The momentum in the United States is shifting towards a larger-scale attack on the Assad regime. But even a limited one will transform the nature of the war, with region-wide consequences.
The probability that the United States will make a single military reponse to the chemical-weapons assault near Damascus is very high.
Al-Qaida has twice returned from presumed defeat. Now, the fate of the Arab awakening provides it with a third opportunity.
Syria's internal stalemate and the wider regional standoff make a political settlement ever more remote. But the military trends are going the jihadist paramilitaries' way.
The cancellation of Obama's September meeting with Putin has led some observers to predict doom for the arms control agenda. But beyond this bilateral sticking point, inter-state agendas are on the move.
In the UK, Labour's nuclear disarmament policies of the 1980s were not to blame for electoral failure, argues Rebecca Johnson. A sensible, fact-based debate about Trident replacement requires Ed Miliband to overcome the Party’s ‘electoral defeat traumatic syndrome’.
The Yemen-related security alert that has led to a western diplomatic shutdown in the middle east and north Africa highlights an enduring feature of the United States's jihadist adversary.
The hope for progress in the core middle-east dispute arises at the very time when a new Iranian president tests Israel's unyielding stance on nuclear security.
Syria's war is producing humanitarian crisis, the growth of radical paramilitaries, violence in Iraq, and intra-state conflict. In the morass there is but one chance of progress.
A combination of extreme weather events and a coming temperature rise may be enough to induce the serious political shift needed over climate change.
The gap between Washington's strategic ambitions in Afghanistan-Iraq and the material results is becoming even larger.
How do Egypt's latest huge street protests relate to popular eruptions elsewhere in the world? A war involving Egypt and Syria in 1973 supplies part of the answer.
