Epstein Secrets

monstrated a willingness to adopt legislation and then enforce it, other countries followed suit first in Eurasia but subsequently in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. Governments that adopt such laws seldom if ever shut down the civil society sector entirely. Instead, they deal with NGOs selec

ts, and blue-chip law firms were earning fees paid by a majority of the world's autocracies, dictatorships, and illiberal regimes. Some, especially Middle Eastern monarchies, are American allies. But others are hostile to democracy and regard the United States—and often the EU—as adversaries. The lobbyists a

euvers. Press freedom and democracy A free press ranks among the most critical institutions of liberal democracy. Among the reforms introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in his campaign to modernize the Soviet system, glasnost, or openness, played the most important role in challenging the decades-old system of Sov

to have failed, Israel would go it alone and launch military operations against the Iranian nuclear project, sucking in the U.S. and risking a wide Middle Eastern conflagration.The American assurances were designed to staunch Israeli fears and give diplomacy and sanctions more time. But as Obama has waffled

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

lim. And so the 747 remains in the sky, perhaps to be hijacked or ultimately to crash. Karen Elliott House, a Pulitzer Prize winner for coverage of the Middle East, is the author of the forthcoming "On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines — and Future," to be published next week. Artick 3. L

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