Articles

Films by regime-friendly directors reveal the more subliminal level of what government representatives proclaim explicitly in interviews.
 

But is he willing to embrace the policies of past administrations in order to achieve that goal?

Military Innovation, Commercial Technologies, and Great Power Competition

Even though the Islamic State group has been greatly diminished, its offshoots and other terrorist groups still wreak havoc around the world.

An American president meets his Russian counterpart in Helsinki. Critics worry that he'll validate Russia's rule over its conquered neighbors, while human rights advocates fret that he won't discuss their issue.

The Russian Ministry of Defense is pursuing artificial intelligence with an urgency that has only grown since Vladimir Putin’s “rule the world” speech in September.

The threats to U.S. LNG range from external shocks, Asian governments keeping their doors closed, and the need to finish domestic investment.

On July 16th, President Donald Trump will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in what is shaping up to be a highly anticipated – and highly controversial – bilateral summit.

The fresh outbreaks of street protests in Tehran that have taken place in recent days raise the question of whether this will be just a temporary disturbance or a sign of more significant changes to come.

America's Iran policy is at a crossroads. In the wake of President Trump's recent decision to abandon the 2015 nuclear deal, his administration has unveiled a new, more muscular approach toward the Islamic Republic.

The record-setting nuclear deal inked between China and Russia earlier this month is the latest blow to America’s declining influence in commercial nuclear power across the globe.

Russia, like many other nations, is investing in the development of various unmanned military systems. The Russian defense establishment sees such systems as mission multipliers, highlighting two major advantages: saving soldiers’ lives and making military missions more effective.

Getting to better relations with Turkey will not be easy. But it’s far from impossible.

Does the road to Tehran lead through Singapore? Hopes are high that next week's summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will begin a process leading to the total, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

When President Trump announced last month that America would leave the global nuclear deal with Iran and reimpose U.S. sanctions, Europe's leaders vowed to create financial mechanisms that would enable their firms to do business with Tehran and protect them from U.S. financial retaliation.

Global outrage over last month’s peak to the so-called Great March of Return on the Gaza-Israel border was instant and understandable. Over 50 people died and hundreds more were injured on a single day. 

Earlier this month, after experiencing a long hiatus from violent extremism, Indonesia succumbed anew to Islamist terrorism when a family of suicide bombers struck three different churches in the country's second-largest city, Surabaya.

In official Washington, which is routinely awash in foreign dignitaries, it's all too easy to miss the comings and goings of world leaders.

The political left is aghast over President Donald Trump's decision last week to abrogate the Iran nuclear deal. 

Despite consuming more oil and gas than any other country in the world, the United States is on pace to become a net energy exporter before 2025.

It's official: the Iran nuclear deal is dead.

What's more pathetic: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' latest blast of ugly anti-Semitism, or the hopes that the global community has long invested in him as a true Israeli partner for peace?

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States has the highest motor vehicle crash death rate among high-income countries, with nearly 37,000 deaths annually, or about 100 per day.

On Monday, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu dramatically unveiled records detailing "Project Amad," Iran's "comprehensive program to design, build, and test nuclear weapons."

With more freedom to maneuver on foreign than domestic affairs, and with their eyes focused squarely on their legacies, all modern U.S. presidents have sought to craft the elusive deal that will solve a protracted global conflict. 

These days, it's increasingly clear that the Iran nuclear deal is on life support.

Mike Pompeo should be promptly confirmed as secretary of State because he is well qualified, but also because this is an extraordinarily dangerous time for the United States to be without an effective secretary of State.

Whatever happened to the Iranian cyberthreat? Not all that long ago, American officials were preoccupied with the growing disruptive capabilities that the Islamic Republic had begun to demonstrate on the World-Wide Web.

In order to better coordinate his response to the latest developments in Syria, President Trump has cancelled what would have been his first trip to South America. Vice President Pence will now go in his stead to attend the Eighth Summit of the Americas.

The world "should wait for our great move," said a top Hamas leader, speaking to Palestinian protestors during violent clashes with Israeli forces along the Gaza border, "when we breach the borders and pray at al Aqsa."

American forces are building military bases in Syria and providing vital humanitarian assistance to embattled minorities there, and yet President Trump is insisting that troops pull out

The new cold war between Moscow and Washington just got a little bit colder.

Congratulations to Heather Nauert, the State Department's new acting under secretary for public diplomacy and affairs! You have just taken the best job in U.S. government, though not many people know it.

A tectonic shift is taking place in Middle East politics. We may be on the verge of seeing a historic normalization of relations between Israel and several major Arab states. And it is all thanks to Iran.

When Vladimir Putin said last fall that artificial intelligence is "humanity's future" and that the country that masters it will "get to rule the world," some observers guessed that the Russian president was hinting at unrevealed progress and breakthroughs in the field.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union organized its vast academic and industrial resources to achieve scientific and industrial breakthroughs for the nation’s military forces.

With President Trump's pick of John Bolton as National Security Advisor raising the chances of a U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, Washington must be ready in its aftermath to pursue a bold, broad, and effective strategy to restrain Tehran's nuclear dreams and hegemonic ambitions.

The sudden announcement of a North Korea-U.S. summit in March 2018 upended all previous diplomacy concerning North Korea’s nuclear program.

Four years after the invasion of Crimea and the Donbas, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine continues unabated. For all the failures of the government in Kyiv to reform, Ukraine is still fighting our war.

In a move that could portend massive shifts in the global oil game, the Shanghai International Energy Exchange will soon unveil an oil-futures contract denominated in Chinese yuan rather than U.S. dollars (product symbol: SC).

Remember Francis Fukayama? The American political scientist and author briefly became the darling of the political science set in the early 1990s with his theory, encapsulated in his bestselling book "The End of History and the Last Man".

As events last week showed, Vladimir Putin continues to open new offensives in his war against the West.

Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu made a significant announcement in mid-March 2018 at a domestic technology forum. "The serial production of combat robots for the Russian armed forces may start already this year," he stated.

Just how far-reaching are Saudi Arabia's reforms? These days, there is unbridled optimism in official Washington over what are widely seen as sweeping social and economic changes taking place in the historically-stagnant Kingdom.

The poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal, his daughter, and twenty-one other British citizens in Salisbury is the most recent of too many such examples. 

You could call it the Iranian negotiating model. After months of escalating tensions with the United States, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has offered to meet directly with President Trump, engendering cautious optimism from many who see this as a necessary first step to de-escalation in Asia.

In recent years, Russian Federation borrowed one great idea from the United States — creating a federally funded center for breakthrough and innovating technologies. The Foundation of Advanced Studies — basically the Russian DARPA — launched in 2013.

Unfolding events in Washington and Beijing raise the disturbing specter of a global passing of the torch from the United States to China

Germany has a new grand-coalition government (GROKO) in sight thanks to the decision by Social Democratic Party (SPD) rank and file to agree to another link-up with Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU). 

Officials in Morocco are apprehensive. "Africa is approaching a dangerous moment," one of the Kingdom's most senior political figures told me recently in Rabat. His bleak assessment, which I heard in virtually every meeting during my recent visit to the country, stems from what are essentially two factors.