Everyone wonders why the U.S. military command announced outlines of the plan to retake the city of Mosul from Islamic State control. There is surface clarity but there must be more underneath. The battle plan itself is simple: overwhelming force,... Continue Reading →
Media accounts of gruesome executions and beheadings carried out by ISIS fighters over the past week have put in the background another aspect of their strategy besides barbarism: the process of constructing a state. Islamic State’s leadership announced that it... Continue Reading →
Co-authored by Michael Chioke* The outside world’s war with ISIS seems to be evolving in a more positive direction. In the battle for Kobani on the Syrian-Turkish border, ISIS fighters are retreating even although elsewhere in Syria and Iraq they... Continue Reading →
Milan is not one of Italy’s most-visited travel destinations. Guide-books often say it’s a two-star city. Rick Steve’s excellent Italy 2014 says, “OK, it’s a big, intense city, so you probably won’t linger.” But he’s speaking here to the average... Continue Reading →
French president François Hollande is evermore himself and this is bad news for France. In his first year it was the old Socialist pattern of campaigning in left-wing poetry (for example the 75 percent tax on incomes over 1 million... Continue Reading →
If Machiavelli were counseling the Hamas leadership today he would give them hard advice. Be smarter about war, he would say. Know that both victory and defeat are not easy to get right. It’s possible, for example, to win a... Continue Reading →
As ISIS/Islamic State takes over Mosul and other parts of Syria and Iraq it is imposing an ancient religious persecution of minorities: Christians (or any minority) face a brutal choice of conversion to Islam, paying tribute, or death. Almost all... Continue Reading →
It’s a foreign policy witticism to say that whenever a crisis occurs in the world the question for some people is always, what does it mean for Israel? With Syria and now Iraq in flames, Israel’s security is not at... Continue Reading →
In last Sunday’s European parliament elections there were two earthquake results in France. The first is the breakthrough of the far-right nationalist, anti-EU, anti-immigrant National Front party (FN). The second is the overwhelming defeat of the governing Socialist party (PS)... Continue Reading →
Tiersky's Viewpoint 