Over the past 18 months, Bahraini security forces, aided by troops from Saudi Arabia, have engaged in a brutal crackdown against the island nation's own Syria-style uprising. Bahrain is home to the Arab Spring's forgotten revolution.
Almost everyone agrees that overdependence on Middle Eastern oil is bad for America's economy and national security. So why don't we recognize the similar dangers of overdependence on Middle Eastern money to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives?
To continue on our current foreign policy course means more dead soldiers, more dead Foreign Service personnel, and more wasted resources. The rest of the world is willing to shed blood. It shouldn't be ours.
The crisis in Syria is the most stark, current example of how the current laissez-faire global arms trade can exacerbate conflicts.
During my recent visit to Iran, I had heard through the grapevine about the possibility of the Canadian embassy shutting down, but figured it was just speculation. When the rumor had turned into fact, it baffled me.
While Lakhdar Brahimi's mission on behalf of the U.N. Security Council and the Arab League to facilitate peace is admirable, he inherits a mandate that utterly failed, and conditions for peace have only gotten worse.
Much unkind comment has been passed on George Galloway, MP for Bradford West. He is accused of being a "pimp for fascism", of operating an unregistered charity for personal gain, of sucking up to Saddam Hussein and, perhaps most damningly, of killing satire with a rusty crowbar and leaving it to rot in a ditch.
A generation ago the plight of the Kurds was dire in all four countries where they mainly live - Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria following the failure to allow them an independent state in the aftermath of the end of the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It is, as I have often been told, a tough neighbourhood.
Canada announced that it has cut ties with the governments of Iran and Syria, shutting down its embassy in Tehran and expelling diplomats from Canada. But Canada is notorious on the human rights of its Middle Eastern immigrants.
The attitudes of the American Republican Party differ from the general tendencies of the Democratic Party, regarding international relations and foreign policy.
Recent economic indicators suggest that at least some of the risks to the Turkish economy that built up in 2010-11 have started to ease. Although this improvement may be partly due to external developments outside of the control of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, much of the rebalancing process has been policy-induced.
Recently, there has been much discussion about establishing a "safe haven" within Syria's borders to protect the growing number of refugees fleeing the country's civil war, which unfortunately have received little backing. Can we hold that bordering states have a duty to accept more fleeing Syrians? This is a tough call, as the international community is not helping the situation in any certain terms.
Assuming that Hillary Clinton still wants to be president, after a breather from years of frenetic activity, first as a presidential candidate and then secretary of state -- she is playing a long game. And the geopolitical pivot to the Asia Pacific is a central part of it.
In opening Tuesday's General Assembly debate on Syria, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon savored an I-told-you-so moment.
The sound of violence in surrounding suburbs has become a feature of life in Central Damascus. While the central parts of the capital have, for the most part, been spared the fighting that has beset some outer suburbs in recent months, residents here are frequently reminded of their precarious situation by the sound of explosions and gunfire emanating from surrounding suburbs.
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has a historic opportunity to help resolve the Iranian-Israeli nuclear imbroglio by leveraging Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Tel Aviv and exploiting its newfound goodwill with Tehran.