S. Frederick Starr, Dorrance Publishers, 2025. In his memoirs, Edward Gibbon observed that “every person has two educations, one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives to himself.” By that standard, S. Frederick Starr has done very well indeed. Starr, who was […]
Movie Review: “Making the Rubble Bounce”
A House of Dynamite directed by Kathryn Bigelow, available on Netflix Nuclear weapons were at the heart of the Cold War. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union ever sought to attack each other directly because each wanted to avoid triggering a nuclear cataclysm. Instead, they waged a proxy war in the Third World […]
