Jonathan Foreman is a British-American journalist and author who focuses on foreign affairs, military matters, and international security. He contributed to The Weekly Standard from 1995 to 2017, writing extensively on conflict zones including Kurdistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq, as well as broader geopolitical topics such as Indian politics and Scottish secession. His reporting often combined on-the-ground dispatches with policy analysis on defense and diplomatic issues.
The victorious Iraqi troops who greeted us this winter in the newly liberated town of Bartalla on the edge of Mosul seemed so different from those I remembered from the mid to late 2000s that it was hard to believe they came from the same country. These guys were, to put it in American military…
Erbil, Iraq
For those of us who were in Mumbai during the 2008 terrorist attacks there, the bulletins from Paris on Friday night evoked queasy déjà vu. With each shocking addition to the story—drive-by shootings at one crowded restaurant and then another, explosions reported at the other end of town, casualty…
American Sniper is easily the most authentic looking and sounding movie that Hollywood has made about American troops at war since Black Hawk Down.
Kabul
It is not clear at the time of writing if Turkey will or will not allow the United States to use the NATO air base at Incirlik for airstrikes against ISIS forces in Syria and Iraq. On October 13, national security adviser Susan Rice announced that Turkey had finally agreed to the use of the base,…
This week’s referendum on Scottish independence may seem like an obscure, perhaps even Ruritanian quarrel to many Americans, but it has profound implications not just for the U.K. and Europe but also for the United States.
The Indian elections that ended with a resounding victory for the Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi and an even more resounding defeat of the ruling Congress party have huge implications not just for India’s potential prosperity, political evolution, and unity but also for the region and the world…
Dark Voyage
DEVOTEES OF PATRICK O'BRIAN'S celebrated series of historical novels are likely to be not just relieved but delighted by Peter Weir's beautiful film "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World." They had reason to be worried at the prospect of a Hollywood version of the beloved Aubrey-Maturin…
Baghdad
THE ONLY LIGHT in the hospital-green back of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle on the move and battened down against the threat of attack is refracted through the dust on the five 6-inch-wide, 2-inch-high periscope windows. But in the gloom you can make out the junk accumulated during five months training…
MORALE HAS CURDLED in many American units around Iraq, despite the amazing success of coalition forces since the invasion began on March 20th. The reason isn't 95-degree heat or the relentless dust or the suicidal harassment by Saddam's Fedayeen. It's the shameful total breakdown of the army's…
BOTH THE NEW MOVIE "The Four Feathers" and the reaction to it exemplify contemporary attitudes to Anglo-Saxon imperialism and the Victorians who practiced it. The film itself--the sixth cinematic version of the A.E.W. Mason novel first published in 1902--is a failure as motion-picture…
The Abolition of Britain
IF THERE'S ONE THING that Pakistanis and Indians agree on, it is that the United States is to blame for all. all their troubles. In Kashmir an Indian army colonel explained to me, "All the militants, all these fundamentalists -- the Americans are giving them money. The CIA." In Pakistan one of the…