Clifford D. May

China’s rulers have a new and unimproved version of rules-based order

China's Communist rulers are making clear that they intend to wrest the torch of global leadership from America's hands.

March 30, 2021

Why Assad crossed Obama’s red line

"Ayman" was a skilled Syrian scientist producing chemical weapons at Institute 3000, a facility within the deceptively named Scientific Studies and Research Center near Damascus.

March 23, 2021

President Macron deserves credit for trying to unite France

What holds a nation together? In some cases, it's blood, soil and language (think Japan). In some cases, it's a police state (think Iran).

March 2, 2021

Biden must deter and not appease Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, and Pyongyang

We all disapprove of appeasement, right? The term evokes Munich, where British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain made concessions to Adolf Hitler in the hope that would sate, rather than whet, the fuhrer's appetite for conquest.

February 23, 2021

Despots dominate the WHO and the UNHRC

I understand why Joe Biden wants to rejoin the World Health Organization and the United Nations Human Rights Council. The new president is a multilateralist.

February 16, 2021

Who killed Lokman Slim?

"Killing for them is a habit," Rasha al-Ameer told reporters last week.

February 9, 2021

U.N. General Assembly simply remembering the Holocaust is insufficient

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is meant to serve two purposes: to memorialize the victims of the Nazi genocide of the 1940s, and help prevent future genocides.

February 2, 2021

Is America prepared for a catastrophic cyberattack?

Attacks intended to shut down financial systems, electricity, water supplies, transportation, communications -- perhaps even the entire U.S. economy could happen. What's the plan?

January 26, 2021

The many reasons Biden should not enrich Iran’s rulers

Tehran sponsors Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria and other countries, Shia militias in Iraq, Houthi rebels in Yemen, and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

January 19, 2021

Biden must heal the nation and show world adversaries a unified America

What a marvelous time to be America's enemy! Despots, dictators and other assorted villains are gloating.

January 12, 2021

Europe capitulates to China’s rulers

The challenges facing what we used to call, with pride and confidence, the Free World are daunting. Illiberal authoritarians of various stripes are increasingly assertive and audacious.

January 5, 2021

Islamic Revolution 101: Ambitious Iranian theocrats seizing power still widely misunderstood

In early 1979, I was sent to Iran to report on the rebellion then underway. I was woefully ignorant of Iranian history, politics and theology.

December 29, 2020

Will Biden learn from Trump and keep making America secure again

"Build Back Better" was Joe Biden's campaign slogan. How different is that, really, from "Make America Great Again"? Both BBB and MAGA suggest the need for restoration, for reversing deterioration and decline, for fixing what's broken.

December 22, 2020

We can’t predict what Biden’s foreign policy advisers will advise

We are now in that quadrennial season when Washington wonks spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to divine the policies of the next administration based on the individuals named as presidential advisers.

December 15, 2020

The forgotten refugees of the Middle East

How much does the average Palestinian know about the Jewish refugees from Arab countries? My guess: very little.

December 8, 2020

The Cold War with China has begun

China has been waging a Cold War against America for years. The current administration has recognized that reality.

December 1, 2020

Abu Muhammad al-Masri’s assassination exposes relations between Tehran and al Qaeda

The assassins were professionals and they had planned carefully. On Aug. 7, 2020, around 9 o'clock on a warm evening, they rode a motorcycle down a street in Pasdaran, a well-off Tehran neighborhood.

November 24, 2020

U.N. and other international organizations hijacked by despots

With the defeat of the Axis Power in 1945, the United States emerged as the strongest military, economic and cultural power on earth.

November 17, 2020

The death threat to free speech in France

How consequential will it be if the French acquiesce, agreeing to carve out an exception to free speech in deference to Islamists? Very.

November 10, 2020

Charting Natan Sharansky’s journeys: From prison to politics to an exodus from Africa

Natan Sharansky was born Anatoly Borisovich Shcharansky in 1948 in Stalino, a grimy Ukrainian coal town renamed Donetsk following the death of the second Soviet dictator in 1953.

November 3, 2020