Tag: Main

The Origins of the Third Reich

Götz Aly, “ Wie konnte das Geschehen. Deutschland 1933-1945 “ (How Could This Happen? Germany 1933-1945), S. Fischer, 2025 In 1936, the year of the Berlin Olympics, the scholar W.E.B. Du Bois traveled through Hitler’s Germany. Germany was not unfamiliar territory for him: four decades earlier, Du Bois had studied at the Friedrich Wilhelm University […]

The Crisis in Northeast Syria

The unfolding events in northeast Syria represent a profound tragedy, not only for the Kurdish people in Syria but for the broader quest for stability in the Middle East. Syria’s transitional government under Ahmed al-Shara’a feels empowered by increasing regional and global recognition and has interpreted this as carte blanche for forcible consolidation. Its forces […]

Shelby Magid: Ukraine is holding and Russia is bogged down

In an interview with Jacob Heilbrunn, the Deputy Director of the Atlantic Council delivers a clear assessment: despite a campaign of terror waged by Moscow, the Ukrainian state remains resilient. No decisive Russian breakthrough, a government firmly in place, a society that holds together, and a Ukraine that continues to innovate, resist, and already prepare […]

The Benefits of Removing Maduro

Making foreign policy is very often a compromise between supporting one’s values and securing one’s interests, between moral clarity and strategic realism. In removing Nicolas Maduro from power, Donald Trump was able to advance both American values and American interests.   Maduro, in the name of “twenty-first century socialism,” crushed press freedom and political opposition. Amnesty […]

THE END OF PALESTINE

When the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favor of Palestinian statehood in September 2025, with only 10 against and 12 abstentions, it appeared that the diplomatic balance had tilted toward a Palestinian state. Yet nothing of substance followed – no borders of the Palestinian state were recognized for instance.  This gap between rhetorical solidarity […]

Profiting from the Lessons of Iraq in Venezuela

Lessons learned from the US occupation of Iraq (from 2003 to 2011) should guide the aftermath of the US military intervention in Venezuela. The US now faces the task of temporarily administering Venezuela in conjunction with the regime whose head, Nicolás Maduro, awaits a criminal trial in New York.  In Iraq, after Initial military victories, […]

Trump’s Africa Deal Threatened by Continuing Ethnic Hatreds 

On December 4, 2025, President Donald Trump presided over a signing ceremony at the US Institute for Peace for a peace agreement between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, the Washington Accords for Peace and Prosperity. Secretary of State Marco Rubio added that “we look forward to turning the agreements that we will be signing […]

Will Turkey Allow Syria to Rebuild?

Syria is at a crossroads. President Donald Trump’s vow to do everything he can to help the war-torn country offers it a golden opportunity to wave goodbye to its dictatorial past. Unfortunately, Turkey’s regional ambitions are threatening to derail Syria’s rebirth. One of the most striking features of post-Assad Syria is the speed with which […]

Partition and Its Discontents

Sam Dalrymple, Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern India, William Collins, 2025 The most sweeping revision of the world’s political map in all of history took place in the twentieth century, when the great Europe-based multinational empires that had dominated the planet dissolved and their constituent parts became independent states. The most […]