Commentary

Sufism has been repeatedly invoked in U.S. foreign policy circles as a possible ideological counterbalance to extremist ideologies in the Middle East and greater “Islamic world.” On a superficial level, for those who view politics as a “battle of...

South Korea is marooned in perilous seas with its ship in more danger of careening off course than at any time since the end of the Cold War. The recent impeachment of President Park Geun-hye, leading to a possible...

America’s prolonged involvement in armed conflict in the Middle East and Afghanistan has obscured an important truth: the most consequential strategic confrontation on the planet has been building, not in Iraq and Syria, but in Southeast Asia where the...

Lithuania’s 2009 presidential campaign was the dullest since the office of the president was re-established seventeen years ago. As one academic remarked, “The 2009 Lithuanian presidential race resembled a cemetery: There was deadly silence”—even though seven candidates ran for...

The seventy-fifth anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor offers an opportunity to look back on the world-changing events of 1941. In that year, the United States was shocked into playing the role of a global superpower. This role...

Auguste Comte once asserted that intellectual confusion lay at the basis of every historical crisis. Whatever Comte’s own confusions may have been, most of them common to his age, he was, on balance, probably right about this. I suspect...

On December 2, President-elect Donald Trump spoke with Tsai Ing-wen, President of Taiwan, shattering nearly 40 years of diplomatic protocol. It has been characterized as everything from brilliant to petty and everything else in between. Since defeating Hillary Clinton...

Over the past several months, much has been made of President-elect Donald Trump’s attitude toward and connections with Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin. Some observers have charged that Trump is naïve about Putin’s real objectives and have implied...

“Mexico. It’s unbelievable what’s happened,” President-elect Donald Trump said at an August 10 Fort Lauderdale rally, after warning the audience of the impending departure of 1,400 Carrier Air Conditioning jobs from Indiana. “A friend of mine—he’s one of the...