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Recent Articles
- Nudging India Into the Game - February 7, 2010
- WASHINGTON -- The key to Kabul lies in Islamabad, Adm. Mike Mullen likes to say, meaning that success in Afghanistan will be impossible without Pakistan's help. But the...
- Revenge, From 10,000 Feet - February 3, 2010
- WASHINGTON -- In their joint operations against Taliban militants hiding in the tribal areas, the U.S. and Pakistan seem to have embraced a classic bit of battlefield...
- Davos Does Populism - January 31, 2010
- DAVOS, Switzerland -- The World Economic Forum is the last place I would have expected to encounter the new populism. But when a venerable European central banker, a man...
- Bringing Partners to the Fight - January 28, 2010
- WASHINGTON -- Gen. Stanley McChrystal this week expressed a truth that military commanders know better than anyone: "A political solution to all conflicts is the...
- A Way Around Congress - January 24, 2010
- WASHINGTON -- It's the truism of the week: To surmount his political troubles, President Obama needs to show leadership -- especially on his signature issue of health...
- In Haiti, a Tragedy That Defies Logic - January 21, 2010
- WASHINGTON -- When an overwhelming natural disaster such as the Haiti earthquake kills many thousands of people, there is a natural human tendency to look for causes and...
- When "The Wire" Becomes the Problem - January 17, 2010
- WASHINGTON -- As the CIA mourns the officers who died in Khost, Afghanistan, last month, there's an understandable desire not to second-guess the procedures that allowed...
- Keep Voicing the Cairo Message - January 14, 2010
- WASHINGTON -- The presidency of Barack Obama is becoming tangled, inexorably, in the spider web of terrorism. "We are at war against al-Qaeda," Obama said last week,...
- What the CIA Needs to Know - January 10, 2010
- WASHINGTON -- In terms of loss of life, the bombing of the CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan, may be the most costly mistake in the agency's history. So it's important to...
- Counterterrorism's Bureaucratic Bog - January 6, 2010
- WASHINGTON -- The Central Intelligence Agency should be asking some painful questions this week about its performance: How could a suicide bomber have flown to Detroit...
- The 'Californiazation' of America - January 3, 2010
- The U.S. economy survived the traumas of 2009, thanks to good policy and good luck. What worries me, looking ahead, is what might be called the "Californiazation" of...
- Pondering the Puzzles of 2010 - December 30, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- The headlines at year's end conveyed the eerie feeling that the world is running on replay: Terror plots aboard airliners, strikes against al-Qaeda...
- Mike Mullen's Military - December 27, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- This was another year of the vanishing center in America. Despite the election of a president who promised to govern across party and racial lines,...
- A Toast to Our Heroes - December 24, 2009
- BASE FRONTENAC, Afghanistan -- It's a week before Christmas Eve, and the chow hall of this forward operating base north of Kandahar is decorated with twinkling blue and...
- Playing Beat the Clock in Afghanistan - December 20, 2009
- MATA KHAN, Afghanistan -- Adm. Mike Mullen, the personification of American military power, is walking the streets of this dusty village in Paktika province when the...
- Pakistan's Moment to Grab - December 17, 2009
- ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The United States and Pakistan, always prone to bickering, need a big idea to unite and sustain them through the testing battle in Afghanistan. So...
- Pasha of the Spies - December 13, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- When the spy movie ends, the suave intelligence chief -- having outsmarted his enemies -- dusts off the lapels of his perfectly tailored suit and...
- Reading Professor Obama - December 10, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- For the past week, I have been mulling over two intriguing things President Obama said the day he announced his Afghanistan policy -- one about the...
- Who Loses the Iran Game - December 6, 2009
- CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- How will the confrontation over Iran's nuclear program evolve during the next year? If a simulation game played at Harvard last week is any guide,...
- Surge, Then Leave - December 2, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- President Obama has been deliberating for months over his Afghanistan strategy. But when it came time to explain that decision Tuesday, he was cool and...
