Truth Has Finally Defeated Fear
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Reforming the Department of State: A Vision for an Elite, Agile Diplomatic Corps
The United States possesses the world’s most powerful military, the largest economy, and the most admired culture. Yet, for decades, thoughtful observers have noted a quiet paradox: our diplomatic influence has not kept pace with our hard power. In an era defined by strategic competition with China, Russian revanchism, renewed war in Europe, and Iranian-sponsored […]
A Pipeline to Success: Central Asia’s Strategic Opportunity
It’s time to go big in Central Asia. The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline holds promise to reshape Central and South Asia for decades to come. For the United States, linking Turkmenistan’s vast gas reserves to the growing energy needs of South Asia is imperative to counter Russian and Chinese influence. For over 30 years, this gas […]
Can Europe Go It Alone?
The Ukraine-related “Coalition of the Willing” and the Need for Global Inter-Democratic Cooperation
The Unquiet Last Years of Naguib Mahfouz
Preface Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006) became the Arab world’s first Nobel Laureate in Literature in 1988. His 34 novels include the Cairo Trilogy (Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street) and his dozens of movie scripts number among the top films of the Arab cinema. In addition, his essays were featured in the main Arabic […]
New York’s Zohran Mamdani and Chile’s Gabriel Boric
When he took office as Chile’s president in early 2022, the youthful Gabriel Boric was hailed internationally as the refreshing new face of progressive politics But he is concluding a four-year term as a battered figure; polls indicate his successor will come from Chile’s right. Boric’s trajectory may serve as a cautionary tale for the […]
The View Over the Yarmouk River, An Israeli Reserve Officer on the Israel-Syria border
As part of my army reserve service, I belong to a unit that is holding a sector opposite Syria and defending the State of Israel’s territory on the northern border. The scenery can only be described as breathtaking. The deep, carved Rokad River meets the Yarmouk River in a tri-border area, creating a magical, peaceful […]
Confronting the Muslim Brotherhood: A Practical Roadmap for the Trump Administration
Ten months into his second term, President Donald Trump has reshaped much of the Middle East’s political landscape. His team helped steady a fragile calm in Gaza, revived coordination among key Arab and Israeli partners, and signaled a broader plan to check Iranian influence. The growing Arab-Israeli security cooperation that emerged from the Abraham Accords […]
The United States as an Offshore Balancer
Americans’ frustration with recent failures abroad, combined with looming challenges in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East, have inspired a search for a new framework for American foreign policy. The suggestion has emerged that the United States could learn from the guiding principle of British foreign policy for several centuries until 1945 – offshore […]
Africa’s Twin, Connected Crises
Nigeria’s attacks on its Christian community and Sudan’s collapse are not isolated crises. They are chapters of the same story: the erosion of deterrence and the testing of the liberal world’s resolve by Muslim Brotherhood networks. Nigeria Northern Nigeria has become the epicenter of an underreported atrocity, a coordinated effort to erase a faith community […]
Kurdistan Between Tehran and Ankara
Wedged between Turkey and Iran, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq has become a crossroads of two competing regional orders. As Iran’s axis of resistance frays under economic strain and regional backlash, Tehran is scrambling to reinforce its influence through coercive diplomacy and the creation of a new strategic corridor to the Mediterranean. At the same […]
Cutting the Maduro Regime's Lifeline
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to María Corina Machado, a woman who succeeded in unifying the Venezuelan opposition and spearheading the most effective peaceful social movement against the regime of Nicolás Maduro. Her award represents yet another international setback for Maduro’s government. It comes at a time when the Trump administration is intensifying its […]
Jordan-Israel Ties Face Strains
The relationship between Jordan and Israel came under renewed strain after a terrorist attack on September 18. A Jordanian truck driver arrived at the Allenby Bridge Border Crossing, ostensibly carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, and shot and stabbed two Israeli soldiers before being shot dead. Hamas praised the attack, and Israel has shut the border […]
Bringing Humanitarian Relief to the Druze of Syria
In Syria, the southwestern governorate of al-Suwayda is collapsing under shortages of food, water, and fuel. The Druze, who follow a heterodox religion which is an offshoot of Islam, are the majority in al-Suwayda, with smaller communities of Sunni Muslim Bedouin and Christians. Traditionally the area was known as Jabal al-Druze (Druze Mountain). Al-Suwayda is […]
How to Flood Gaza with Aid without Enriching Hamas
The key to success of President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan is to remove Hamas from power, permanently. A key to achieving that is to take away Hamas’s profit centers in Gaza, which allow it to pay fighters and smuggle in weapons. Hamas currently makes money by taxing and exercising control over critical humanitarian supplies in […]
J.D. Vance: The Geometry of Power
In the Oval Office, power breathes in gestures as much as decrees. President Donald Trump, re-cast by history as a peacemaker, governs in broad strokes — intuitive, dynamic, and commanding. Beside him, yet never overshadowing him, stands Vice President J.D. Vance: younger, disciplined, and disarmingly direct. The chemistry between them has become one of the […]
AIPAC’S Dilemma
Congressman Seth Moulton is one of the most highly respected members of the House Armed Services Committee. The Massachusetts Democrat and retired Marine has a record of working both sides of the aisle. He and Jim Banks, a conservative Republican from Indiana, co-chaired the Future of Defense Task Force; their 2020 report garnered considerable attention […]
The Fragile Peace
The relief that swept across Israel this past week was profound. Twenty living hostages returned home from Gaza captivity. Families who had braced themselves for permanent loss suddenly found themselves whole again. For a few days, the streets filled with tears of joy. Mothers embraced sons they thought they’d never see again. In a country […]
Where We Are Headed with the Trump Peace Plan
It was a holiday like no other in recent memory. On the eve of Simhat Torah 2025, exactly two years on the Jewish calendar to the day of the Hamas attack in 2023, the 20 remaining live hostages were released to ambulances. Watching from a respectful distance, Israeli crowds on the Gaza border cheered. Later […]
Book & Movie Reviews
A Tormented Search for Balance
Kissinger, a PBS documentary by Barak Goodman, October 2025 PBS’s three-hour documentary on Henry Kissinger is in most respects admirable and should be viewed by everyone. Kissinger’s long life and exploits are handled briskly but thoroughly; the narrative does not dawdle, dramatic footage and scores of brief interview excerpts keep the story moving, quite coherently […]
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 […]
Videos
Interview with Hillel Halkin
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 […]
Interview with Yossi Klein Halevi
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 […]
Interview with Gadi Taub
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 […]
