Not long ago, an archaeologist friend of mine and I came to a striking conclusion: We did our intellectual work entirely backwards from one another. He, with almost nothing to go on beyond shards of pottery, had to extrapolate a world from mere fragments. I, blessed or burdened (take your …

Muqtada al-Sadr, a Shia cleric whose Mahdi Army followers battled U.S. forces during the years of the occupation, made big gains in Iraq’s parliamentary election on October 10. His victory could pose problems for the United States and Iran. But despite the Sadrist List’s electoral success, it is not a …

The NATO defense ministers who met yesterday and today in Brussels had a long list of issues to discuss, from the alliance’s role in confronting a rising China to its plans for countering a resurgent Russia. But NATO is also confronting more fundamental questions about its identity that have taken …