Boston Globe: ‘Iraq, Syria: Borders aren’t endlessly flexible, but they change’
IF NOT for one fateful act, history would little note Mark Sykes, a British socialite who was master of a mansion the size of Downton Abbey and loved horse breeding. It would pay even less heed to Francois Georges-Picot, an obscure French diplomat whose highest post was consul general in Beirut. Yet with a few […]
Boston Globe: ‘Iraq delivers bloody lesson on blowback’
AFTER MANY decades in the covert-action business, Americans have come to learn what “blowback” means. Often our foreign interventions produce quick victory. Then things go bad. Short-term success dissolves into long-term failure. Many of our interventions have not only thrown target countries into violent upheaval, but weakened our own security. The recent explosion of militant […]
AlJazeera America: ‘Iraq crisis should bring the US and Iran together’
The resurgence of violence in Iraq has a sliver lining: forcing old enemies to cooperate
Boston Globe: ‘Europe’s wimpy servility is really wisdom’
THE UNITED STATES and Europe are drifting slowly apart. This may be to the benefit of both, but the prospect of a more independent Europe distresses some in Washington. They complain, ever more loudly since Russia’s seizure of Crimea, that Europe refuses to take enough responsibility for its own security. Some European countries are not […]
Boston Globe: ‘Are human rights activists today’s warmongers?’
ALMOST EVERYONE likes the idea of human rights. The phrase itself is freighted with goodness. Supporting human rights is like supporting world peace. The modern human rights movement began as a band of outsiders, fighting governments on behalf of the faceless and voiceless. President Jimmy Carter brought it into the American foreign policy establishment by […]
