The Pope is not a political figure.

George McGovern and his supporters committed what, in a two-party system, are capital crimes: they did not compromise, they took hard ideological positions, they alienated a large portion of their party’s traditional supporters, and they...

While Argentina, Brazil, and Chile – what in textbooks used to be called the ABC countries – seem settled into democratic politics and free market economics, the Andean countries are in disarray.

At the United Nations, a lynch mob for Israel is always just a moment away.

Pundits are used to analyzing the gap between what our ideals suggest and what our security interests require.

The Iron Dome is great for the U.S.

Moammar Gaddafi, who has called himself the ‘Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,’ should go down in history with the Emperor Bokassa and Idi Amin as...

I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders – leaders not compromised by terror.

Tunisia is small – just ten million, no great natural resources.

It is a keen measure of the fall of American influence in the region when a Palestinian leader responds to intense American pressure to go to the negotiating table by waiting to see if Arab...

At the height of the Cold War, when Ronald Reagan was president, the Soviets and their allies and satellites did not shirk human rights debates with the West. They had their arguments ready.

One good way of measuring the mood in Israel is just how alert or relaxed the guards at every restaurant entrance appear to be.

I grew up in Queens, in New York City, in a middle class Jewish family. My mother was a public school teacher, my father was a lawyer. They were Democrats – kind of middle-of-the-road democrats.

The real crime of Hosni Mubarak is that he ruled for 30 years and left behind an Egypt where the Muslim Brotherhood is the single strongest player.

Reagan did not wait out the Soviets; he beat them.

The Obama administration has vastly expanded the use of armed drones and concentrated a great deal of diplomatic effort on building and maintaining alliances that share information about terrorists, provide access to get near them,...

The attack on the British embassy in Tehran came just days after the Iranian ‘parliament’ voted to expel the British ambassador, and therefore reeks of official complicity.

Obama’s foreign policy is strangely self-centered, focused on himself and the United States rather than on the conduct and needs of the nations the United States allies with, engages with, or must confront.

U.S.-Israel relations are often depicted as an extended honeymoon, but that’s a false image.

There’s been an Israeli position, which is ‘We love Mubarak,’ that permeates their whole society, the political class. That certainly differs from many of us in the pro-Israel camp in the United States.

American power remains today what it was in the Second World War and the Cold War: the greatest force for freedom in the world.

The presence of jihadis in Syria should be no surprise.

Grasping the realities of the Middle East is never easy. This is not primarily because they change quickly, but because so much time, effort, and money is spent to prevent reality from breaking through.

While we use American power to fight hard for democracy against extremism on both left and right, our critics seem suspicious of any assertion of United States power or influence against any government or group...

After 9/11, we did see Palestinian terrorism in the context of all terrorism.

The anchors of the Arab consensus have long been Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and both are now weakened forces in Arab politics and diplomacy.

What Israel wants is peace with – and the acknowledgment of – all the Arab countries.

On the human rights side, administration policy has been marked by indifference. When the people of Iran flooded the streets to protest the theft of their presidential election in June 2009, President Obama was silent...

I just don’t understand how Kerry or Obama or anybody else thought Assad was going to change.

When freedom of the press is threatened, the United States should be leading efforts to protect it.

Mass killing has very clearly not been eliminated, nor has the ‘international community’ developed a response that will avert it or bring it to a quick end.

During the election campaign of 2000, it was generally thought that then-governor Bush didn’t know much about foreign policy or national security affairs, and that Colin Powell would lead on that front, while the president’s...

Persecution of Christians is growing around the world, and Congress needs to pay more attention to it.

If you are trying to raise a child to be a Jew, then you have to create a sense of Jewish identity. You really weaken that sense of identity if you celebrate two religions.

The Sandinistas are a tough bunch of guys, with a fabulous amount of Soviet Bloc equipment and Soviet Bloc advisers.

Sari Nusseibeh is a man without a country.

While foreign competitors, French or Japanese or German, merrily bid for contracts abroad, American companies find themselves tangled in a web of legislation designed to express disapproval, block trade in certain commodities, or perhaps deny...

The conflict between secular Zionism and the settler movement did not appear overnight following Israel’s conquests in the 1967 war, for there was an argument that bridged the gap: security.

When a deeply sympathetic American president asks for concessions and compromises and appears able to cajole some from the Palestinians, which was the Clinton/Rabin and Bush/Sharon combination, Israel must respond.

While all Alawites fear vengeance against their entire community should Assad fall, there are varying degrees of loyalty to the Assads.

Tunisia was not for the United States an important country in the way, let’s say, Algeria was because of its gas, because of its size, because of its struggle against terrorism that sometimes turned bloody.

Arab states continue to send the Palestinians gifts of extravagant rhetoric and countless Arab League resolutions – but not much cash.

The ransoming of captives has been practiced by Jews for many centuries and has been regarded as a greater obligation than charity for the poor.

Henry M. Jackson, congressman and senator from 1941 until his death in 1983, achieved far greater renown than most legislators, ran for president in 1972 and 1976, and was for much of the 1970s and...

Dubai must crack down on rampant smuggling, and the U.A.E. federal government has significantly stepped up pressure.

America’s relations with complex Middle Eastern states such as Egypt are often difficult.

In Jordan, where the prime minister is always a commoner, the king has announced some new reforms that would tend to move the country toward a more democratic system: Notably, the prime minister would emerge...

Scandinavia is boring. People living there apparently have little to do. And as European history teaches, when there is nothing much to do, you may as well amuse yourself by attacking the Jews.

I personally would not talk to a Jew for Jesus.

Why are diplomatic cables secret at all?