RealClearWorld Articles

The war between the U.S. and Iran has now passed the five-month mark, and there is still no end in sight. The White House and the media have repeatedly teased imminent ceasefire agreements, only for it to become clear within days that the cycle of negotiation and conflict is returning directly to its starting position. The Islamic Republic therefore continues to suffer severe and wide-ranging losses and will no doubt continue to do so until something significant changes to upend the fruitless process that we have all been watching unfold repeatedly. The Iranian regime is the intransigent...

Prime Minister Rumen Radev can be quite pleased with his situation.  His landslide in the April 19 elections gave his Progressive Bulgaria party a clear majority in parliament.  Former Vice President Iliana Iotova slid into his old job and leads in the polls for the October 25 presidential election.  His people are at all levels of government and his popularity remains high.  No party has governed Bulgaria alone since 2001 and no politician has held such sway in the country since 1989.  One hundred days after being sworn in, what Radev has been doing with...

“Ladies and Gentlemen, Hungary is back.” This declaration by Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi, the Central European nation’s new Defense Minister, quickly became the running motto last week at the Equilibrium Institute’s Budapest Energy and Security Talks (BEST), at which this author was in attendance. It was a sentiment defense policymakers from both sides of the Atlantic have longed to hear. At the forefront of the newly elected Prime Minister Peter Magyar’s administration is the message that it will bring Hungary’s foreign policy into alignment with the rest of...

Michael Rubin's Iran Needs an Insurgency is remarkable less for what it says than for how late it arrives. He has suddenly discovered that Iran needs an insurgency. Welcome to the debate. The only problem is that the very movement Rubin has spent more than two decades disparaging has been waging precisely such a struggle since 1981. Long before Rubin concluded that organized resistance was indispensable, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK) had already built a nationwide resistance network, established Resistance Units across Iran, and paid an extraordinary price in blood for confronting the...

Election day is normally a time when voters get to make their voices heard. In Clacton, England, however, voters were denied that chance in the by-election that saw Member of Parliament (MP) Nigel Farage win re-election in a landslide. The other major parties refused to run candidates, dismissing the by-election as a political ploy. By refusing to stand in the by-election, Britain’s political parties are failing to provide voters a choice and missing an opportunity to pressure a political adversary. The impetus for the Clacton by-election stems from a £5 million gift to Farage...

President Trump’s latest Canada tariff punch is a message for the World — just not the one the Administration intended to send. The Administration wanted to project control, instead it looks unreliable.   The timing of the latest 50 per cent tariffs on some Canadian goods this July was no coincidence — they were announced just days before USTR Jamieson Greer announced new Section 301 tariffs on trading partners representing nearly 99 per cent of American trade. With the IEEPA tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court, and these new tariffs being put in place, the...

When Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev sat beside Vladimir Putin in Omsk recently and suggested that it might be time to freeze the war in Ukraine and return to negotiations, his words attracted attention well beyond Central Asia. They were notable not simply because they were spoken in Putin's presence, but because of what they revealed about a region that has spent more than three decades quietly redefining its place in the world. Tokayev's intervention was about Ukraine. But it was also about something larger. It was about sovereignty, strategic uncertainty and the gradual...

As the war with Iran enters its sixth month, it’s impossible to ignore all the ironies associated with the Trump administration’s ill-advised decision to initiate hostilities against a country that wasn’t poised to attack the United States or undermine U.S. national security. Much of the current focus is on re-opening the Strait of Hormuz through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas ordinarily flows. Closure of the strait has driven up the price of fuel and basic goods, both in the U.S. and around the world. The irony is that the Strait of Hormuz...

By August of 1941 most of Europe cowered under the heel of Hitler. Germany had reclaimed the Rhineland, annexed Austria, occupied Czechoslovakia, then invaded and occupied Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Yugoslavia and Greece, and in June had launched a seemingly unstoppable assault on the Soviet Union. Europe had completely submitted. Britain stood alone. From far across the Atlantic President Roosevelt observed these events with growing consternation. The capitulation of the Old World democracies in the face of Fascism was an affront to the basic...

