James H. Barnett

Noir series now on Netflix vividly captures the contradictions and dynamism of the Weimar era.

America’s biggest partner in Africa faces a host of internal crises—and its approach to security only makes matters worse.

The key to reading history of Nazi Germany, a wise professor once explained to me, is to attempt to understand the logic and mentality of those who embraced the Nazi movement without ever losing sight of what an ultimately absurd and fundamentally evil project theirs was. This is the approach…

In February 14, South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma resigned amid widespread corruption allegations, ceding power to his newly elected deputy, the business tycoon and onetime anti-apartheid activist Cyril Ramaphosa. Less than 24 hours later, Ethiopian prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn resigned,…

In December 2015, newly elected Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari declared that the terrorist group Boko Haram had been “technically defeated” after intensive military efforts. The Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF), a consortium of military units from Benin, Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and…

An attack on October 4 by suspected Islamic State-affiliated militants that left four American soldiers dead has unexpectedly pushed the landlocked, sparsely inhabited African nation of Niger into the limelight. While most Americans seem less interested in the attack itself than in the ensuing…

A week before Kenya’s August 8 presidential election, the mutilated body of Chris Msando, head of software for the country’s chief electoral body, was found in a ditch outside Nairobi. His autopsy revealed that he had been tortured before dying of strangulation. That the man who held the passwords…