Sometimes it pays to read beyond the front page:
Federal and local law enforcement authorities are investigating a shooting in Prince George’s County that critically injured a prominent intelligence expert who specializes in the former Soviet Union.
Paul Joyal, 53, was shot Thursday, four days after he alleged in a television broadcast that the government of Russian [...]

Sorry for crossposting, but this needs wider visibility. This time, Blair seems to mean it about British troops beginning to draw-down their presence in southern Iraq. All the usual provisos still apply - so far, it’s just part of the extra force that is going, and the last squaddie is scheduled to leave in three [...]

The National Security Archive’s publication of the original powerpoint slides used in planning for war with Iraq has got a lot of attention, especially the prediction that by now there would only be 5,000 US soldiers in Iraq. But it’s also interesting as an index of tension with Iran.
The briefing includes several scenarios on what [...]

Before the war in Iraq, Europe did not have a coherent policy for dealing with that country. Given that the current large-scale American presence there will not last forever, some questions arise for European governments:
Should Europe as a whole have a common policy for dealing with Iraq?
If so, what should it be?
Who will implement it?
Who [...]

Ali and Nino, the closest thing that modern Azerbaijan has to a national novel, was first published in German in 1937, sold in various translations, hit US bestseller lists in the early 1970s and bears the name Kurban Said as its author.
But the question of the author’s identity had never been resolved. All anyone agreed [...]

Why is America the way that it is?
Wrong question, the author of Albion’s Seed would say. America isn’t any one way, and hasn’t been since the very beginning of European, particularly English, colonization. David Hackett Fischer puts the core of his argument straight into his subtitle: Four British Folkways in America. He identifies four distinct [...]

Everyone’s now blogged about Jacques Chirac’s unexpected remarks about Iranian nuclear weapons.
But I think there may still be some angular momentum to be had. Chirac stated that, should a hypothetically nuclear Iran launch a nuclear weapon, Tehran would be destroyed before it had gone 200 metres. This is a pretty basic statement of nuclear deterrence, [...]

Demography matters, as Ed constantly points out. It matters so much they’re even talking about it up at Davos, where they’ve invited “the world’s most important bloggers” into the bargain. So, from the AFOE (Europe’s No.1, according to E-Sharp magazine) forward bureau in the Hotel Derby, we’d like to point out that this probably won’t [...]

Thomas P.M. Barnett, Pentagon thinker and tech entrepreneur, stands up in the centre of the circle and says…I am Thomas Barnett….and I…am shrill! You’ll feel better now you’ve said it, Tom. See his latest column, here, in which he says that:
That’s how we’ll master this allegedly chaotic world: recalling that we’re history’s first and [...]

It’s usually a charmingly naive belief that wars are the fault of leaders, and if the Ordinary People could choose we’d all live in peace. It doesn’t take long, considering some parts of the blogosphere, your local bar, the historical record and such, to realise this is absurdly simplistic. For one thing, there are always [...]