A lot has changed in the Middle East and around the world in the last 15 years. A lot has happened in the United States as well. Reading President Trump’s new National Security Strategy, almost all of the emphasis is on the latter. The country would have been better served...

It has long been all too clear that the U.S. has gradually built up the military capability to help local powers defeat ISIS in Syria and Iraq without having strategy for dealing with the host of other problems that exist in bringing any kind of lasting stability to...

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the world’s most prominent Saudi investor, has gotten a great deal of attention, but the sweep included other billionaires, senior royals from other branches of the family, and technocrats who began guiding Saudi Arabia’s economic reform...

There isn’t a number system in the world in which three is greater than 73. And yet, in Syria, an alliance of three governments has run circles around an alliance of 73, imposing its order on a violent and chaotic situation.

It is tempting to see the whole episode...

To many leaders in the Middle East, the Trump administration is a breath of fresh air. The president’s statements about battling extremism and reinforcing the status quo, and his general disinterest in the region’s domestic conditions, are a huge relief after President...

The United States seems to be adjusting the military half of its strategy in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan to the point where it can be successful. The estimates of the overall patterns in global terrorism in the semi-official START data base continue to rise, but the U.S....

If there were a global siren to signal that a humanitarian crisis has tipped over the threshold to a catastrophic scale, it would be ringing loudly right now. Today, 20.7 million people are starving or at...

Dilapidated refugee camps, destroyed cities, and over-crowded inflatable boats battling the Mediterranean; these are the images that dominate coverage of displaced Syrians. After seven years of war and destruction that has caused Syria to become the

Africa featured prominently on the agenda of the annual summit of the Group of Twenty (G20), held July 7–8 in Hamburg, Germany. Led by an initiative of the German chair, the heads of state of 20 of the world’s leading economies agreed on the establishment of a G20...

The United States, its allies, and international organizations are just beginning to come to grips with the civil dimensions of "failed state" wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.