George W. Bush
Reports on George W. Bush See all →

Opinion: The lost cause of Iraq and Syria, symbols of the West’s defeat

After over a decade of Western involvement in Syria and Iraq, the region remains unstable and vulnerable to Iranian interference. In Syria, the Kurdish conflict seems set to endure now that the U.S. military has been largely withdrawn from the area. Iraq is facing a wide-scale insurgency against its ruling class and, in the aftermath of the Soleimani assassination, the U.S. is unlikely to be able to play a role in eventual foreign-led negotiations.

Opinion: Trade wars are bad, and nobody wins them
United States President Donald Trump insists that trade wars are “good” and “easy to win,” but history tells otherwise. His plan to slap tariffs on steel and aluminum imports will hurt U.S. producers and will likely cost far more jobs than they protect. The retaliation for such measures could hit ...


Opinion: Conventional measures give false reassurance on global risk
Conventional measures could be the wrong ones to gauge the risk of a financial shock to the global economy. Imbalances created by cheap money are building up in the economy. A close look at market capitalization, share buybacks, and interest-rate spreads presents a troubling picture.


U.S. civil-military relations in the age of Trump
Controversy has erupted over relations between the civilian government and military leadership in U.S. President Donald Trump's administration. The president’s critics derided him first for appointing military officers to top political positions, then for marginalizing them. But a closer look reveals that the national security team agrees on the biggest ...


The West’s leadership crisis as a Russian trauma
Russians are not gleeful about the leadership vacuum in the West. There is a sense that the failure of Pax Americana has left them bereft and vulnerable. Faced with a decaying imperial center, peripheral states such as Russia or Turkey have had to assemble their own, “surrogate” order from the ...
