Those who know me often accuse me of being Pollyannaish in my long-range optimism, noting that I still believe, unlike most post-Marxists, that the state will eventually wither away (although I've come to accept the likelihood that it just might not happen during my...

"Bush views new report on spy lapses with favor," was the headline on the New York Times story previewing the latest commission that reported several weeks ago on the manifest and manifold U.S. government intelligence failures in detecting...

In the 1950s and 1960s, the curious profession of Kremlinologist was developed among academics and the intelligence community. These worthies made it their business to try to figure out what the less-than-scrutable folks running the Kremlin were likely to do. It...

Events will no doubt present us other crises and opportunities. Lebanon could blow up, something significant might happen in the Palestinian-Israeli situation, the U.S. might bomb Iran, there might be more visible troubles in Colombia, and confrontations over Taiwan...

Approach my inferences in the following with caution. It can be dangerous to infer too much from experiences and anecdotes separated by a long period of time, especially when events have intervened that might offer a more satisfactory explanation. With that caution,...

Let me deal first with an issue raised by a reader who called me Monday morning after hearing a brief synopsis on the radio and asked if I had yet read the long piece in Sunday's New York Times dealing with assertions from both the Iraqi interim government and the...

President Bush was uncharacteristically slow to take credit, in his speech this week at the National Defense University, for what appear to be democratic-like changes in the Middle East. This might have been in part because if you're just counting numbers, which to...

Well, it is not that difficult to see that something potentially quite important is happening in Lebanon. It certainly seems to be a move in the direction of independence and the idea of a civil society with democratic underpinnings – and the move is reflected or...

It is difficult enough to try to figure out what President Bush's real goals are during his current whirlwind trip to Europe. It is more than possible that the trip has more to do with asserting imperial dominion – or at least reminding people that the United...

The assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri gave the United States an opportunity to demonstrate maturity and respect for the ability of people in the Middle East to handle their own affairs even (or especially) when those affairs have a tragic...