Section: The American Interest (USA)
The P-Word
Things are happening so fast in the armed diplomacy of the Levant that it is hard for codgers like me to keep up. No sooner do I finish responding to one major development than another laps at my closing period. And now again: I finish “Ceasefire or Bait-and-Switch” and the very next day John Kerry drops the “p” word on us: “partition.”...
Heidegger’s Ghosts
A specter haunts the post-Cold War liberal order—the specter of radical spiritual malaise. This discontent with or downright opposition to the Western-originated, universalist claims of the broadly liberal cultural, economic, and political order takes diverse forms. One can detect it among Iranian revolutionary theocrats, Russian imperialist...
Of Syria, Dead Donbas Commanders, and Ukraine Fatigue
Ukraine muddled through 2015, meeting neither the exalted expectations of the country’s boosters nor the malevolent hopes of its detractors. Its major accomplishment for the year sounds rather minimalist, but is important nonetheless: the country survived. Since the retreat from Debaltseve in early 2015, Ukrainian forces have managed to...
Ceasefire or Bait-and-Switch?
Oh dear, another day, another “cessation of hostilities” in Syria that is likely to be anything but. How come?As news reports make abundantly clear, the main external protagonists are supposed to deliver their clients and proxies to a cessation of hostilities (legally distinct from a “ceasefire.”) That means the U.S., Saudi, and Turkish...
The Western Pragmatists Explain Russia
Editor’s Note: How do Russia and the West see one another? What are the experts’ views on the confrontation between Russia and the West? How do the pundits explain the Russo-Ukrainian war and Russia’s Syrian gambit? What are the roots of the mythology about Russia in the West, and why has the West failed to predict and...
National Front Asks Russia for $30 Million Loan
Marine Le Pen’s National Front has had a close relationship with the Kremlin in recent years. Now, the Moscow Times reports that Le Pen is looking to Russia for some more financial assistance: France’s far-right National Front party has asked Russia for a 27-million-euro ($30 million) loan, claiming that the party needs it to finance...
Ukraine’s Grim Slide
Ukraine’s government was on the verge of collapse earlier today after two smaller parties quit the governing coalition in disgust following Tuesday’s failed vote to oust the unpopular Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk from office. Both Ukrainian reformers and journalists denounced Tuesday’s flubbed no-confidence vote as a crooked...
Poroshenko’s Political Shadowplay
A closely contested vote of no confidence failed to oust Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk from his post yesterday, the latest in a series of high-stakes gyrations that have brought Ukraine’s governing coalition within a hair of collapse.Though the governing coalition has always been a fraught enterprise, making uneasy allies of...
Moldova: Where Putin Could Score Next
Since Russia seized Crimea and stoked war in eastern Ukraine, most of the scenario-building as to where Russia might push next has focused on the Baltics. The buildup of Russian anti-access area denial (A2AD) assets in the Kaliningrad District has made the northeastern flank an almost obvious area for Russia to pressure the West. But the focus on...
Russia Wields the Kurdish Weapon
An incoherent American strategy is allowing Putin’s Russia to drive wedges into American alliances and disrupt what little strategy the U.S. has left in Syria. The latest example: Russia’s clever move to back the Syrian Kurds—key allies in what passes for America’s anti-ISIS strategy—against the Turks, America’s NATO...
