Israel has made its security the sin qua non of negotiations with the Palestinians, including insistence on military control of the Jordan River valley. But these escalating demands ignore questions of Palestinian security and the greater risk to Israel from worldwide opprobrium,…
As Iraq becomes a hotbed for al-Qaeda terrorism, President George W. Bush’s legacy grows even dimmer. But one could argue that he did succeed in stirring democratic impulses in the region, albeit mostly of an anti-American variety, as ex-CIA analyst Paul…
Official Washington’s neocons are still trying to derail a negotiated settlement with Iran over its nuclear program by imposing new sanctions and thus putting the U.S. on a course for war as favored by Israel’s Likud. But this reality is…
The single-minded Republican drive to exploit the deaths of four U.S. diplomats in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 and use the tragedy to embarrass President Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has obscured the more complex reality of what happened,…
Turkey’s moderate Islamist government has charted a foreign policy path that has both coincided with and diverged from the Obama administration’s strategies, especially on the Syrian conflict and the Egyptian military coup, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains.
When South Africa was ruled by white supremacists and faced boycotts, Pretoria’s defense was that many black-ruled African states were worse and apartheid shouldn’t be singled out. Now, Israel is advancing a similar argument, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar…
The neocons are still beating the drums for U.S. military intervention in Syria, now supposedly for humanitarian reasons. But as horrific as the Syrian violence is it’s clear that President Obama’s restraint last summer averted making the mess even worse, says…
Israel’s Right suddenly finds itself in a strange new world where it can’t do whatever it wants to Arabs under its control without encountering international resistance, like the recent plan to forcibly relocate Bedouins in the Negev, as ex-CIA analyst…
The fear of NSA’s metadata collection is as much in the potential for Big Brother government as in the present or as Edward Snowden says a “turnkey tyranny” all ready to go but private-sector abuses are another worry, ex-CIA analyst Paul…
The neocons along with their allies in Congress and on the Washington Post’s op-ed page remain determined to sabotage a diplomatic rapprochement with Iran, demanding that its leaders be confronted, not engaged, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar notes.