Articles

Peace in our time in Syria? Not even close. Last Thursday, international negotiators meeting in Germany announced that they had reached what was described as "an agreement toward halting hostilities." Not a ceasefire, not an armistice, but a deal to make another deal to possibly stop the fighting. "I'm pleased to say that as a result today in Munich," Secretary of State John Kerry said at the time, "we believe we have made progress on both the humanitarian front and the cessation of hostilities front... to be able to change the daily lives of the Syrian people." Note to Kerry: Try not to say "Munich" when announcing a peace deal, especially one doomed to fail.

The next Gaza war is fast approaching, with the terrorist group Hamas feverishly expanding its tunnel network to launch attacks inside Israel and Jerusalem now debating the shape and timing of its next move.

The next American president will inherit a world on fire. Whoever ends up winning the presidential election in the Fall of 2016 will enter the Oval Office facing a range of pressing - and difficult - global problems. How he or she will address them will determine America's place in the world for much of the decade to come. As such, it's worth examining what the future commander-in-chief will be forced to contend with on the world stage.

Was the Iran nuclear deal really all about nuclear weapons, from Tehran's point of view? Or did the mullahs play the world for suckers as a road to easy wealth?

To hear President Vladimir Putin tell it, his government is the proverbial tip of the spear in the global war on terror.

For months, Kremlin officials have taken great pains to style their intervention in Syria in grandiose terms - not simply as a ploy to prop up a key strategic ally, but as a broader campaign against Islamic extremism. To hear them tell it, Russia has been forced to lead because of Western fecklessness in the face of gathering Islamic radicalism. Yet this bluster belies the fact that Moscow's counterterrorism policy is both flawed and selective in the extreme.