Going for Broke: Understanding Greece’s Referendum Gamble

You can read my latest feature for The National Interest here.

Alexis Tsipras’ Syriza party came to power in Athens with promises to end austerity and to renegotiate the terms of Greece’s economic assistance from international creditors. But six months of seemingly endless rounds of talks with the IMF and leaders of the eurozone countries have produced nothing—except, perhaps, additional evidence that heavily indebted Greece lacks whatever it would take to squeeze meaningful concessions from those sat across the table…

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America’s Worst Nightmare: Assad Is Too Big to Fail

My latest piece for The National Interest raises the question of whether U.S. backing for anti-Assad rebels might have prolonged the conflict in Syria and led to more human death and misery than otherwise would have been the case.  Read the full piece here.

The war in Syria began over four years ago. Since then, hundreds of thousands of civilians have died and millions more have lost their homes. For most people in the West, the human toll imposed by the war is literally unimaginable. Yet Western governments have been active participants in the conflict since its inception, both militarily and diplomatically. All the while, however, the goal of western involvement in Syria—and of the U.S. government in particular—has been unclear. So what exactly is the point of U.S. foreign policy in Syria?

The Method to Rand Paul’s Madness

I have a new piece over at The National Interest.  Read it here.

For somebody aspiring to occupy the White House, Rand Paul is taking some obviously bold—and, in some quarters, unpopular—stands on foreign policy and national security.  Republicans in particular have almost uniformlylambasted Paul over his positions on reforming the National Security Agency (NSA) and how to combat the Islamic State (IS), and most commentators agree that Paul is too contrarian to pass muster in primary season. But is the outspoken Kentuckian really authoring his own political demise or are there sound strategic reasons for Paul’s steadfast refusal to toe the party line?