U.S. should know by now that ransoming hostages with Iran only leads to terror
On January 16, 2016, as the United States, Iran, and other world powers began to implement the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the diplomatic deal to constrain Iran's nuclear program in exchange...
View ArticleWill Erdogan Airbrush Atatürk From Turkish Life?
The Anıtkabir, the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, is a monumental structure that sits amidst parkland on a hill overlooking central Ankara, Turkey's capital. School children, conscripts,...
View ArticleDid the Defense Department Lie About Closing Lajes?
The Pentagon continues to reduce forces at Lajes Field in the Azores, a strategic archipelago in the mid-Atlantic. A year ago, the base was already a ghost town. After US taxpayers had spent millions...
View ArticleWhether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump wins, the next President needs to...
As presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump debated last week, Syria was a sideshow. Clinton mentioned the country in passing; Trump ignored it altogether. While they sparred over...
View ArticleWould a bankrupt Saudi Arabia be good for America?
If Saudi Arabia had no oil, the world would be a very different place. Bernard Lewis, the famous emeritus professor of Islamic history at Princeton University, famously analogized the influence of...
View ArticleTurkey Should Play No Part in Liberating Mosul
In December 2001, US forces had Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden cornered in Tora Bora, a rugged cave complex in eastern Afghanistan not far from the Pakistani border. Rather than tighten the noose with...
View ArticleTurkey is Headed for a Bloodbath
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called the failed July 15 coup attempt a "gift from God." The Turkish government immediately blamed Erdoğan's former ally-turned-rival Fethullah Gülen for being...
View ArticleErdogan's Troop Incursion Into Iraq Threatens NATO Unity
Turkish forces are massing along the Iraqi border, while President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatens a further incursion into Iraq to prevent Iraqi forces—especially Shiite militias—from establishing...
View ArticleTrump Team's First Ethics Scandal
It's only been a few days, but already it seems Donald Trump's presumptive foreign policy and national security team could be weathering its first scandal. I have written about General Michael Flynn,...
View ArticleTrump's troubling security adviser
President-elect Donald Trump has asked retired general and former Defense Intelligence Agency head Michael Flynn to serve as his national security adviser. It is a crucial post which oversees the...
View ArticleWill Erdogan Bring Assassinations Here?
Turkey has never been known for its respect for human rights, but one of the most troubling aspects of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's rule has been Turkey's increasing aggressiveness toward...
View ArticleErdogan Makes a Bid for the Military
Much of the reason why so many diplomats and analysts got the trajectory of Turkey so wrong for so long is that they focused on the cosmetic over the substantive. They focused upon the debate about...
View ArticleWhy Should We Trust Erdogan's Spies?
At the heart of controversy over intelligence embraced in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq were 16 words inserted into President George W. Bush's 2002 State of the Union address: "The British...
View ArticleWhat Kerry got wrong in his Israel speech
Secretary of State John Kerry laid out his vision of a Middle East peace deal on Wednesday. Rather than achieve peace between Israel and Palestinians, however, Kerry will be remembered for catalyzing...
View ArticleSetting traitor Manning free is a betrayal by Obama
As the clock winds down on his presidency, President Obama has commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, the army intelligence analyst convicted of leaking hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic and...
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