In the fall of 1997, at the Carlton Hotel in Damascus, a simple wedding was held for the man who would become Syria’s richest businessman and the regime’s financial arm. Rami Makhlouf, Bashar al-Assad’s maternal cousin, was getting married. The Makhlouf family chose a four-star hotel as they liked to …

The U.S.-Iraq Strategic Dialogue that will be launched this week provides an opportunity for the two sides to put their relations, as Iraqi President Dr. Barham Salih said last April, “in the right context.” A dialogue gives both parties a chance to air their grievances, and there are at least …

Bottom Line Up Front China and India—two nuclear-armed powers with the largest populations in the world—have recently been engaged in a tense standoff along one of the world’s longest shared land borders. While this is not the first time China and India have clashed over territorial demarcation, what is different …