The next flashpoint in the Middle East is not the Strait of Hormuz–it’s the Syria-Iraq border.  Washington is understandably focused on its conflict with Iran, but its consequences are quickly expanding into surrounding countries. Since the War on Terror, Iraq has developed into a divided territory hosting its own state government, the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), and Iran-linked extremist group Popular Mobilization Front (PMF). Teheran’s Islamic Regime spent decades building its Hezbollah network in Iraq, which eventually expanded into Syria as a supply corridor...

A Media rights organization has quietly removed at least eight individuals from its roster of media workers killed while doing journalistic work. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said it acted after Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad published obituaries identifying as combatants people the organization had listed as journalists. In plain terms, these were not journalists killed for reporting. They were members of designated terrorist entities.  Weeks later, a Palestinian reporter, Abubaker Abed, revealed in a tweet that Al Jazeera had ended the contracts of at least 24 of its...

To hear President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio discuss Venezuela one would almost think that they were talking about two different countries. When Trump has discussed developments in the seven months since U.S. forces seized Nicolas Maduro he has been almost giddy with delight.  When he last spoke about Venezuela he proclaimed that Delcy Rodriguez, whom he had handpicked to serve as Maduro’s successor, was “doing a great job” and that the country was now “incredibly successful.”  The metric he used to define this success was simple—the...

Iran’s geography ensures that the consequences of its domestic politics cannot remain within its borders. The country overlooks the Strait of Hormuz, lies between the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, and connects the Middle East with Central and South Asia. Prolonged instability in Iran can therefore threaten regional security, disrupt energy supplies and impose costs on the global economy. Yet Western policy continues to treat the Iranian people’s demand for political change as separate from these strategic concerns. Human rights are discussed in one forum, nuclear proliferation...

The announcement came at a politically symbolic moment. On July 13, ten countries, including Ukraine and nine European states, launched the Integrated Anti-Ballistic Coalition (IABC) in Paris with the ambition of developing a sovereign upper layer of missile defense for Europe, a political initiative embodied by Project Freyja, which originated in Ukraine. Just one day later, Airbus Defense and Space, Destinus, MBDA Deutschland, Safran Electronics & Defense and Thales signed a Letter of Intent establishing the Bliksem EXO Consortium, with the stated objective of delivering Europe's first...

Over the past eighteen months, nearly every condition analysts have long said would erode the dollar's dominance arrived at once. War broke out in the Persian Gulf. The Strait of Hormuz has closed, reopened, and closed again, and remains shut as this is written. Iran began charging transit tolls denominated in yuan. Indian refiners started settling Russian crude in yuan and dirhams, the first time a top-five oil importer structurally routed around the dollar for energy. China's cross-border payment system posted record volumes, clearing 1.22 trillion yuan in a single day in March. Central...

In fits and starts, President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza is progressing. After months of inertia over Hamas’s refusal to disarm, the White House announced a breakthrough on July 30. Hamas agreed on paper to surrender its weapons. The agreement, which Trump touted as “a monumental step toward lasting peace and security,” lays out a 15-step “roadmap” by which Hamas will disarm, Israeli troops will withdraw from Gaza, and the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a 13-member technocratic body that is currently based in Egypt,...

Rumors have been circulating that China is not yet ready to provide Pakistan with its 5th-generation Fighter jets in the near future, citing the rationale that Beijing will hold off on J-35 sales to Pakistan because India currently does not possess any fifth-generation fighters and the arrival of the J-35 will alter the balance of power in South Asia. Moreover, China will prioritize its domestic military needs amid the rising challenges it faces in the South China Sea; Pakistan will be unable to bear the cost of the J-35, and the Chinese will not allow the placement of J-35 at bases hosting...

Earlier this year, Kazakhstan found itself thrust between two powers as the U.S. and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury, targeting Iran in airstrikes that prompted escalations across the region. Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev immediately extended messages of support to leaders in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan, strongly condemning Iran’s retaliatory strikes on their territories. In contrast, he opted out of expressing such solidarity with Iran, instead addressing his nation’s condolences to the Iranian people, through channels...

China's Central Military Commission normally seats seven men. It currently seats two. On January 24th, General Zhang Youxia, the senior vice chairman and the most powerful uniformed officer in China, was placed under investigation for serious violations of discipline and law. So was General Liu Zhenli, who ran the Joint Staff Department, meaning he was the officer responsible for coordinating combat operations, unit movements, and intelligence across every branch of the People's Liberation Army. Both men had combat experience from the war with Vietnam, which almost nobody in the PLA does...