- A Scary Political Movie - November 29, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- For a political horror show, fast forward to the summer of 2010: The unemployment rate is stubbornly high, hovering in a range between 9.3 percent and 9.7...
- A Skeptical Biden's Role - November 26, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- With President Barack Obama finally ready to announce his decision about Afghanistan, it's a good time to examine the role played by Vice President Joe...
- Boosting Tribes for Afghan Success - November 22, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- While military officers wait for President Barack Obama to conclude his agonizingly slow review of Afghanistan policy, they've been reading a paper by an...
- Ramallah's Road Map to Statehood - November 19, 2009
- RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Looking at this city, you can imagine what a Palestinian state could someday be like if folks got serious: The streets are clean, there's new...
- The Fed in the Crosshairs - November 15, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- Among the cherished prerogatives of members of Congress is the right to second-guess. That ritual is now playing itself out with a vengeance as the solons...
- A Salute to Our Military - November 11, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- In the aftermath of the Fort Hood shootings, some commentaries have examined the damage to the U.S. Army from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A few have...
- Still a Bridge Too Far - November 8, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- The Iranians have a word they use to describe a political impasse. They speak of it as a bombast, which means a dead-end street, or a knot that can't be...
- The Karzai Calculus - November 4, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- With the "re-election" of President Hamid Karzai, if that's the right word for a process that featured fraudulent balloting and a canceled runoff, the...
- The Real Afghan Strategy - November 1, 2009
- BARAKI BARAK, Afghanistan -- Hikmatullah, a tall Pashtun farmer dressed in turban and white cloak, looks slightly bewildered as a U.S. Army officer offers him tea and...
- On the War's Frontlines - October 30, 2009
- KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Here's what you would see if you traveled this week to Kandahar and Helmand provinces, the two big battlegrounds of the Afghanistan War: This is...
- A Resilient Baghdad on a Day of Horror - October 26, 2009
- BAGHDAD -- From the air Sunday morning, this looked like a city restored. You could see paddle boats skimming the pond at Zahwra Park, and go-karts and waterslides. And...
- In Waziristan, A History of Resistance - October 25, 2009
- ISLAMABAD -- Talking with a Pakistani intelligence officer here last week about the army's invasion of South Waziristan, a visitor noted that troops have been marching...
- Pakistan Fights Back - October 22, 2009
- RAWALPINDI, Pakistan -- Until a few months ago, Pakistani officials often used the term "miscreants" when they described the Taliban fighters operating from the western...
- A Hitch in Iran's Nuclear Plans? - October 16, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- Since you're probably not a regular reader of the trade publication Nucleonics Week, let me summarize an article that appeared in its Oct. 8 issue: It...
- Careful to a Fault on Afghanistan - October 15, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- Afghanistan could be the most important decision of Barack Obama's presidency. Maybe that's why he is, in effect, making it twice. What's odd about the...
- Hubris, and a Hiccup - October 11, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- It's a classic example of the law of unintended consequences: Congress triples its assistance to Pakistan as part of a deepening strategic relationship....
- Afghanistan Tests the Obama 'Doctrine' - October 8, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- Is there an "Obama Doctrine" lurking among the zigs and zags of his foreign policy over these first nine months? I think there is, in the president's...
- Pakistan's Model For Fighting Terrorism - October 4, 2009
- SWAT VALLEY, Pakistan -- A visit to this battlefield of Pakistan's war against the Taliban left one indelible image -- of a teenage boy's beaming smile of relief -- that...
- One Tough Adversary - October 1, 2009
- WANA, Pakistan -- The zigzag trip to this garrison town deep in the tribal area of South Waziristan tells a story that's more than a century old: The fierce Mehsud tribe...
- In Pakistan, A Question of Trust - September 29, 2009
- ISLAMABAD -- The headquarters of Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence directorate is a black-ribbed stucco building in the Aabpara neighborhood of the...