The Nov. 24 downing of an intruding Russian bomber by Turkish jet fighters produced understandable anger in Moscow. A trace of Cold War-era angst spread throughout the civilized world. The incident had Cold War echoes. Russia lacks the Soviet Union’s armed might, but has nuclear weapons. Last year its bullyboy president, Vladimir Putin, shook the […]

Last week’s attack on Paris is the latest act of mass homicide and media grandstanding in the Islamist terrorists’ long war for the terms of modernity. That name frames the fight as a multigenerational struggle with very basic cultural, political and historical stakes. War acknowledges the military dimension; “terms of modernity” indicates that the cultural […]

On Nov. 10, a so-called anti-austerity alliance led by the Portuguese Social Democratic Party toppled the governing center-right coalition. That remarkable Portugal Ahead coalition, formed by former Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho’s Christian Democrats in partnership with the PSD, had done what many thought impossible. Formed during the 2011 economic crisis, the coalition saved Portugal […]

Turkey’s democracy is the legacy of Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Turkish Republic, and the only man to successfully modernize a nation of Muslim culture. That democracy is Turkey’s greatest domestic asset and most valuable foreign policy tool. Unfortunately, Nov. 1’s snap national election results put Turkish democracy, cultural vitality and Ataturk’s legacy at risk. […]

On Oct. 26 East Asia watched with great interest as a U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer, USS Lassen, patrolled disputed waters in the South China Sea. The Lassen’s 72-mile cruise was a calculated and overdue act of muscular diplomacy intended to warn China that its destabilizing South China Sea territorial expansion policy will not be […]

Will Portugal once again succumb to the ravages of Big Debt? Big Debt is not just an economically strangling burden, it is debt that increases because it lacks political discipline. For some three years, Portugal’s coalition government, led by Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho, exhibited just the kind of calculated economic discipline and political guts […]

The Pentagon insists it isn’t reviving the Strategic Air Command. The Cold War is over — supposedly. SAC and its workhorse B-52 became uncomfortable symbols of that long, weary struggle waged on the edge of thermonuclear destruction. However, the U.S. Air Force’s decision to consolidate control of its strategic bomber fleet into a single headquarters […]

The latest Greek crisis election produced a telling statistic: Only 55 percent of the electorate bothered to vote. The figure represents a sharp decline from 64 percent in January 2015’s election. That election brought the radical-left Syriza party to power. Syriza’s telegenic leader Alexis Tsipras became prime minister. In 2012 parliamentary elections, 66 percent of […]