The concept of “the West” is a complex and difficult one. At times it excludes countries in the geographical west, like Cuba and Venezuela and sometimes Brazil. At times it includes countries not in the geographical west, like Japan and Australia. As Richard Sakwa has explained, the West can refer to a 500 year old civilizational West or to a cultural or historical West of which Russia considers itself to be a core member. The twin ticket admission into the political West is membership in the U.S.-led, post-Cold War security community built around NATO and in a cultural community allegedly...

“We’re going to do everything we can to keep a wider war from breaking out,” U.S. President Joe Biden promised when war erupted in Gaza. But that foreign policy legacy is in tatters. War has spread from Gaza to Lebanon and has arrived at the doorstep of Iran. There is a real danger that the war could continue to spread. On October 1, Iran demonstrated its capability to evade Israel’s air defense systems and deliver ballistic missiles to their targets in Israel. Since then, Hezbollah has demonstrated the ability to evade Israel’s air defense systems with slower moving drones. Israel has...

The freshly elected President Barack Obama probably never imagined that he would be delivering his Nobel Peace Prize lecture by defending war. But there he was, in December 2009, doing just that. “I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated,” he said. “[P]erhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars.” Obama told his audience that he is mindful of what “Martin Luther King Jr. said in this same ceremony...