Commentary

Mexico’s six gubernatorial elections this year will set the stage for the 2012 presidential contest and determine whether the once-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) can continue its come-back. Of greatest importance is the July 3 face-off in Mexico State...

The stunningly rapid unfolding of Tunisia’s so-called “Jasmine Revolution” left analysts, activists and officials scrambling to make sense of an extremely fluid and uncertain situation. To be sure, matters on the ground appear to have stabilized somewhat, with the...

There is no more important question facing a state than the place of its military relative to civil society and the roles that the military exercises. The reason is simple: on the one hand, the coercive power of a...

There is no good policy for the United States regarding the uprising in Egypt. The question is whether the U.S. government should adopt a strategy that has lots of negatives but possibly fewer than straddling the fence. Here’s the...

As 2010 ends, U.S. diplomats have spent less energy on holiday festivities and instead are working overtime to prevent trust with foreign governments from evaporating after thousands of leaked documents became public. Despite the outcry over the consequences of...

The most recent battle in the New Cold War is being waged as you read this. It is a battle over nuclear weapons. Claiming that more than 30,000 of their computers have been compromised by a nasty piece of...

The regional differences in Mexico’s drug war make little sense to Americans. Until October 24, when gunmen massacred 14 patients at a Tijuana drug rehab clinic, Baja California, a hotbed of violence in 2009, had started to stabilize during...

Unshakeable resolve. The theme was a touchstone on the evening of September 11, 2001, as members of Congress gathered on the steps of the Capitol Building. The Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, announced that “Democrats...

One of Philadelphia’s often overlooked historical points is that the city is the birthplace of this Nation’s Corps of Marines. It was here, on November 10, 1775, that the Second Continental Congress voted to establish two battalions of Marines....