America can keep this asymmetrical wheel spinning much longer than Tehran can. Practically, maybe not.

From the Department of Unintended Consequences The possible endgames in Iran are starting to look like a Waffle House menu at 3am: Everything will probably give you heartburn, but booze and hunger make people optimistic. The administration is now using phrases like “degrade capability,” “strategic reset,” and “regional stabilization” for the same reason that CEOs do – use enough syllables and it’s less obvious that you’re pin-wheeling. The assumption is that if sufficient pre

Lose the Shock-Absorbers at Your Own Peril A few weeks after the attack on the US mission compound that killed US Ambassador Christopher Stevens, I was on a Turkish Air flight into Benghazi. “Qaddafi was a good ruler at first…” the doctor – a Libyan practicing in Ireland – told me, “…and the monarchy was corrupt and inefficient.” He was coming home for his brother’s funeral and thought the situation stable enough to bring his son, a restless lad of six or seven. The trouble,

If you want to look smart, be a pessimist; if you want to be rich, be an optimist.

What was supposed to be a “night in Caracas” operation to decapitate a regime has become a Mexican stand-off.

Pothole was published a year before what future historians may well mark as the start of World War III. Like the first world war, this conflict will have its aspects of jihad,

Tehran has discovered a deep vulnerability at the heart of the global order.

White House luxuriate in unpredictable chaos. Exactly what China’s current entrenched model needs to avoid.

Double whammy verdicts are barely a rounding error for Meta. The knock-ons will be worse.