The Damascus neighborhood known as Mezze 86 is a dense, dilapidated warren of narrow hillside streets adorned with posters bearing the face of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. The presidential palace is nearby, and the area is...

I'm in Oslo to give a seminar and a public lecture at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies, and I'm looking forward to hearing how world politics looks from a Nordic perspective. I haven't been to Norway since 2009, when my visit coincided with the Norwegian Nobel Committee's surprising...

“We now have supplies from Saudi Arabia,” a rebel source said. “We have been told more weapons are on their way, even higher-end missiles.” At the G8 this week Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, condemned the West’s attempts to send arms to the opposition, even though he did...

Syrian rebels need to wrest back control of territory held by Islamist militants whose involvement in the conflict gives Bashar al-Assad a pretext for more violence, French President Francois Hollande said on Sunday. Radical Islamist groups such as the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front have...