China's Plausible Deniability Doctrine in the Middle East
China insists it is a neutral actor in the Middle East. However, recent reports suggesting it is helping Iran rebuild its air defenses tell a very different story. Whether those reports are ultimately confirmed is almost beside the point. The real story lies in the widening gap between Beijing’s diplomatic rhetoric and its strategic behavior. […]
Do the Trump Tariffs Make Sense?
In 1817 David Ricardo, an English economist and politician, changed the world. In his treatise On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, he demonstrated that free trade between and among countries always benefits all of them, because of the principle of comparative advantage: even if country A can produce every product and commodity more […]
CENTCOM Requests Ideas for Punishing Iran – An Alternative Proposal
Response to U.S. Central Command’s Request for Ideas on Punishing Iran The unusual request by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) for new ideas on action against Iran offers a rare glimpse into the dead end into which the American campaign has drifted. According to a CNN report, an officer in CENTCOM’s intelligence branch circulated a request […]
The New Arena of Strategic Competition Between Israel, Syria and Turkey
As long as the Bashar Al-Assad regime remained in power, the tension between Turkey and Israel was largely understood through the Palestinian question, Hamas, the war in Gaza, and the mutual harsh rhetoric between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. For this reason, the rivalry between the two countries was mostly […]
Lawbreakers Should Not Benefit From the Law
The international order established after World War II rests on a simple idea: states agree to live by a common set of rules. International law has served as the foundation for security, economic cooperation, and the relative predictability of international relations over the past several decades. Today, however, that system is facing a profound crisis. […]
Will Germany Embrace Real Economic Reform?
Once upon a time Germany was famous for its Wirtschaftswunder, or economic miracle. Today there’s little to brag about. If you want to witness the tragedy of economic illiteracy in real-time, step into the German parliament during a pension debate. Watch as politicians thrash about at the podium, warning working citizens that putting retirement savings […]
Spain’s Left and Right Fight over Franco’s Monument
Ahead of his June visit to Spain Pope Leo XIV was pressed by conservative Catholic groups to visit the Valley of the Fallen, the massive memorial complex in the mountains near Madrid built during the Franco regime. While it is dedicated in theory to all who died in the country’s civil war, this memorial is […]
Iran and the Future of America First
How the Iranian Question Could Define Republican Strategy After Trump As the United States approaches the 2028 presidential cycle, the central debate inside the Republican Party is no longer simply who will inherit Donald Trump’s political movement. The deeper strategic question is what America First will become after Trump. The answer may be shaped by […]
“KNOW THE ENEMY”
DEATH, TIME AND WAR IN THE JIHADI WORLD
DEATH, TIME AND WAR IN THE JIHADI WORLD
From the start, Donald Trump’s plan for peace in the Middle East was headed for trouble. Among other things, the US president’s proposals failed to understand jihadi notions of death and time. Fortunately, Trump’s plan for Gaza, first announced in September 2025, was rejected by Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on August 9, 2026. Though […]
Why Israel’s Government Voted to Recognize the Armenian Genocide
How the geopolitical tide can turn in thirty years! If 1996 was the high-water mark of Turkish-Israeli relations, 2026 is their lowest ebb: from a free-trade agreement to a trade embargo; from an Israeli tourism boom to virtually none; from close military cooperation under their landmark MOU to Erdogan’s threats of military confrontation; and from […]
From El-Sissi’s Egypt to the End of Political Islam
Why Top-Down Decrees Can’t Cure the Region’s Crisis? El-Sissi diagnosed the symptom. He did not know how to cure the disease. On January 1, 2015, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi stood before the scholars of Al-Azhar University and issued an ambitious call for a “religious revolution.” He warned that it was both mathematically and morally […]
How Hitler Created A Dictatorship in 53 Days
In 1949, Theodor Heuss, the first president of the Federal Republic of Germany, warned his countrymen that “we should not make it so easy for ourselves to forget what the Hitler era brought us.” Heuss, who had been a member of the pro-democracy German State Party during the Weimar Republic, was a keen student of […]
