By now, those of you who have been following the Korean crisis have encountered plenty of proposals from pundits. Let's consider some of them.

Perhaps the most original idea comes from a professor in Texas, whose advice is that the United States should launch a preventive strike on...

War cries, threats and counter-threats, moves and counter-moves are emanating from the Korean peninsula. Pundits have pronounced on what's going on and where things are headed. So this may be a good time to engage in some humility and to reflect on how little we know.

To make things...

France's recent military intervention in Mali halted an apparent push toward Bamako, the country's capital, by the hard-line Tuareg Islamists who for months had ruled Mali's vast northern region. French President Francois Hollande acted after a frantic Malian government pleaded for help on January 10, no doubt realizing that its...

Here's an irony. The NATO air campaign that helped overthrow Muammar Gaddafi, and that French President Nicolas Sarkozy couldn't wait to launch (French jets were heading to Libyan targets before the other NATO participants were ready to go), has presented Sarkozy's successor, Francois Hollande, with a big problem in Mali....

Shinzo Abe became prime minister of Japan -- its seventh in six years -- after his Liberal Democratic Party, which has governed Japan for all but four years since 1955, won this month's parliamentary elections resoundingly, ending a three-year interlude by the Democratic Party of Japan.

Mr. Abe has his...

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime has shown surprising staying power in the vicious civil war that's been grinding on for nearly two years. One reason for its endurance is the contrast between its overwhelming advantage in firepower -- which it has used with utter disregard for non-combatants' lives -- and...

I've had it with globalization.

In my line of work, academe, it's virtually impossible these days to avoid hearing senior university officials begin a speech (especially at commencement or at a conclave of would-be financial benefactors) with the solemn observation that "we live in a globalized world," that states...

Syria's continuing carnage and chaos have led to tens of thousands of people (mostly non-combatants) being killed and maimed. Many more have become refugees, within their homeland, or in neighboring countries. With things already so horrific, it's hard to imagine them getting worse. But the regime of Bashar al-Assad is...

The plunge of the rial, Iran's currency, has been breathtaking. In 2010, it traded for about 10,000 for one U.S. dollar. Now, the Iranian government, its dollar earnings halved by the economic sanctions the United States and its allies imposed (supplementing those adopted in the United Nations) to...

Speculation about the euro's fate remains rife. Some in the American elite never liked the idea of a European currency, perhaps because they believed it might some day give the dollar a run for its money as the global reserve currency, a status that provided the United States an array...

Dokdo/Takeshima. Senkaku/Diaoyu. Xisha/Hoang Sa (aka the Paracels). The Spratlys. If your reaction is "Huh?" it's because these are clumps of islets and clusters of rocks -- most with no permanent inhabitants to speak of -- that dot the Sea of Japan and the East and South China seas. While obscure...

So who's got the worst job on Mitt Romney's campaign team? My pick: the head of his national security brain trust, former World Bank chief Robert Zoellick, followed by Romney's lead foreign policy speechwriter (whoever that is).

Why? Because crafting a critique of Barrack Obama's foreign policy...

If you've been following the Eurozone's crisis but have found the economic technicalities trying (or worse, boring) don't despair. The roots of the crisis, the obstacles impeding solutions, and the consequences of success or failure are essentially political.

The technicalities of bond yields, the implications of creating Eurobonds, the appropriate...

Despite inevitable differences in detail, the Arab Spring has so far produced comparable outcomes in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt: elections leading to post-revolutionary governments. This pattern may not prevail in Syria, though, and post-Assad politics could be a whole lot messier, with the violence and turmoil continuing.

Let's start with...

Most Western press reports and pundits characterized Wednesday's suicide bombing that killed three top Syrian military-security officials (a fourth succumbed to his wounds later) as a deathblow to Bashar al-Assad's government. The Obama administration seemed to concur.

With fighting raging in Damascus's neighborhoods and suburbs and an...

The solidarity toward Afghanistan that was on display at Sunday's conference in Tokyo, which was attended by some 70 governments and international aid organizations, was impressive.

Afghan president Hamid Karzai received a pledge of $20 billion through 2015, with the United States expected to provide some $2...

As Egypt's political drama unfolds, there has been some discussion about whether the Obama administration has enabled the emergence of an Egypt run by the Muslim Brotherhood by failing to stand by Hosni Mubarak.

The back and forth on this point highlights a larger challenge that Washington has long encountered,...

You've got to hand it to Egypt's top military brass, collectively known as the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). They quickly filled the political vacuum produced when the Egyptian version of the Arab Spring ended the 30-year rule of strongman Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. Since then the...

Much about Syria's continuing carnage remains unclear -- above all, what outsiders can do to stop it. But there are also undeniable facts.

Bashar al-Assad's regime has not lost the capacity and determination to kill, even after 15 months of bloodshed that has left some 10,000 Syrian civilians dead...

Sometimes, you're strongest when you're weakest. This is the paradox presently prevailing within the Eurozone.

Until recently, the idea of issuing Eurobonds was dismissed as politically infeasible because it would in effect commit the EU's financially most prudent members to guaranteeing the loans of its most profligate ones. That...