NEW YORK – Let me posit a radical idea: The most critical threat facing the United States now and for the foreseeable future is not a rising…

MEXICO CITY – Supporters of Hugo Chávez, the recently deceased Venezuelan president, and even many of his critics, have repeatedly emphasize…

PARIS – Mali is a landlocked West African country of 15 million people, covering 1,240,000 square kilometers (478,800 square miles), three-q…

NEW YORK – Any look back at 2012 would necessarily focus on three parts of the world: the eurozone, with its seemingly endless financial unc…

MEXICO CITY – The last two months have witnessed more far-reaching changes on the drug-policy scene in Latin America and the United States t…

PARIS – The newspaper commentaries that I write often have a dark perspective. Sadly, this one will be no different. But there are two piece…

NEW YORK – Most of the debate about how to address Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear-weapons capacity focuses on two options. The first is t…

MEXICO CITY – If one were an irredeemable optimist, upcoming events in Venezuela and Colombia could be viewed as a harbinger of good things …

PARIS – The face of French politics changed dramatically in May and June. First, after 17 years of center-right presidents, François Holland…

NEW YORK – Much of the debate over what to do in the Middle East tends to pit realists against idealists. Bahrain is a classic case, as is S…

MEXICO CITY – On July 1, Mexico will in all likelihood vote the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled the country for seven d…

PARIS – France has now conducted its ninth presidential election under direct universal suffrage. And, for the first time in 17 years, after…

NEW YORK – A surprising number of elections and political transitions is scheduled to occur over the coming months. An incomplete list inclu…

MEXICO CITY – The Summit of the Americas, which takes place roughly every three years, could be viewed as the sort of Latin American boondog…

PARIS – We are little more than a decade into the twenty-first century, but a terrible precedent has already been set: all of the major inte…

NEW YORK – We know quite a bit about Iran’s nuclear program, and what we know is not encouraging. Iran is reported to be enriching uranium a…

MEXICO CITY – For Latin America, 2011 was, in Frank Sinatra’s terms, a very good year – and 2012 doesn’t look like being so bad either.…

NEW YORK – Some 40 years ago, when I entered Oxford University as a graduate student, I declared my interest in the Middle East. I was told …

PARIS – This September, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, took the bold step of directly asking the United Nations to g…

MEXICO CITY – When the United Nations voted for what was known as partition and created the State of Israel 64 years ago, subsequently grant…

NEW YORK – It was a decade ago that 19 terrorists took control of four planes, flew two into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, hit …

PARIS – Could the financial crisis of 2007-2008 happen again? Since the crisis erupted, there has been no shortage of opportunities – in the…

MEXICO CITY – The role of the politically committed intellectual has a long and ubiquitous history. The Spanish-French novelist and screenwr…

NEW YORK – The killing of Osama bin Laden by United States special forces constitutes a significant victory over global terrorism. But it is…

PARIS – How difficult is it to erase one’s past as a colonial power? Tunisia has been independent for 55 years, and Côte d’Ivoire for 51 yea…