Epstein Secrets

a summer of blood David Ignatius June 22 -- "Peace is at hand," Henry Kissinger famously announced in October 1972 after a seeming breakthrough in Vietnam negotiations. But it wasn't at hand. It took three more months to complete the Paris Peace Accords, which collapsed in 1975 when North Vietnam ove

He had long been under pressure to abandon his principles. (No doubt, by this he meant his Arab nationalist convictions, his alliance with Iran and Hizbullah, his opposition to Israel and the United States.) Syria needed to strengthen its immunity against such conspiracies, he insisted. In this defiant

America's future ability to mobilise for war.=/span> During the Korean war, around 70% of draft-age American men served =n the armed forces; during Vietnam, the unpopularity of the conflict and e=se of draft-dodging ensured that only 43% did. These days, even if every young American wanted to join up,

decades, its mastery of precision-guided weapons, is fading, as these become widely available even to the bigger mi=itant groups, such as Hamas or Hizbullah. The result is that America may be unable, within reasonable cost li=its and without reinstituting the draft, to raise the much bigger army it =igh

le that America's isolationist mood will simply be a phase. The US went through similar, inward-looking periods after the first world war and after Vietnam. In both cases, international events compelled America to plunge back into global affairs. An economic resurgence in the US may create a more outw

ent raises more vexing issues related to regional and international confrontations that bind the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel, Hizbullah and others in an intense ideological struggle to define the character and condition of the region. A sub-plot of the debate about whether Iran sho

ng a summer of blood David Ignatius June 22 -- "Peace is at hand," Henry Kissinger famously announced in October 1972 after a seeming breakthrough in Vietnam negotiations. But it wasn't at hand. It took three more months to complete the Paris Peace Accords, which collapsed in 1975 when North Vietnam overra

. He had long been under pressure to abandon his principles. (No doubt, by this he meant his Arab nationalist convictions, his alliance with Iran and Hizbullah, his opposition to Israel and the United States.) Syria needed to strengthen its immunity against such conspiracies, he insisted. In this defiant spe