Foreign Policy in Focus

How a semantic argument over passports prompted a debate over who gets to shape U.S. foreign policy toward Israel-Palestine.

Parties linked to Spain’s “Occupy” movement now lead governments in the country’s three largest cities — and they’re already ruffling feathers.

Despite its improving relations with Havana, Washington’s ultimate goal for the island remains regime change.

If we continue to think about the Islamic State as a force to be fought on the battlefield, its second year will be worse than its first.

While Israelis water their lawns and swim in Olympic-sized pools, Palestinians a few kilometers away are literally dying of thirst.

U.S. efforts to construct an “armed peace” in the Asia-Pacific are only encouraging a cycle of escalation.

Hardliners want to use North Korea as a hammer to destroy the nuclear agreement with Iran. They’d better start looking for a more effective instrument.

Every economic class in America plays a different game of chance, each with its own vastly different cost and payout.

Convergence theory predicted that the world would become like Swedish social democracy. Why has the opposite happened?

In the post-Cold War era, the right and even some on the left are playing a new game of “Who’s your favorite dictator?”

Bashar al-Assad is not going to age out of office any time soon.

China has its vanishing girls. North Korea has its disappeared prisoners. And America has a generation of missing, jailed, and dead black men.

Obama’s no peace president, but he’s won important diplomatic victories. Will they survive the 2016 election?

Rare are the moments when enormously complex situations lend themselves to unambiguous yes-or-no answers. This is one of them.

Using FBI Director James Comey’s speech on inequality and bias in policing to make a broader point about the state of education and the reform needed.

No matter who wins the election next month or whatever military force is raised and thrown against Boko Haram in the future, it is likely that the insurgency will continue.

We’re better off having the limits of free speech tested by artists — including obnoxious ones — than having its limits imposed by political rulers.

After the Paris massacre, European governments should resist narratives of civilizational conflict and push for a ceasefire in the Syrian war.

Can video games crowdsource more democratic solutions to the world’s problems?

A few Americans are held hostage by al-Qaeda. The rest of us are held hostage by the U.S. overreliance on military force.