As a senator campaigning for president, Barack Obama promised a new era of diplomacy. In a 2007 debate, he declared it “ridiculous” that “not talking to countries is punishment to them.” Then, soon after taking his oath of office, he made outreach to rogue regimes the cornerstone of his strategy, promising states like Iran that […]
President Obama claims he inherited a mess in the Middle East. Not so. Fracking and horizontal drilling on private lands in the U.S. had taken off in the last years of the Bush administration and by 2009 were set to revolutionize America’s energy future. By 2011, the U.S. had cut way back its dependence on […]
Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. Eight million Israelis are surrounded by some 400 million Muslims in more than 20 states. Almost all of Israel’s neighbors are anti-Israeli dictatorships, monarchies, or theocracies — a number of them reduced to a state of terrorist chaos. Given the rise of […]
Declaring the North Atlantic Treaty Organization dead has been a pastime of analysts since the end of the Cold War. The alliance, today 28-members strong, has survived 65 years because its glaring contradictions were often overlooked, given the dangers of an expansionist and nuclear Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact subjects. From its beginning, NATO […]