Editor's Note: The following letter was received by the Institute from Dr. Michael K. Launer, Emeritus Professor of Russian at Florida State University and is published with his permission. This is a brief response to Ted Snider’s September 8, 2026 article, "All...
The United Arab Emirates spent eight years and a fortune trying to own a stretch of water. It bought proxies, seized islands, built runways and naval bases along both banks of the Bab el-Mandeb, and sold the whole program to Washington as the wall that would keep Iran...
On January 22, 2003, Donald Rumsfeld stepped behind the podium at the Foreign Press Center in Washington and, with one answer to a Dutch public television reporter, redrew the map of Europe. The reporter wanted to know why so many Europeans trusted Saddam Hussein more...
The 55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting, held in Koror, Palau, from August 31 to September 3, offered a revealing window into the limits of an increasingly ambitious external security agenda in the Pacific. The immediate subject was Australia’s expanding...
The war in the Middle East keeps getting worse for President Donald Trump. The campaign to defeat Iran and establish a new order in the Middle East that left Tehran’s allies marginalized has imploded spectacularly. Not only is Iran still fighting, but it has also...
When former CIA Director James Woolsey served as chairman of the board for the non-governmental organization (NGO) Freedom House for roughly two and a half years, it was during a particularly turbulent period in the post-Soviet space. Freedom House’s "Message from the...
On the evening of August 4, an airport employee at Leipzig/Halle noticed a small drone resting on the apron near a parked Ukrainian Antonov freighter. It carried an explosive charge and a detonator. The charge did not go off. A bomb-disposal robot rolled out across...
Operation Epic Fury, a war of aggression launched on false pretenses, has failed to topple the government of Iran or force the “unconditional surrender” President Donald Trump demanded on the seventh day of a war that’s now in its seventh month. In April, the Trump...
