Publications

With NATO’s latest gathering this week in Vilnius, Washington is understandably focused on what the United States and its allies should do next to help Ukraine rebuff Russia. Moscow’s invasion, however, is part of a larger, multi-nation challenge to which Washington has not yet developed a comprehensive response.

That challenge is the axis of deepening diplomatic, military, and economic cooperation between China, Russia, and Iran. Washington is responding to individual provocations in ways that seem to contradict one another.

These are heady days for Turkey's president. Last month, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country's larger-than-life strongman, eked out an electoral win over opposition rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu to secure a third five-year term in office. In the process, he dashed the hopes of many in the West for a more democratic turn on the part of NATO's only Middle Eastern member.

With Washington resuming indirect talks with Tehran over its nuclear program, opponents of the 2015 nuclear deal in the United States and abroad are raising legitimate fears that Washington will provide the Islamic Republic with sanctions relief while getting little, if anything, in return. And who can blame them?

Between mid-March and mid-April, Israel's northern frontier experienced its worst spasm of instability in over a decade-and-a-half. On March 13, an armed extremist connected to Hezbollah infiltrated the country and blew up a car at the Megiddo junction, some 50 miles south of the Israeli-Lebanese border. Three weeks later, over the Passover holiday, the Hamas terrorist group launched a salvo of 36 rockets from Lebanese territory against towns and civilian populations in the western Galilee, wounding several and damaging local infrastructure. Two days after that, rockets were launched at Israel from Syria as well.