In For the Long Haul

Years ago Stratfor.com, the private intelligence service and Web site, maintained that the real purpose of the Iraq war was to establish permanent U.S . bases in Iraq, to serve as forward staging areas for future forays in the world wide "war on terror," in someplace...

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Khrushchev’s Cold War

Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Khrushchev's Cold War (New York: Norton paperback, 2007), 670 pp. Überhawks carelessly toss around the Hitler comparison – Ho Chi Minh was Hitler. Slobodan Milosevic was Hitler. Saddam Hussein was Hitler. Now Mahmoud...

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McCain’s Mangled Metaphor

Never mind Hillary's plants or that guitar-strumming singing wannabe pundit, the real news out of the Youtube/CNN GOP slugfest is that John McCain's failing, cash-strapped campaign was dealt another heavy blow in his embarrassing tiff with antiwar Republican Ron Paul....

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Blowback From Moscow

Our next president will likely face a Russia led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, determined to stand up to a West that Russians believe played them for fools when they sought to be friends. Americans who think Putin has never been anything but a KGB thug...

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A Tenuous ‘Peace’ in Anbar

RAMADI, Iraq - A semblance of calm belies an undercurrent of violence, detentions and fear across Iraq's volatile Anbar province. The province – which occupies one-third of Iraq's geographic area – has been a bane to authorities since the beginning of the...

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In the Fox’s Lair

One reason parts of Iraq have quieted down, at least for a while, has received widespread attention: the Sunni split from al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda's own tactics alienated its base, which is usually a fatal political mistake, and for once we were wise enough not to get in...

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Much Ado About Annapolis

ANNAPOLIS, Maryland - The Middle East peace conference that began and ended here on this crisp, sunny Tuesday was lean on specifics for a lasting peace deal between Israel and Palestine and the formation of a Palestinian state. Dealing with a timeline for continued...

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