Publications

Abstract Samuel Huntington was such a prolific scholar that it is sometimes difficult for researchers to keep up with his many policy analyses and recommendations. This article deals with one important Huntingtonian thesis, of the late 1990s. The thesis...

Abstract How should foreign policy analysts understand the American response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014? Despite widespread bipartisan recognition that Eastern European states, from the Baltic States to the Black Sea, were experiencing their most severe...

Abstract Does America really have a national security “deep state”? If by this loaded term we simply mean a sprawling bureaucracy filled mostly by a permanent cadre of lower-level officials, then inarguably the answer is yes. But how much...

Abstract In this article, the author answers the question: Where did America’s Founders get their ideas? The essay delves deeply into the origins of the American political tradition by exploring the legacies of Medieval and Renaissance Europe and the...

We begin the Fall 2018 issue of Orbis with an essay by FPRI’s Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Walter McDougall, in which he examines one strain of the American political legacy: the Atlantic Republican tradition that placed a special emphasis on “civic virtue.”...

Israel and Hamas are on the brink of war again. There were sustained conflicts between Israel and Hamas in 2008/9, 2012, and 2014. The most recent spasm of violence may burn out as fast as it has erupted; however,...

These are difficult times. What we are witnessing worldwide today is not a new thing, but the latest iteration of a very old thing. We are again experiencing the human condition, where we humans define ourselves against the other—often...

Analysts have heralded the Khashoggi scandal—the mysterious killing of Saudi-born Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in early October—as the biggest rift in U.S.-Saudi relations since the September 11 attacks. The truth is, as...

Majalla The question sounds like the beginning of a bad joke: What do an actress and former head of Interpol have in common? However, the answer is no laughing matter. Actress Fan Bingbing and former President of Interpol Meng...

I study civil wars. While I don’t believe a civil war is yet likely in the United States, I do see some unnerving parallels between the current American political environment and those in the former Soviet Union and former...