Epstein Secrets

ints and analogies suggest that the West, particularly Europe, should focus on long-term assistance for the democratic and economic development of the Middle East's reborn countries, and also on partnerships with all forces that support their countries' democratization and modernization. The West can no longer

, combining behind-the-scenes contact with megaphone diplomacy, all the while working in Washington's partisan atmosphere and dealing with alarmed Middle Eastern capitals. It has had to protect its substantial interests while staying on the right side of history. It is too soon to know whether a democratic E

e case in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Syria is a paradox in this Arab season of revolt. It has an authoritarian regime dominated by a corrupt Baath Party - a relic of the age of dictators that is being swept away in so many other countries. But President Assad, relatively young at 45 and wrapped in t

olding chaos in their midst, why should the United States, some 7000 miles from Iraq spill its blood and treasure in another futile quest to remake the Middle East for them? A futile quest that has over the last decade chewed up the minds and bodies of 56,000 brave American soldiers, including some 4,700 kille

eelection bid, Maliki's Electoral Commission disqualified more than 500, mostly Sunni, candidates on charges that they had ties to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. For the Obama administration, however, tangling with Maliki meant investing time and energy in Iraq, a country it desperately wanted to pivot awa

power to civilians. As for human rights, though, just what do Egyptians have to celebrate? Not all that much — a sad commentary on the uprising in the Middle East's most populous country, one that is a reference point for regional politics despite its poverty and EFTA_R1_00234086 EFTA01845140 stagnation. Yes

the Turks. Yet decades earlier, Bashar al-Assad's father, Hafez -- a man of supreme cunning and political skill -- had ridden the military and the Baath Party to absolute power, creating a regime in which power rested with the country's Alawite minority. The marriage of despotism and sectarianism begat th