Harlan Ullman.

Over a century ago, as this column noted, events in Europe were simultaneously described as serious but not yet desperate and as desperate but not serious.  Given the antics of the Boy Sun King in Pyongyang, Kim Jung Un, it is hard to know how serious or desperate the current situation on the Korean peninsula is. Kim unilaterally abrogated the truce that ended the Korean War sixty years ago; cut off the hotline with Seoul; threatened to strike America; provocatively moved several of his mobile rockets; restarted the Yongbyon reactor; and warned diplomats in the north to leave in advance of conflict.  Is Kim serious in threatening a state of [...]

During the Cold War, the thermonuclear standoff between the U.S. and Soviet Union was often described as two scorpions in a bottle. The notion was that both scorpions would sting the other to death no matter which struck first. Of course, the prospect of the scorpions being of the opposite sex with options other than mutual suicide was rarely raised. Today, the United States and Iran are not two scorpions in that once famous bottle. But both states remain locked in a dangerous embrace going back decades to the overthrow of the Mossadegh government in the 1950’s and the restoration of the Shah to the 1979 revolution and takeover of [...]

Ten years ago this month, the United States launched Operation Iraqi Freedom against Saddam Hussein.  The real reason for this invasion was President George W. Bush’s freedom agenda with its aim of changing the geostrategic landscape of the Middle East by imposing democracy on Iraq.  The stated casus belli was Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction that, as Bush and his National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice warned, could lead to a “mushroom shaped cloud” exploding over our heads.  But, the WMD cupboard was bare.  Saddam fell and was later executed because of his fear of revealing the truth. In the run-up to the war, the U.S. commander, Army General Tommy Franks, [...]

As President Barack Obama arrives in Israel for his first state visit, clearly Iran will dominate the agenda along with discussions over Syria, the Arab Spring and even the Palestinian issue (although Israeli settlements in occupied territories may be missing in action as too politically sensitive).  In last week’s interview for Israeli television, the president concluded that Iran was at least a year removed from achieving a useable nuclear weapon.  The intent was to dampen any enthusiasm for an attack this year on the part of newly re-elected Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu.   And Mr. Obama’s address to the Israeli public (and not the Knesset) will doubtlessly incorporate that argument. Meanwhile, [...]