Michael Ledeen is a historian, author, and foreign policy analyst long associated with the American Enterprise Institute. A specialist in Italian politics and Iranian affairs, he contributed articles to The Weekly Standard covering Middle Eastern policy, the Iranian regime, and European political developments. He is widely known as an influential neoconservative voice on national security issues.
Iran is on the march all over the world, from Syria and Iraq to Venezuela and Cuba (where they have a Hezbollah base). Except when they unceremoniously retreat, as in recent days when their flotilla to Yemen turned around when they saw the U.S. Navy.
He did it again, as we should have expected. Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei walked us right up to the finish line, spat on us, and walked away. Months and months of secret and public talks, letters, back channels, and gestures produced nothing of the sort the president, assorted…
Italy has long been Europe’s political laboratory, having invented fascism, incubated eurocommunism, launched the postwar economic miracle, and brought the social democratic nanny state to ruin. Most Italians are very unhappy, as well they might be. Unemployment is at record highs (13 percent…
Perhaps the most terrible thing about fascism was its enormous popularity. The German and Italian people—the same who had given the Western world many of its most notable cultural achievements—not only endured fascist tyranny; most of them were active and enthusiastic participants.
The president has described the Boston terrorists as “self-radicalized,” and his voice is but one in a great chorus insisting that we face a major threat from Americans gone bad, almost entirely on their own, and certainly without any input from foreign countries or terrorist groups. Some of these…
Italy has long been the political laboratory of the West. From Roman republics and tyrannies through the city-states of the Renaissance, into the Counter-Reformation and on to fascism, Eurocommunism, and homegrown terrorism, the Italians have provided us with advance looks at our future. We should…
This thoughtful and useful book is misnamed: It should be called Italy, a Historical Portrait of a Failed State. But David Gilmour’s timing is impeccable, giving us this affectionate profile just as Italy raced to the brink of self-destruction. If you want to understand better how and why Italy…
Speaking publicly about the role of Iran in Afghanistan--which is substantial, and about which we have considerable information--seems to be taboo for our current leaders. This is neither new nor surprising. Iranians, and Iranian-trained terrorists from organizations such as Hezbollah, have been…
CHINA IS THE LITMUS TEST for American foreign policy, indeed for the will and wisdom of the West. For China is the last of the great dictatorships of this century of wicked dictators, and if we fail in this final challenge it will call into question our previous triumphs.
America's behavior in Iraq over the past month "bears a close resemblance to the disaster of the Bay of Pigs, but unlike President Kennedy, no one is apologizing for this one." So said former Defense Department official Paul Wolfowitz before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. As in 1961, brave…
Pundits love to say that foreign policy doesn't determine presidential elections, but they have very short memories. Kennedy convinced the country he was a tougher anti-Communist than Nixon. Johnson convinced at least part of the American public that the nation could not allow Goldwater near the…