Epstein Secrets

o western Europe and North America. It is worth noting that in an arc of Middle East nations from Turkey, through Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Jordan to Tunisia — and including the Palestinian territories — unfavourable views of Russia predominate and are growing. None of this matters much to Mr Putin, who i

ially then-secretary of state James Baker, worked hard to negotiate a peaceful dissolution of the Soviet empire, and it found reluctant partners in Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. In the following decade, U.S. policy was less wise and balanced, and Russia also provided a less judicious counterpart. No doubt

December, 2013 Article 1. The Washington Post Iran committed to making a deal David Ignatius Article 2. The Washington Post An interview with Tunisia's Rachid Ghannouchi, three years after the revolution Lally Weymouth Article 3. The Guardian Saudi Arabia and Iran must end their proxy war in

er and to the state." To appreciate the magnitude of what Putin is doing, it helps to recall a bit of history. In July 1989, the Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, made a speech in Strasbourg that many took as an important step back from the Cold War. His theme was that Russia now regarded itself as sharing a

arity of the government, much to the benefit of the radicals who hope to replace it. In many other places, from the West Bank and Gaza to Yemen and Tunisia, the protest movements are also more important for what they mean in local politics than about global policy. Radical movements and imams who work

g which one decrepit leader succeeded another, from Leonid Brezhnev to Yuri Andropov to Konstantin Chernenko, before a younger and more open-minded Mikhail Gorbachev arrived too late to save a stagnant society and economy. As President Ronald Reagan famously said of those old Soviet leaders, and as the next U.S