Publications

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s charm offensive has already changed the global dynamics over Iran’s nuclear pursuit to Tehran’s advantage, with the West easing its pressure and Israel now positioned as a stubborn outlier.

Also to Tehran’s benefit, Rouhani’s efforts have opened a clearer fissure between Washington and Jerusalem. Not only is U.S. President Barack Obama clearly banking on diplomatic success while a skeptical Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterates his threats of an Israeli military strike, but Obama also seems more likely to take a deal with Tehran that Netanyahu would find hard to swallow.

If you grew up any time in the last half-century, chances are you have fond memories of Charles Schulz’s iconic “Peanuts” comic strip and its hard-luck protagonist, Charlie Brown. Each week brought a new misfortune for the unhappy Charlie, but never more so than when his crafty friend Lucy offered to play football — a game that, no matter how many times it was attempted, invariably ended with Charlie flat on his back.

The British historian AJP Taylor believed that in Germany, classical liberalism always fails in the competition of political ideas. For over six decades, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) has tried to prove Taylor wrong. The FDP—which calls itself “Die Liberalen”—champions free-market economics and protection of civil liberties, while remaining the most “Atlanticist” of the German political parties.