After sacrificing over 6,700 troops and spending over $2 trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan to rid the world of Al Qaeda, the U.S. is seriously considering arming these very same elements to effect regime change in Syria. The same political leaders who want to give the...

Several experts and commentators have attributed much of Egypt's economic and political turmoil to the ineptitude and intolerance of the ruling Muslim Brotherhood. Yet Egypt's main opposition party, the National Salvation Front (NSF), a coalition of liberals, leftists, secularists, moderate Muslims, business interests and minorities, has yet to...

As the world focuses its attention on the conflict in Syria, northern Mali has become the biggest expanse of territory controlled by al Qaeda, which is seeking to establish an autonomous state. Rukmini Callimachi from the Associated Press describes Mali as "Al Qaeda's new country" while...

The Obama administration has intensified its efforts to influence the configuration of Syria's post-Assad political landscape by isolating jihadist elements on the ground, unifying Western-friendly rebel factions and piecing together a more moderate political opposition as the noose tightens around Damascus. The expedited diplomatic and counterterrorism maneuvers are being driven...

At the outset of his first term President Barack Obama did explore diplomatic routes to check Iran's nuclear ambitions, but the mullahs responded with little more than insouciance. However, Tehran is not alone to blame. The administration had always planned on abandoning diplomacy after Obama's first 12 months in office...

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has a historic opportunity to help resolve the Iranian-Israeli nuclear imbroglio by leveraging Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Tel Aviv and exploiting its newfound goodwill with Tehran. Morsi is well-positioned to broker a "cool peace" and prevent Israel and/or the United States from launching airstrikes against...

President Barack Obama's actions in the Muslim world have failed to live up to the principles espoused in his soaring speeches, according to Fawaz Gerges in his new book, Obama and the Middle East. Although afforded an opportunity to transform America's standing in the region, as Gerges illustrates,...

Detractors have blistered Mitt Romney for lacking vision because his national security prescriptions contrast with Obama's only in shades -- deviating in form, not content. But these critics miss the point: Style is Romney's strategy. In the absence of any articulate doctrines to call his own Romney has made a...

It's hard to fathom that the United States stems from a revolutionary tradition considering it has opposed more revolutions than it has supported, or so argues Pulitzer-prize winner Gordon Wood in his latest book, The Idea of America. Wood sees a "terrifying gap" between us and the Founding...

Lloyd Gardner's Road to Tahrir Square exposes how the U.S. empowered Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak with the "tools of repression" for the past 30 years and the extent to which American policymakers have shaped Egypt's destiny, including the very outcome of its historic revolution.

Gardner, a Rutgers University...

Francis Fukuyama once hypothesized that the end of the Cold War signaled the end of history, describing the seminal moment as "the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." Charles Kupchan flips this theory on its head...

The U.S. has been financing both sides of the war in Afghanistan since 2001 as a startling percentage of foreign aid continues to flood Taliban coffers on a daily basis, according to Douglas A. Wissing in his new book, Funding the Enemy: How U.S. Taxpayers Bankroll the Taliban.

A U.S. House Foreign Affairs committee hearing held last week on human rights violations in Balochistan elicited predictably defensive reactions from Pakistan after the proceedings exposed the brutality of the sub-colonial racist ethos the country's Punjabi elite inherited from their British overlords. According to Pakistan's rulers and right-wing...

GOP candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a self-styled "ideas man," proclaimed after his South Carolina victory that he was running on a platform of "American exceptionalism" -- an intellectually shoal paradigm that makes "Yes We Can!" seem downright Emersonian.

But it would seem any Republican candidate to be...

Iraq war apologists are capitalizing on last week's bombings in Baghdad to blast President Obama for allowing the premature mass exodus of American combat troops from Mesopotamia -- a decision that will purportedly enable Al Qaeda to flourish and cause the people of Iraq endless suffering. But these war lovers...

Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald's novel The Voice takes its audience on a quest for the real Holy Grail, entwining scientific mythology with geopolitical intrigue in an esoteric thrill-ride Dan Brown couldn't dream up, as a frustrated journalist unravels a 5,000-year-old mystery involving Templar knights, Celtic priests and...

If you thought their economic plans were disastrous, wait until you get a load of the foreign policy doctrines Republican presidential candidates bandied about during their most recent primary debate. Bombing Iran, abating foreign aid to zero, intimidating China and torturing people are just a few examples of what GOP...

It was a surreal sight to behold -- a Muslim woman bedecked in black abaya and full veil whilst hobbling on Louboutin red soles in a Doha market where Bedouin were selling spices and fabrics next door to Sri Lankans peddling designer jewelry. Then again Qatar is the land of...

Although for one to suggest the U.S. had any alternatives to leveling Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 is to invite ridicule, legendary Afghan resistance commander Abdul Haq had, in fact, an indigenous remedy for overthrowing the Taliban, rounding up al Qaeda and establishing a legitimate government in Kabul.

Although his recent New York Times polemic slamming Afghan war critics is entitled "This War Can Still Be Won," Army Special Forces Major Fernando M. Luján makes an interesting admission near the end of his piece when he concedes that "winning" is a meaningless word when it comes...