Epstein Secrets

rian president Bashar al-Assad's top security grandees during a national- security headquarters meeting in Damascus, a suicide bomber in Bulgaria's Black Sea resort city of Burgas set himself off near an Israeli tourist bus, killing five Israelis and wounding scores of others. EFTA_R1_00537947 EFTA0202

st December, it continues to expand its theater of operations beyond the familiar near-abroad stretching from Lebanon and Syria to Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf. The long arm of the Islamic revolution Nearly two dozen incidents within the past eighteen months (including recent attempts in Azerbaijan, India

he military incursion is unlikely to stop in Crimea: nearly all of eastern Ukraine is Russian-speaking. Russia defines its interests far beyond its Black Sea fleet and the Crimean peninsula. Marina Korolyova, the deputy editor of the liberal radio station Echo of Moscow, told Slon.ru, "I am the daughter

s staggered into civil war and military coup. China is stepping up territorial claims in the waters off East Asia. Longtime allies in Europe and in the Persian Gulf are worried by the inconsistency of a president who came to office promising the end of the United States' post-Sept. 11 wars. Now Ukraine has eme

his forces are running rampant through the country's industrial heartland. Instead the great prize may be the southwest, an area that includes the Black Sea port of Odessa and gives him a boundary not only with the pro-Russian breakaway Transnistrian statelet, but with NATO and the EU itself. To fan the

States remains a reliable ally our friends can trust for support against attacks. These private conversations echo public statements by leaders in the Persian Gulf states and Asia expressing concern that they may have to fend for themselves in the face of military challenges from Iran, China or North Korea. T

y the city, a show of strength or simply a routine rotation of Russian military equipment. Russia has many military facilities in Crimea, where its Black Sea fleet is based, and the area has stronger historical ties to Russia than to Ukraine's central government in Kiev. While promising to defend the int

r battle groups, those massive, time- honored symbols of American commitment, is constantly scrutinized as they shift from the East Asian theater to the Persian Gulf and back again. One former Obama official denies that there is really any ambivalence at all about America's role, at least in the East. "This is t